For a woman who nine years ago had life as she knew it destroyed, 33-year-old Jo-Ann Lynch is a pillar of strength and perseverance but justice continues to elude in her quest to ensure that the woman whose action changed her life forever, faces the consequences.
To her it is easy but to the Guyana Police Force it does not appear that way. Lynch knows that Onika Sinclair, who threw a corrosive substance into her face destroying it in the process and causing untold damage inside and out, lives in Trinidad and she cannot fathom why the police, with the assistance of their counterparts on that island, cannot have her brought back to Guyana to face the courts.
The struggle has been real for Lynch; she has made several trips to Trinidad and met with law officials and other persons in that country, but she believes the local police have been lapsing which has resulted in the woman not being arrested and brought back to Guyana.
This newspaper has published several stories on the mother of one’s plight, chronicling her struggles with the most recent being the file on the case mysteriously disappearing even though Sinclair was charged in absentia and the prosecutor requested that the matter be put down indefinitely. In 2010, the file could not be located and Lynch was forced to recount the horrifying details into two statements to the police but she endured this with the hope that her attacker would have been apprehended. Five years later it is still not a reality and the police seem to be no closer to this.
This newspaper made contact with a senior police officer who is aware of the case and who promised to give an update by tracking the force’s Interpol details but several attempts to get the promised information from the officer proved futile.
Then Crime Chief Seelall Persaud, now Commissioner of Police, had told this newspaper in 2010 that the force was informed by its counterpart in Trinidad that police might have arrested Sinclair, who was behind that horrific June 2006 attack on Lynch. Persaud said the Trinidadian police requested some information in an effort to verify that the woman was indeed Sinclair and the Guyana police had provided that information.
At that time he did not volunteer what follow up action had been taken or whether the T&T police responded. He had explained that the local police made contact with Interpol in Trinidad and informed them that the woman was wanted and that she may be hiding in Trinidad. Persaud had said too that police in Trinidad responded and requested information, which was subsequently faxed to them.
Persaud was also asked why Sinclair could not have been tried in her absence but he indicated that once a person has not pleaded to a charge the matter cannot be tried in that person’s absence.
Contacted, legal sources pointed out that if the woman was charged indictably, which should have been the case because of the grievous nature of the alleged crime, then there was no need for her to plead to the matter and she could have been tried in her absence. It is not clear what charge was filed against the woman and whether, since the file had to be reconstructed, that charge still stands. Lynch continues to question why an arrest warrant was never issued for Sinclair.
‘A call’
Sinclair had gone into hiding in Trinidad after the information was published, but Lynch said she had received a call last year from someone who revealed the woman was in Trinidad and was working.
Sinclair is reportedly close to a well-known and powerful criminal lawyer in Trinidad, who it is believed is shielding her and providing the means for her to remain free. She is apparently receiving visits from her children, who live in the US.
Meanwhile, Lynch continues to try to put her life together and the hardest part is watching the impact all of this has on her now teenage daughter.
“For me when someone has done wrong to you, you should be given justice…some people are talking about forgiveness but she must face the consequences…. How can you ask someone to forgive when you have taken so much from them?” Lynch asked during a recent interview with the Sunday Stabroek.
“For me to go into details to tell you the struggles that I go through, it is really like I am alive but then again I am not alive. I am alive in the sense that I have life but I am not alive as for doing all of the things I was born to do,” Lynch struggled to explain.
“But I cannot understand people coming to me and saying you know let God deal with it, like I can’t get a grip on it…” she said emphasizing that justice must be served, adding that so many people do not fight for justice or their rights and this gives her the impetus “to show other people that you can still fight and get justice.
“You tell me to let God deal with it but then the same people that go to church and know the Bible are enabling her so that is a double standard.”
In 2006, Lynch was involved in a relationship with the father of Sinclair’s two children, Mark Moore. Early one morning Sinclair, with the support of others, ambushed Lynch in the apartment she was sharing with Moore in Bartica. Sinclair had travelled from Georgetown to Bartica and entered the apartment but Lynch had barricaded herself in a room. Following a conversation, and with her sister being present, Lynch was made to believe that Sinclair would no longer attack her. However, as soon as she opened the door the acid was thrown in her face and Sinclair immediately left and caught a boat out of the township and has never been seen since.
Moore subsequently married another woman and lives between the US and Guyana.
Sinclair’s relatives had claimed that Lynch tormented her before the incident, but Lynch continues to deny this and said it was Sinclair who travelled to Bartica from time to time. On the day of the attack, when Sinclair gained access to Moore’s apartment where Lynch was, it was the landlady’s sister who gave her the spare key. And after Sinclair committed the act, she was assisted in her escape to Georgetown.
Barking up the wrong tree
Sinclair’s former co-workers in Trinidad had decided to dig into her life, after she allegedly told one of them that she was barking up the wrong tree. An internet search revealed that she was wanted for a crime in Guyana.
Lynch was contacted and she travelled again to Trinidad but because the persons who had alerted her began getting threats after they attempted to get the matter published in the Trinidad press, she was asked to remain silent.
According to Lynch, last year the police in Trinidad had visited Sinclair’s last known address, but she had apparently gone into hiding. Lynch said she no longer sees any reason to remain quiet and by once again publicizing the matter she hopes that the long arm of the law will finally catch up with Sinclair.
Compensation
And as she struggles for justice, Lynch said persons continue to approach her asking her to forgive Sinclar and accept compensation for the horrific incident. The most recent individual was a brother-in-law of Sinclair who offered her money.
“I don’t really know about other people but for me it just goes against everything that I believe in… How can you come to offer money? It is as if she took my life but I am still alive and when he was there he looked at me and hugged me and said at the time when she burnt me she was not in her right frame of mind,” she said.
But Lynch said she asked him how someone could have travelled for over two hours to throw acid on someone and not be in her right frame of mine. He also asked her if she wanted to talk to Sinclair but she declined.
“I really don’t look down on persons who would take money when people do them wrong and so but yes while you are supposed to be compensated it should be by justice, you should be given justice. It is really terrible because my daughter was four when this happened and she has to live with seeing me like this,” she pointed out.
Her daughter, Lynch said, becomes angrier as she gets older as there is so much she as her mother cannot do for her only child.
“I cannot be a functioning mother as I would want to be. There are certain things that I cannot do for her, like when she has school functions and so on, not every time I would be feeling up to it,” she said.
However, as she has said before she is heartened by the level of love, support and respect shown to her by Barticians as residents are all concerned about her well-being and would always give her words of support.
Some even tell her she is a source of inspiration as she still does her designing, which is her source of income, and she is never fearful to go out in public. But there is so much she still battles with. Many days she would be unwell as a direct result of the acid attack which the doctors have indicated damaged some of her internal organs. If it rains she has to be careful not to get wet because then she becomes ill.
She has done surgeries in Trinidad which have helped her tremendously but there are more surgeries that need to be done. It is not only that she needs finances for these but she also said “it takes a lot out of me because I become really sick but sometime soon I would do another one where the doctor would remove some of the damaged skin.” She also hopes that her left eye which was severely damaged would also one day be fixed as she was given some hope by doctors in Trinidad who said this could be done.
The struggle for justice continues for Jo-Ann Lynch; it is one she has no intention of giving up.
