A mother is fighting for the release of her 15-year-old daughter, who was held at a police station for over a week before being placed at the Sophia Juvenile Holding Centre.
Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection Simona Broomes, who was approached by the mother, yesterday promised that the case would be investigated and added that an approach would be made to Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan about teenagers being held in police lock-ups.
The child, who was held at the Whim Police Station after being charged with assault, was only removed after her mother on Monday approached the Police Complaints Authority (PCA), which also promised an investigation. Hours after, the child was removed from the station and taken to the Sophia centre.
According to the mother, when she saw her daughter yesterday the crying girl was wearing someone else’s clothes. After seeing her daughter, the woman approached the Brickdam office of Minister Broomes and appealed for assistance.
Broomes told Stabroek News that she has since contacted the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Lorene Baird and instructed that an immediate investigation be conducted and a report submitted along with recommendation so that she could better pronounce on the matter because she does not have the facts.
“It is not a nice situation to see a mother leaving all the way from Berbice and she ventilated all her options,” Broomes said, while noting that as soon as the report gets to her she would examine it with senior minister Volda Lawrence and contact the mother.
Questioned about what steps the government is going to take to ensure that teenage girls are not held in police lock-ups, since this is the second such case to make the news since the new government took office, Broomes said she is going to suggest to Lawrence that they engage Ramjattan on the issue. She stressed that it is wrong for teenagers to be held in police lock-ups.
“I definitely know this is an approach that our government would not take and it something that needs to be corrected and it needs to be corrected right now,” the minister said.
Last month, a 13-year-old was kept in the Bartica Police Station lock-ups for close to a week after she was charged with wandering. The girl had left her home for days in the company of a 21-year-old male, who was subsequently charged with raping her.
At the time, Minister Ramjattan had told this newspaper he would have worked to ensure that minors are not held in the lock-ups and noted that it had to start with more education for police officers. Had there been a more educated force, he had said, then ranks at the Bartica Police Station would have known that it was wrong to hold a young child in police lock-ups that have no provision for juveniles.
“If we had good police officers at Bartica, understanding the nature of the problem, they could have done a better job of it, rather than shoving her inside of a lockups and then charging her,” Ramjattan had told this newspaper.
‘Giving away’
The assault charge against the 15-year-old stemmed from an altercation involving her pregnant sister, a cousin and two adult vendors.
According to the mother, the family has had an ongoing problem with the vendors, who sell in front of their home and dispose garbage in the vicinity.
The mother was not at home at the time of the altercation but she was told that her nephew approached the vendors over the manner in which they were disposing the garbage and an argument ensued and later escalated into a fight. The woman said she was told that her daughter got involved after she saw her pregnant sister on the ground and being attacked by the vendors.
After the incident, both sides made police reports and they were all charged.
Upon being questioned by the magistrate at the Albion Magistrate’s Court, the mother said she related that she works in Georgetown and returns home at weekends. Apart from the 15-year-old, she has two other minor children. She said she was forced to seek work in the city in an effort to support her minor children.
Her partner is an alcoholic, she said, and he lives in the house along with other relatives, including her adult nephew and brother.
The woman said her daughter attends one of the better secondary schools on the Corentyne and she is a prefect which speaks to her good behaviour in school.
In court, a probation officer recommended to the magistrate that the child be placed in a home and the mother was sent for the child’s birth certificate.
The woman was going to comply but her brother cautioned her. “…Me brother ask me if I know wah I doing is give away I giving away me child and suh I say me not carrying the birth certificate,” the woman said.
In the end, the child was returned to the Whim Police Station lock-ups, where she remained for over a week. According to the mother, the girl cried throughout and refused to eat. She said the probation officer kept insisting that she turn over the birth certificate but instead she took in a photocopy and refused to lodge the original. As a result, she said she was threatened with the removal of her two younger children from her custody.
Out of frustration, the woman said she “walk and tell everybody me story” and a man advise her to go to the PCA, which intervened.
After the child was moved to the juvenile centre, the woman said a Georgetown-based journalist took her to the home, where she saw the child. It was the same journalist who took the woman to Broomes’ office.
“If you see me child how she get fine, fine and she crying and asking if I come to carry she home. I want me child, that is my child,” the woman said in tears.
The mother recalled that during the elections campaign she had heard President David Granger stating that children should not be placed in lock-ups and should be with their parents.
“Hand over me child to me because is me own. Me bear fuh mek she. I not abusing me child. I working hard to mind she. Dem ain’t know how me mek she,” the woman said.
‘Children belong with their parents’
Meanwhile, Broomes said that she hopes to provide some information to the mother by today as to the way forward. She said it is hoped that the probation officer in Berbice, following the investigation, would be able to further advise the magistrate on Friday, when the matter is slated to be called again at the Albion court.
“We cannot dictate to the court but definitely our position is not to advise the taking away of children because we know the chaos that we came into office and found. It is chaos. I don’t even like the name of these places like Drop in Centre, where you have all ages of children mixed-up,” she noted.
“While we inherited that legacy, it is not one that we would want to keep on the way forward [because] it is not just about taking away people’s children and putting them in homes where we are not in a position to properly supervise them. These children in the homes are not properly supervised. Children belong with their parents,” she added.
Broomes pointed out that since the woman is a single-parent and was forced to find a job in the city, instead of recommending the child be placed in a home the option should be finding ways to assist the mother in an effort to keep her in the home to take care of her children.
“If it was a situation that she was abusing the children, then definitely you have to remove her from the home. But this is not the case and to put the child in the lock-ups, you don’t know what effect this would have on the child, who is a prefect in her school and this speaks to her attendance and her behaviour,” she added.
