A single mother is accusing officers of the Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA) of being involved in a scheme to take away her 10-year-old daughter and put her in the care of her paternal grandmother by alleging the child was pregnant; she is calling for action to be taken against the officers.
However, Director of the agency Ann Greene has staunchly defended her staff, saying they did nothing wrong but rather were investigating a report of a child being pregnant. She pointed out that the agency continues to be placed in a difficult position where it is “damned if you, damned if you don’t.”
The 39-year-old mother said she has dedicated the last ten years of her life to caring for her only child, “working any job” and as such May 12, 2016 would forever remain etched in her mind. That was the day CCPA officers attempted to wrench her child from her loving care and when a police officer assaulted her as she struggled to prevent her child being removed. She believes all of this happened because the child’s paternal grandmother has been attempting for some time to take her child and had even at one time offered her money. “They wanted to get me lock up or something and then my child would gone,” she said.
Today, while her daughter remains in her care, life will never be the same for them and she wants those responsible for her child being stigmatised in the neighbourhood and afraid to go to school, to be held accountable. The mother said officers visited her home, demanding the child and informing her that the child had to be removed from her care. She protested and the police became involved but instead of getting help she was assaulted. Later, at the Georgetown Public Hospital, when a test proved that the child, who has not yet started menstruating, was not pregnant, she cried out to the doctor about the lack of confidentiality attending the issue and that her child had been needlessly embarrassed. She said the doctor then made several copies of the negative pregnancy test and advised her to share it around the neighbourhood to put the issue to rest.
“Now look how they trying to bring shame and disgrace on me,” the woman said, almost in tears during an interview with the Sunday Stabroek. “I need justice. I need some big one to come in and give me justice,” she added.
Justice
In her quest for justice, the woman approached Greene at her office, but she alleged that the director was very harsh and did not give her a hearing but instead defended her staff without “hearing the whole story.”
Greene has vigorously denied this claim but posited that the matter could have dealt with differently if the woman had cooperated with the agency’s officers. According to the director, the agency received a call from the GPH that tests conducted indicated that a child was pregnant and when told of it, the mother ran away from the institution with the child. She said the agency was obligated to investigate each report and the mother was later contacted and told to take the child to the agency. Later, another pregnancy done at the GPH proved that the first test was a “false positive.”
“We can’t say we blaming the hospital too, things do happen and we have to investigate each report,” Greene stressed.
She gave the example of a baby being brought from the interior after officials reported that the child may have contracted herpes. However, it was later discovered that the child had a very severe case of diaper rash. “The parents did not want that child to be brought out, but we had to investigate,” she pointed out.
Greene said it was “grossly unfortunate” that the positive pregnancy test was false, but according to the law the agency is mandated to investigate any such report and we would get a “second and a third opinion. But the person who made all the drama that day was the mother. I am not blaming her but she did not want to bring the child… We are not corruptible, it is hard enough for our officers.”
She stated that when the mother visited her office her mother, who accompanied her advised her to leave, since, according to her, they would not get justice in that office. “I told them this is the place to get the action, let me hear it as it has to come right here, in this place,” Greene said.
The child care director said her officers are becoming increasingly frustrated especially when parents do not cooperate when matters are being investigated. “We don’t take people’s children away,” she said. “That is the last resort, but we must investigate.”
The mother, in her frustration, turned to Red Thread and the head of that organization Karen de Souza said she would be seeking legal advice for the troubled mother.
She said that Greene has to defend her officers but unfortunately the loser such situations is the person who has no voice. “Fortunately, in this case, the woman was desperate enough and stood her ground and not allow them to ride roughshod over her,” de Souza noted. She added that the country has come to a difficult place when persons who are supposed to be interested in protecting children cannot find a way to do this “without browbeating or bullying the said child they are supposed to be protecting.”
In these situations de Souza questioned what happens next when an aggrieved mother cannot get recourse at the level of the director the agency. She noted, “The law gives child care officers a lot of power but it has to be applied judiciously and be tempered [and] we must have somewhere to have checks and balances.”
Three months before
For the mother there is no doubt in her mind that there was some collusion between her child’s parental grandmother and officers at the agency since about three months ago persons dressed in Muslim garb had approached her home demanding the child.
She claimed that on her visit to the agency she saw one of the women in the building.
Greene dismissed this claim pointing out that while the agency does have a young officer who is Muslim, she had no dealing with the matter.
According to the mother, the officers had first approached her home on May 11, and informed her mother they were there to remove the (named) child, but she informed that the child’s mother was not at home. They left a number and the mother said when she called a male officer informed that she should visit the agency with the child.
The woman said she went alone and was first told that her child would be removed because she was being abused at school and later that she was “fingered” (sexually molested). She objected to both scenarios and the officers insisted that she take them to her and place the child in their care. She also became suspicious when she overheard one of the officers saying, “I thought you said the woman mad.”
Initially she conceded and got into a car with them but later demanded that they get the police involved and they drove to the Turkeyen Police Station. There, matters took a turn for the worse the mother said, as she was battered almost bloody by a police officer after she physically fought to follow the child care officers who were on their way to her home to remove the child. Prior to this, the police officer told her she was under arrest and she should ‘sit on the bench.’
“I ask him for what,” but he did not answer, she said. “I wouldn’t lie I start to cry and so and people come out on the road because by then we went in the yard and is then then one of the child care officer say they removing me child because she pregnant. The woman said she immediately informed them that her child could not be pregnant while revealing that only two days prior she had taken her child to the hospital because of a fever and several tests, including blood and urine, were conducted.
“If they see she pregnant how come the doctor let me leave with her?” the woman said she questioned the officers.
Later the child was removed from the home and taken to the station where she remain for two hours in a room with the child care officers. The child told this newspaper that the officers repeatedly told her that she was pregnant and “having affair. But I keep telling them no,” she said as she snuggled close to her mother.
A decision was later taken for the child to be taken to the GPH in the company of her mother. The woman made some allegations against the officials at the hospital as she believes they were known to the child care officers.
She demanded to see someone else at the institution and a pregnancy test was done, which proved that the child was not pregnant. Following this, she said, the child care officers exited the hospital through the back as a crowd had built up because she was protesting.
“When they gone I ask the doctor what will happen to my child because everybody think she pregnant. She print more of the pregnancy test and tell me go and give the neighbours to prove that she not pregnant,” the mother lamented.
Taunts
Since the incident the woman said life has been hell, as persons in the neighbourhood have been taunting the child; she is being laughed at in school and she does not want to go.
“Imagine a rasta man look at her the other day and say ‘You suh lil and done pregnant,’ is them things she have to go through and now I have to go and drop she to school and pick she up,” the mother said.
The child and mother live by themselves in a house that is situated behind another house occupied by her sister and mother. According to the woman, she was two months pregnant when the child’s father left for New York and she has not seen him since. However, she said his mother, who lives between Guyana and the US, attempted to have a relationship with the child and initially she allowed it until it became evident the grandmother had ulterior motives.
“Look, I work hard since she father lef. I ain’t take another man. I just working. I does drive horse cart. I does mind animal: I get ten donkeys, four horse, sheep, pig. I does pay a man to come home and teach me child in the afternoons. I does try. Why they want take me child?” the woman questioned.
She said she would not stop in her quest to ensure those responsible are held accountable.
“If I don’t get justice I going and stand up by President Granger office with a placard and he will have to see me. I have to tell him what happened,” the aggrieved mother said.
