The parents of six-year-old Antonio George, and three-year-old Joshua George, who died tragically early last week Friday morning when fire ripped through the Drop-In Centre on Hadfield Street, continue to bemoan the treatment meted out to them by the Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA).
Sonia and Leon George said they made a request to view the bodies of their dead children, and for copies of their death certificates as well as the medical certificates of the remaining children. The CCPA had said that after being removed from their parents’ home, the children were taken to the hospital, where medical examinations confirmed that they were neglected and malnourished.
However, the parents said that instead of acceding to their request, which they set as a pre-requisite for the funeral to be held, CCPA officials are pushing ahead with funeral arrangements.
“If we don’t get to see the bodies and the documents, then [there] will be no funerals… What are we burying? Who are we burying?” Leon George asked yesterday. He said they had a meeting with a Miss Roberts on Thursday and yesterday they received a call informing them that the funeral will be today.
“They tell we that Le Repentir has no space and that they get space on the East Coast to bury the children but up to now they not showing us the bodies nor the documents,” he fretted, while adding that they have been cooperating fully with the authorities and they would have wanted to see the same from the officials.
Stabroek News attempted to make contact with Director of CCPA Ann Greene but was unable to do so.
The parents said too that at the meeting on Thursday, Pastor Wendell Jeffrey was introduced as the children’s counsellor, while a woman was identified to work with the children’s mother, to counsel her after the funeral. No arrangements, according to them, were made for counselling for the father of the two children.
The couple said too that both Jeffrey and the woman insinuated that the children could be adopted. The woman, according to the father, told them that she has adopted children and how much love and support they have received. Jeffrey spoke of the couple’s 16-month-old baby clinging to him and asked the parents if it was okay for him to do the same.
“He then start talking about how he and he wife want adopt and so… I don’t know why they think we want our children to be adopted. What I want to tell Pastor Jeffrey is to stay away from my children,” Leon George said.
Even as the parents continue to mourn the loss of their two young children, they yearn for more time with the remaining three. The five children—aged 11, 8, 6, 3 and 16 months old—were removed from very unsavory conditions at their parents Chapel Street, Lodge home on the evening of July 6, by child care officers and by the morning of July 8, two were dead.
The couple once again noted that their living conditions are not ideal for the children but they maintained that with some assistance they can care for their children.
“They are saying that under my care my children were neglected. But they were alive. You take them out of my care. You said you would protect them and now you can only produce three of my children?” the woman had asked rhetorically during a recent interview.
