Today when 37-year-old Sonia George opens her eyes, unlike many, her heart would not be merry it would be heavy and she would be crying. This is her first Christmas without her children and worse, two of her five children are dead.
“I can’t think about Christmas and I know I can’t stay at home this Christmas, the pain would be too much for me I would miss my children,” George told the Sunday Stabroek just two days before Christmas.
George’s sons, Joshua George, 3, and his brother Anthony George, 6, perished during an early morning fire at the Hadfield Street-based Drop-in Centre on July 8. The two were among her five children who were removed from her Chapel Street, Lodge home by the Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA) officers two days before the fire. Twenty-nine other children who were in the building managed to escape.
Today she is in a court battle with the system for the return of her three remaining children. It is a system that tells her she is an unfit mother who is unable to take good care of them.
Her retort? “My children was not on the streets and they take them and murder two of them, I saying is murder and now they don’t want to give me back the rest of my children,” George said.
For now she has to be content with seeing her children once a week for an hour. Her baby—who was just 16 months old when she was taken—is soon to be two and is growing without that important bonding with her mother. Her 11-year-old son will also soon be 12 years old, but she hopes that before her eight-year-old becomes nine they would be back with her.
The court hearing is set for May 31, 2017 and until then George said she has to cope with a system that was set up to help children, which she feels is doing more harm than good to hers.
“My children are deteriorating before my eyes, they getting fine and my daughter tell me every night she does cry for her brothers. My children are in pain and they frighten and is for long it guh be like that,” the woman said in tears. “This thing get me sick now. My pressure always high so they not only tek me children but leave me as a sick woman.”
George said she had believed that her children would have been returned to her for the holidays and she could not believe the authorities would have been so cruel to a mother especially in light of the fact that two of the children were killed in their care. “But they say I have to wait until the court matter reach…”
Since her children were taken George has attempted to improve her living conditions and she said should the children be returned to her they would not be returned to the dilapidated building they called home as she and her husband Leon agreed that it was unsafe for their children.
She has since found employment and works six days a week and this has affected her ability to access the promised counselling by the ministry, because of her working hours.
“I try to tell them if I could come later after work or on Sunday but they say I have to work with them time and now I have to pay fuh my own counselling because I need it. It really hard for me sometime I can’t even sleep because of how I feeling,” she said.
However, she said that when her children are returned to her she would make alternative arrangements because their well-being is paramount.
‘Not spending Christmas at home’
“I wouldn’t be spending Christmas at home because it would be very sad for me just to sit alone in the house without my children,” George shared with this newspaper.
She recalled that while she is poor, last year she did all she could to make the holidays merry for her children. “I did all I could for them and they had nice things to eat and so and I know they had a good time. I don’t know how they would be this year.
“Everybody at home spending Christmas with their children, they take mine they kill two and now they have the three” she lamented.
And she would also be missing the December 29, and January 12, birthdays of two of her children although she has begged the officers to allow her to spend time with the children on those days, even it meant rescheduling the regular visiting day.
“I hope somebody listen to me right now is just these lil things I have to look forward to,” she noted.
She also complained bitterly that sometimes she does not spend the allotted with her children because of her work schedule or at times because they are brought late. The mother said she begged for the time to be rescheduled to later in the afternoon since she was working and was not always allowed to leave early.
“But they tell I have to work with them hours so if I late I just see them for a little and then they gone. And when them late I have to wait and they don’t give me back the time but I must sit and wait on them,” she lamented.
The woman said she is also barred from taking anything for her children to eat. Some months ago, during a visit with the children the baby picked up a cup that contained bleach and drank some which resulted in her being hospitalized briefly. The officers did not accept that the baby drank the bleach but never gave an explanation for her brief hospitalization.
Since that incident George said they are not allowed to give the children anything to eat and she believes that they—especially the baby, who she said is a “hearty eater”—are hungry at times.
“The other day the baby was crying and I know she hungry and they just give she two cups of water and said she had a good meal before and she would eat when she go in the bus,” she recalled.
Because of the manner in which she is treated, George said she feels very disrespected by the officers.
Appeal to the president
George made a special appeal to President David Granger to look into the matter.
Following the horrific deaths of the boys the President had commissioned a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) which found that there were “systemic failures at all levels” and the persons in charge of the centre were collectively responsible for the state of affairs that led to the deaths of two young brothers in a fire.
“The CoI found that this was a tragedy waiting to happen and that there was collective responsibility for the tragic event which claimed the lives of Joshua and Antonio George. The system to protect the children failed and therefore all the players are collectively responsible,” the report had said.
Among other findings, the report highlighted the overcrowding at the centre, the inadequate and poorly trained staff working at the time of the July 8 fire, and the lack of adherence to fire regulations.
George recalled that the President had indicated that once persons were found culpable “heads would roll. But now the inquiry come and done and no heads ain’t roll and I still without me children. I need the President to say something not wait until July 8, to come again and then talk I need him to do something.”
The government has given the couple a piece of land in Sophia where it is expected that a house will be built but George said she has refused the land because of its location “till at the back of Sophia and them places don’t even have water and light sometimes. I ask them for another piece of land somewhere else and I waiting.”
‘Poverty is not a crime’
And to those who might feel that George was a bad mother resulting in her children being removed, she said that it was the furthest from the truth and she wanted the nation to know that she loves her children.
“My children were not on the streets when they take them. Our house was burnt down that is why we were living in the old house, but poverty is not a crime, we were living in a house,” the woman said.
She pointed out that when the officers removed the children they had no marks of violence and were not being physically abused; and instead of being protected, two died.
She labelled the CCPA a “let down because they kill two and leave the rest with a disaster to live with.
“I would like the President to look at the qualification of some of those officers because of how they treat me. That is not how they are train to treat people. And I would like for their powers to be reduced.”
Even as she passes Christmas without her babies today, George’s only wish is that come next Christmas her children would be with her.
