A Berbice mother is demanding justice after her 14-year-old daughter and a classmate were allegedly drugged and raped by two Corentyne men last week.
According to the mother, on Tuesday her daughter left for school as per normal. However, the school later informed the woman that her daughter and a classmate were being sent home.
“I tell them send she at the market, that’s where me deh. I don’t know, [there was] some fight or something, so them send home me daughter and she friend,” she explained.
However, the woman said she did not see her daughter until Wednesday, when she found her at the police outpost at Number 62 Village. “…And she deh drunk, drunk and she tell me, ‘Mommy me na do nothing wrong.’ She keep telling me that,” the woman added.
As a result, the mother said she filed a police report and took her daughter to the hospital for a medical examination. She was told that her daughter was sexually assaulted. “Me daughter deh drunk, drunk but she tell them police everything,” she explained.
The woman told Stabroek News that her daughter claimed that she and her friend were walking home from school when two young men, said to be in their twenties, offered them a drop in their car. “Them girls like them been frighten to come home because wah happen at school. Them take them girls a rum shop and give them beers and me daughter say them promise fa put them in taxi,” she said. “… But them give them the tablets and then take them to them house. Them separate them and take them different house,” the woman said she was told by her daughter.
A police source told this newspaper that the alleged assault was reported on Wednesday at the Number 52 Police Station and the Springlands Police Station. However, the suspects have not been arrested as yet.
Efforts to contact the parents of the other teenager proved futile. According to information gathered, the suspects along with their relatives have reportedly brokered a settlement with the other teen’s parents.
The mother of the 14-year-old told this publication that the suspects were trying to contact her. However, she insisted that her daughter did not deserve what she had endured and as a result, she is demanding justice for her. The woman called on the police to investigate thoroughly.
The police’s handling of rape cases involving minors has been under close scrutiny recently after ranks were accused of ignoring multiple reports of sexual assaults by one of the suspects in the alleged murder of 13-year-old Leonard Archibald. However, the police have denied receiving official complaints about any alleged assault. Archibald was allegedly raped and then dumped into the Berbice River, from where his body was eventually recovered. Two men have since been charged with the crime.
