She left her mother’s home at age 13 and soon after was pregnant with her first child. Fast forward 25 years later, and she is a mother of 12 children between the ages of 25 years and eight months old. None of her children live with her and some have branded her a bad mother, but Venus Anita Lalloo says she is a mother who has had a hard life, which included a lot of abuse. She has given birth to 13 children, but one of them died in December last year.
Lalloo believes she is in the fiercest fight of her life and that is to regain custody of her three youngest children, including an eight-month-old baby. But the odds are against her and it is a fight she seems to be losing.
In December last year, Lalloo was sentenced to six months in prison after she was found guilty of three counts of child neglect and was unable to pay the $300,000 fine imposed.
“Where I woulda find that money from?” she asked during a recent interview with the Sunday Stabroek. “Ah mek up me mind that I would spend a six month and ah deh done settle in and I was cooking and suh in the kitchen…”
But then she was released from prison after the fine was paid by the Ministry of Public Security. Since that time, she said, she has been working “scrubbing people house” in an effort to earn enough money to regain custody of her children.
On her release from prison, she said, she had visited her three daughters who were in the care of the Alpha Children’s Home in New Amsterdam and said she had planned to visit them again at Christmas, but wanted to have some money when she did so. She also admitted that she was given a bag of groceries by the two ministry officials who paid the fine and that they also gave her $10,000 and transported her to her Edinburgh Village home, where she had to replace the padlock as she found it destroyed and her home ransacked.
But the next time she saw her girls, one of them was dead. Neena Blair, 8, was killed in an accident that involved a car and another child at the orphanage.
“I was cleaning a house and staying by the girl and they just come and tell me how Neena dead… I start to holler and holler and up to now like me ain’t understand how deh say she dead. Dem tek she from me and say I neglect she but she dead…,” the woman lamented during the interview.
Lalloo’s relatives have publicly called her out as an unfit parent. One sister went as far as to suggest that she should be prevented from having any more children and the state should keep those already in its care. But Lalloo believes that no one could love her children as she does and “my sister just like to talk.”
No neglect
She said she was not neglecting her four youngest children when they were taken from her, but residents in the area told this newspaper that the children hardly attended school and were indeed neglected by their mother. It was the residents repeated complaints to the authorities that prompted them to visit. According to Lalloo, on that day she was told she had to give a statement to the police and her children would have been returned. Instead she was kept in the lock-ups and later charged.
Her baby is now in the care of a nurse who is keen on adopting the little boy but Lalloo said it would happen “over my dead body. When I went in prison the nurse and a probation officer come with a paper for me to sign and I tell them I not signing any paper because I not giving away me son.”
Since her release Lalloo has been making appointments to see the little boy and visits the New Amsterdam Probation Office to spend time with him.
“And when I have me son and I kissing he up and playing with he, if you see how the nurse girl does be crying. I tell she don’t be crying, crying around me,” the mother said revealing that they are now before the court on the matter.
The Sunday Stabroek witnessed one of the visits recently and it was obvious that the child was very attached to Lalloo. He held her face as she played with him and gave her small kisses in between. She also kept telling him, “Mommy loves you.” Lalloo said she would fight to ensure that the child grows up knowing his mother and she would not allow anyone to take that away from her.
‘Never treat me good’
She also swore to would do well by her three youngest children which she was unable to do for the others because of her situation at that time. Lalloo also revealed that she had a very difficult childhood.
She recalled that she spent the first six years of her life at De Velde in the Berbice River with a foster mother, but her mother later took her back. She is the eldest of ten children.
“Look, let me tell you, my mother never use to treat me good. She never use to want give me food and I use to get nuff licks. She use to pick up any stick and lash me,” she recalled.
“But I don’t hate me mother or anything, you know. I still love me mother. I just telling you straight up. One day I just say ‘mommy I ain’t able with this’ and I move out and go and live with me first child father.” She was 13 years old.
That union produced three children, but according to Lalloo it was a “living hell” since she was abused constantly. Even though she stayed with him for quite some time, eventually she packed up and left.
Lalloo believes that she found real love when she struck up a common-law relationship with her second partner.
“Let me tell you, he was a loving man. He didn’t rich but he use to work hard and he treat me three children just like he own… When he get pay, he use to bring all he money and give me,” Lalloo said, her voice softening.
While they did not always have everything, Lalloo said she was happy with Sean Samuels for whom she bore three children.
But one day all of that changed. She was at home taking care of her two youngest children, a one-year-old and a baby, while the others were at school when she received a message that her husband had been injured at his worksite.
“A lil boy come and call me and tell me how he get shock at the sawmill. And me sister, I tell you, after I ask me sister to look at dem children I fly. I run but it was like me flying and I reach to the hospital.” But by the time she got there, the man she loved was dead. Lalloo said she felt as if her life was over she wanted nothing but to resign herself to darkness.
During the interview she spent a significant amount of time talking about the funeral and the aftermath of husband’s death. She received compensation from the owners of the company, but all of that is in the past as she has nothing to show.
“Dem give me some money—I can’t even remember is how much—and they build a lil one bedroom house fuh me and dem children at Cow Dam. But the house done bruk up long and I move out from deh…,” Lalloo said.
Eventually she struck up a relationship with another man for whom she also bore children but the relationship was very abusive and her partner also used cocaine. “I use to work, work like a dog, you know, because I had to support me children and he ain’t use to work but he use to want money and he use to beat me bad.”
She recalled that when she purchased food items at the end of the month her then reputed husband would sell the items or exchange them for cocaine.
She endured this abuse for 11 years but one day, “I had enough. I was dressing me children for school and he say the children ain’t going to school and he beat me. I lef and I went to the probation officer and they give me a letter to go to the police and I went home back and he curse me up.”
She reported the matter to the police and he was charged and later jailed after she testified in court. A scar on her forehead is a reminder of the years of abuse she endured at the hands of that man.
‘Not a bad mother’
Lalloo accepts that many would accuse her of being a bad mother, but she believes that she was just a victim of circumstances.
“I would tell them I am not a bad mother. I does work hard, I don’t sit down and right now I waiting to start on this job and I would take care of my children. One of me big daughter guh look after them when I working,” Lalloo said in reference to her youngest children.
She is adamant that she would not have any more children, but does not agree that she has too many.
“Children is life,” she said when asked if she believes she should have stopped having them a while ago. “… Sometimes you have so many and it is the last one who might look you after when you get old.”
She says that if she is given a second chance she would do better by her three minors. “That one that dead she was an angel, always use to help me and always making sure I was alright.”
Lalloo’s daughters had been vainly looking out for her at the orphanage on the day the Sunday Stabroek visited before the tragic accident as one of them was celebrating her birthday.
But the mother maintains that she was working to get some money as she did not want to show up empty handed. “I know was my daughter birthday and I promise them I would go and I woulda go but then I get the news that me angel dead.”
As Lalloo looks to the future, she said her only wish is to have her three youngest children returned to her custody. “My children will be my joy I would work and take care of them…”
