BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – EARLIER this week, Commissioner of Police Celvin ‘CG’ Walwyn and Sharon Rattan, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Gender Affairs, appeared on Freedom FM Radio where they held discussions on domestic violence and child molestation.
Both parties shared their views on the two issues and suggested that the laws should be tightened and harsh penalties must be imposed on sexual predators and the perpetrators of domestic violence.
Their discussions came at a time when a young mother could be sentenced to one month imprisonment for violation of a court order if she does not have her nine-year-old daughter back in the Federation by tomorrow.
Speaking with SKNVibes, the young mother, in tears, recounted the events that led to a certain magistrate ordering her to have her daughter back on St. Kitts on or before Saturday, May 19, 2012.
The mother explained that she had taken her child’s father to court for non-maintenance of her daughter and the magistrate ordered that a certain sum be paid on a weekly basis.
Additionally, the magistrate had given him visitation rights; in that he would collect the child from her mother’s home and take her to his home every other weekend.
“Instead of every other weekend, he would collect my daughter every Friday and have her returned on the following Monday. But there was a problem, because our daughter would be taken to his mother’s home, which is within the same yard of his house, and she would sleep in one of the two bedrooms with her uncle…her father’s brother.
“He hadn’t much time for the child because he loves to party. Therefore, he thought it best for his mother to take care of her when she visits him on the weekends. However, one night in 2009 when my daughter was seven years old, she was sexually molested by the same uncle who at that time had a case in court for child molestation,” the mother said.
She explained that on that particular Monday in 2009 when her daughter returned home, she told her to take a bath while she prepared her clothing and snack for school.
“After noticing that she was in the bathroom for quite a long time, which was not normal, I decided to check on her. I asked her why she was taking so long when she knew that she has to go to school and I had to go to work.
“My daughter told me that she was feeling a pain in the region of her vagina but I did not take it seriously. She dressed and went to school while I left home for work; but because of having to work on shifts, I was unable to monitor her every action. I however, observed that she was acting strangely and she told me that she no longer wanted to go by her father at weekends.
“I thought that her refusal to visit him was because he had a new girlfriend and they were living together, but when I further questioned her about the pain I was shocked at her response.
“To my surprise, my daughter told me that on her last visit to her father and while sleeping in the same room with her uncle, who was 15 years old at the time, he woke her up in the middle of the night. She said, ‘He wake me up, put his hand over my mouth and wuk up on me.’ I immediately contacted her father and related what my daughter told me.
“In response, he said that his brother did not commit such an act. He also said that it had to be his eight-year-old son because on one occasion he had caught him on top of her.”
The young mother said she was angered by his response and noted that if he had once caught his son atop her daughter, “why didn’t he inform me rather than keeping it a secret”?
In an effort to confirm that her daughter had told her the truth, she took her to a doctor whose examination revealed that the seven-year-old girl’s hymen ‘was intact but pushed way back and crooked”.
“From what the doctor told me, I understood that it could not have been done by her eight-year-old brother but by her uncle. I also learnt that during the illicit and cruel act there was not full penetration that is why her hymen is still intact,” she added.
The mother said she had reported the matter to the police and the Child Welfare Department, and the uncle was arrested, charged and subsequently bailed.
“The case was called up in 2010 and adjourned. But since then we have not returned to court to bring the matter to an end,” she said.
She claimed that since being sexually molested, her daughter’s grades at school had significantly fallen below her poorest standard, and that she was summoned by a teacher who complained that the child’s behaviour was abnormal.
The mother explained that the child underwent several counselling sessions with a professional but was still traumatised. “She was scared to sleep at nights in any room where there was a male presence, unless it was her brother…my son. On one occasion when a young male relative was sleeping on the bottom bunk with my son and she was at the top, she got out of bed and went into the living room to sleep because she remembered what her uncle did to her.”
As a result of her being traumatised, the concerned mother said that she sent her daughter to live with a relative on a neighbouring island and her grades at school have improved to a very high degree, as well as positive changes were observed in her general behaviour.
“Since I sent her away her father had stopped giving me money to maintain her. So I took him to court and he countered by telling the magistrate that I had violated the court’s order by sending my daughter away which denied him visitation rights.”
The mother said that the magistrate told her to have the child returned to St. Kitts but she had refused, and at another attendance at court she was fined EC$1 000 for disobeying the court order.
“On Thursday (May 10) we appeared again before the same magistrate and she said that my daughter must return on or before Saturday (May 19) or I will be imprisoned for one month,” the mother said.
Asked if the matter of sexual molestation was raised in defence of her action, the mother said that she mentioned it to the magistrate but was told that was a different matter and that she was not the sitting magistrate in that case.
The mother claimed she told the magistrate that the child would soon be writing the Test of Standards and would return home for the summer holiday. “This request,” she said, “was denied by the magistrate.”
This media house contacted a legal luminary who, on the Editor-in-Chief’s request, advised that the child returns or the mother would indeed be imprisoned for violating the court order.
The legal luminary asked the mother if her lawyer had requested from the magistrate a suspension of the order, to which she replied in the negative.
He therefore again advised that she comply with the court order.
