A 27-year-old mother of three is decrying the justice system she believes failed her two young daughters, after a relative was freed of charges of sexually assaulting them, by Magistrate Clive Nurse, who dismissed the matters on May 4.
It took seconds before the magistrate’s words sunk in, and the woman said while she fought to compose herself in the courtroom, she broke down as soon as she left its environs.
She cried because she knows her babies were not lying. She cried because she knows the traumatic effect the assaults have had on her girls. She cried because she feels she failed them. She is still crying because she knows justice has been denied and the pain will live with her girls forever.
“I was devastated. I was really shocked… They told me from the beginning that they had a very strong case and even when I suggested I get a lawyer to look into the welfare of my children, they said it was not necessary because the case was strong,” the still devastated mother said in an interview with Sunday Stabroek.
The pain was still etched on the face of the petite mother of three as she spoke of standing in the courtroom alone and being told that the matter was dismissed on the grounds of the credibility of her children and the fact that neither saw when the other was assaulted. She explained that there was a difference between the written and typed statements of her children, which she described as a grammatical error.
It was a matter of whether the victim or the accused ran away when she pinched him, one statement said she ran and the other said he ran. The mother believes that this could have been easily cleared up by the prosecution and should not have been grounds for dismissal. Another negative in the court case was the fact that the first person the children confided in, a relative of the accused, did not turn up in court to testify.
“I stood there while the magistrate gave a list of reasons but it was not until he was finished giving the reasons that he said he was dismissing the charges,” the mother said.
“At first I was not sure what he had just said because it hadn’t registered. After a few seconds it just sunk in, then I realized and I tried to remain composed… but the tears came as soon as I left the compound,” the mother said.
The worst emotion was the feeling she had let her children down as they had expected her to do something about the assault.
The hardest thing was telling her 11 and eight-year-old daughters that the case had been dismissed.
“I think even they were shocked. They did not answer me right away but the eldest asked, ‘So what will happen now? Would he touch other children?’ I couldn’t answer. I told her I didn’t know. I couldn’t give her a definitive answer.
“The little one asked, ‘So he is not going to jail?’ It is like she expected him still to go to jail.”
The mother said she was prepared to approach the Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecutions to ascertain whether the matter could be appealed. But her daughters are not prepared to testify again, as they had been accused of being liars by the man’s lawyer.
“I explained to them that they would have to go back on the stand and they didn’t want to,” the mother related.
“They said the lawyer told them that they were lying the last time and that they didn’t get to say all they wanted to say; they wanted to know if it would be the same lawyer.”
When the older girl quietly said, “God will deal with him,” the mother said, she drew strength from this statement.
The mother also spoke about the many times the case was postponed without clear reasons. “Many times I would turn up—I did not allow them to attend after they testified—and I would be given another date and even when the matter was finished the magistrate took a while before he gave the decision,” the mother said.
Shock and anguish
Going back to March 2016 the young mother, who is separated from her husband who is the father of her three daughters, said she had left her children with her husband’s relatives. Three days later, her daughters revealed that they had been assaulted by the male relative who usually visited the said home.
The mother spoke about the shock and the pain she felt when her daughters related how the man touched them and how his relatives, including their father, tried to talk her out of reporting the matter to the police.
It got worse when the children told her that it had happened on previous occasions, but they were confused about the previous dates, so these were not included in the charge, though they would have established a pattern of abuse.
Recalling when she was told, the mother said, “I wasn’t sure if she knew what she was talking about,” when the older child interrupted her during a conversation and related that she had been touched. “… So I asked her what she meant and she was more specific. Just when what she said was sinking in, the small one said, ‘me too.’” At this point, the female relative with whom she was conversing, indicated that the children had told her about being sexually assaulted.
She said the anguish she felt at that moment is not something she would wish on anyone.
“I was shocked because he always seemed to be that helpful kind of person. We never had an issue before,” the mother said.
The children described how and where it happened, but said that they were not assaulted in the presence of each other. They also spoke of the relative telling them that he liked them.
“… I spoke to my sister and mother and we discussed that if we do nothing we lose; my children would feel they can’t trust me to protect them and they can’t rely on me. But if we report him their names would get out in the public,” the mother said.
The latter occurred as she said after the matter was reported the children said they were asked about it by their peers and they had asked to be transferred from the school. The mother said neighbours also approached her on the issue.
“It was not easy, but I knew it was the right thing to report it,” the mother said as she recalled how the man and his relatives approached her and begged her not to report the matter.
They attempted to make her feel guilty by pointing out that he was the only parent his almost adult children had and if he was jailed they would be alone and it would be her fault.
“I tried to explain to them that it was him who did something wrong and it was he who was causing it not me,” she said. They approached her twice again but she stuck to her decision. She said her church was very supportive, and it was the church’s lawyer who told her that the matter had to be reported.
But the hardest part was when the children’s father questioned them as to whether they were sure and when they insisted, he indicated that the man was family and he did not want him to go to jail.
“So I asked him who his children were and if he was not going to protect them. He told me that the children would be in a scandal and I would be the cause,” the mother said quietly.
At one point he would constantly harangue the girls about the issue and the mother said she was forced to stop him from seeing them in her absence.
Asked why she did not stop him from seeing them altogether, the woman said it would have been hard. “The children adore him and they always want to see him so I could not stop him from coming to see them,” she explained. The couple argued about the matter for months and whenever this happened he would not see the children for weeks and eventually she was forced to stop discussing the matter with him.
And while she stopped the children from visiting the relatives, the mother said, they would go looking for the children. Now, since the man no longer visits the relative’s home she has allowed them to visit again but not as often.
Money
The man was arrested, charged and placed on $200,000 bail; he never attempted to contact her once the charge was instituted.
The young mother is also still affected by being called a liar by the man’s female lawyer and being told that she had coached her children on what to say because she wanted money.
“She accused me of wanting money because I thought he was getting a big pay out from the job where he was being laid off, and that was hard,” the woman said.
“But what she and the magistrate do not understand is that after the incident I had to see my eldest child sleeping with her hands over her vagina as if she was trying to hide it and that whenever the younger one saw him she came home crying,” the woman said almost in tears.
She said nobody would understand her pain when she was told that her eldest daughter’s hymen was broken.
“They have come a long way I think. But I want the magistrate to know is that my children suffered in more ways than one and at nights, when I see my daughter sleeping like that, I cry. … Had they told somebody else after telling me, if I had not done anything about it, they could have been taken away from me. I would have been seen as having neglected them. I chose to do the right thing and the system failed my children,” the mother said.
