Just under a month after suing the Childcare and Protection Agency (C&PA) and the Attorney General (AG) for more than $25 million in damages for what she said was her unlawful detention, the 14-year-old has now filed an almost $200 million suit against the Guyana Police Force.
Her $155 million claim is directly against Police Constable Orlando Harris and Police Corporal Amelia James who she said respectively arrested and supervised her detention at the East La Penitence Police Station.
The Commissioner of Police has also been listed as a defendant in this new suit.
Through her adult sister, the teen is seeking against the officers of the law, jointly and severally, in excess of $155 million altogether for what she alleges to be a breach of her constitutional rights; breach of the Juvenile Offenders Act, breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, their negligence and breach of duty of care to her and for false imprisonment.
Further, she wants interest to be paid on the $155 million, in accordance with the Law Reform (Miscella-neous Provisions) Act.
Additionally, she wants costs and any further order the Court deems just to grant.
The teen (Claimant) deposes in her statement of claim (SoC) that she had been repeatedly pressured by Harris and James “to confess or disclose the names of alleged conspirators” in the absence of her attorney.
She has complained in her first suit of being held against her will and under arrest for five days—from December 3rd to 7th, 2020 at the East La Penitence Police Station on narcotics investigations.
She alleges being “subjected” among other things, to “sexual predatory advances” by female adult prisoners for which she sued the C&PA its Director Ann Greene and the AG; seeking declarations that they breached their statutory duty of care to her and for negligence in failing to have her removed from police custody to a facility more fitting for the detention of minors.
She has said that it was not until December 7th, 2020—after acting Chief Justice Roxane George SC heard her application for bail at habeas corpus proceedings—that she was eventually ordered to be released into the custody of the C&PA.
The teen says in her newest claim filed on Monday, that while in custody, Harris in particular “induced and threatened” her to confess “or face adverse consequences.”
She complains too, of being arrested by Harris, instead of a female police officer; and said she was repeatedly questioned by James without caution and in the absence of her guardian or lawyer.
The teen said that James had initially shackled her to a chair after stating that she (James) wanted to sleep and was concerned that she might escape. The teen said that sometime after, however, James plac-\ed her in a cell with female adult prisoners, as she (James) wanted to sleep.
According to the teen, it was while in the cell that she was “sexually harassed and tormented,” and though she complained, it persisted; while stating that the police failed to investigate these complaints.
She advances that the defendants knew from the inception that the appropriate place for her detention and questioning would have been at the Sophia Holding Facility in the presence of a Childcare and Protection Officer, or a relative.
Through her attorney Eusi Anderson, the claimant has advanced that Greene, the C&PA, the AG and the named officers of the police force all had a duty to ensure that the statutory duty of care imposed by the Juvenile Offenders Act, the Rights of the Child Convention and the Childcare and Protection Agency Act on them, to her, was discharged.
The lawyer argues among other things, that in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, “every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her age. In particular, every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults unless it is considered in the child’s best interest not to do so….”
The teen has said that the defendants failed to provide counselling, guidance, support and or any kind of welfare measure to protect her rights or to implement systems to prevent and/or curtail sexual harassment by female adult prisoners.
