[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n a particularly hot afternoon, we are seated in the shadiest area of a sun-drenched Serenity Park in Castries: a girl who appears two years younger than her real age, her neatly attired father, flanked by his wife and his sister, the girl’s stepmother and her aunt. We have chosen to meet at this park whose name suggests an atmosphere of peace, calmness; trouble-free. Alas, the reason for our meeting is so I can hear first-hand details of an horrific nightmare that is responsible for the child’s shocking condition: four months pregnant at age thirteen. For several minutes, she listens in silence, as if in a trance, while the grown-ups introduce themselves to me. Then, for the purposes of this story, she revisits, step by miserable step, the night her young life changed forever.
She recalls the date without any prompting: March 31; a Saturday. As usual, about 10 p.m. her mother left home “to go to karaoke, at Miss Sandra’s place”. She normally returned around 2 a.m. Before she left on the night of horror, she called her boyfriend to say she was about to leave her house and he should come to her home to stay with the children—the then twelve-year-old and her three younger half-siblings. The girl’s grandmother, who also resides in the house, was out at a Country and Western gathering that night.
The horror story continues: “When I go to bed I usually lock the room. But my sister would wake up to go and drink water or something, and then she would not lock the room back.” On the unforgettable occasion, the soon to be prey recalls, “I was lying on my bed. I felt my pillow shift. I woke up and turned around. I saw him standing in front of me. He didn’t have a shirt. He said that if I told anyone what he is going to do me he’s going to kill my family with the gun he has. I started crying.” Even as she speaks, more tears are running down her face. She stops talking, wipes her face before continuing.
“I was on the bed. He pulled down my panty and told me to stay there. Then he pushed his penis inside of me and started having sex with me.
When he left the room, I took my panty from the end of the bed and put it back on. The next morning when I woke up he was just leaving the house to go up the road. I went outside to pee. I removed my panty and never put it on again. I threw it away.”
She has not spoken with her stepfather since the rape. “I never really liked him as a stepfather or as the father of my mother’s three other children.”
In the month that followed, the still twelve-year old (she turned 13 on June 1) told her mother she had not had her period. It was not the first time her period was late so they were not alarmed. Her mother decided against going to see a doctor. Another month went by without her period. Again she told her mother about it. The mother subsequently arranged for a check-up but cancelled on the day, the girl says, due to the rain.
Her father gives his version of things: he is employed by a cruise line company based in the United States. He claims his daughter was the main reason he left Saint Lucia in search of greener pastures to benefit them both. At the time his daughter was seven years old.He left her in the care of her mother, a resident of Saltibus who was sharing her home with her boyfriend (with whom she subsequently had three children) and her mother.
“Twice in 2015 I asked her [the girl’s mother] to let my daughter stay with my mom. She refused. I was worried for my child. I felt her living conditions were not right for a growing little girl. I knew the police had searched the house for drugs,” says the father.
He received word his daughter was being used to sell snack items, on the mother’s behalf, on the street—when she wasn’t babysitting her siblings.
He visited annually, he said. In July of this year he returned home and rented an apartment at Cedars Heights in Vieux Fort. “On July 16,” he explains, “I went to pick up my daughter and noticed she was removing all her belongings from the house to take with her. I told her she did not have to take all her things since she would be returning to her mother’s place.”
The girl had been stayng with her father two days when the child’s mother called to say their daughter had not had a period in two months. Four days later he took his daughter with him when he went to St. Jude Hospital to have his own regular check-up. That’s how he discovered his child was about to be a mother.
He went on: “I called her mom and asked her to meet me at my mother’s home. I showed her the results of a pregnancy test and demanded an explanation. But she was in shock.”
The burning question then became: Who was the impregnator? The child recalls, indicating her mother and father: “They were asking me who had sex with me.” She says her mother took her aside and, when they were alone, handed her a stick and told her, “If you don’t want to say who had sex with you, write his name in the sand.”
“I just told her that I think it’s my stepfather,” the teenager continues.
Her father told me: “I spoke to the mom. I said, ‘Since your daughter said it’s the stepfather that did that, and you have three kids by that very same man, what will you do?’ She said at this point she doesn’t really care what happens to the guy. So I asked her to accompany me to the police station. But she refused.”
When finally they went to the Vieux Fort Police Station, there was no one at the Vulnerable Persons Department (VPD). They were questioned by a female officer from the Criminal Investigations Department. Again the thirteen-year-old hinted to her stepfather. The officer advised them to return the following day to see someone at the VPD. They did so on Saturday July 28 and were introduced to a different police officer.
“He told me he was so backed up with work that he wouldn’t be able to record a statement from us that morning; we were invited to return four days later,” the girl’s father tells me. However, unable to wait that long, he and his daughter revisited the station on Monday, July 30 and demanded attention.
They were reassigned to a female officer but not until August 1 were they interviewed by a police inspector from the Vieux Fort Police Station. The alleged impregnator turned himself in the same day.
“We went into a room,” the girl’s father recalls, “and saw the young man sitting on the chair in the presence of his lawyer, Lorne Theophilus and some other people.”
The thirteen-year-old identified her attacker, and afterward the group retreated to the place the crime had allegedly happened where more drama ensued: the handcuffed suspect asked to use the bathroom. He was to be escorted to the neighbour’s hedge for the aforementioned reason but, instead of urinating, the suspect bolted into the bushes, chased by a police officer.
The suspect remains free. The father says the last time he checked there were no warrants out for his arrest.
The girl’s father says he has tried to get custody of his daughter but has been unable, for various reasons, to get a court date. Recently he heard from Human Services in Castries. A supervisor advised him that he needed to identify someone with whom he might leave his daughter. His sister has agreed to look after the teenager in his absence.
The father is scheduled to leave for the States next month and has little idea what will happen next. Meanwhile he is worried what the escaped suspect might do to his daughter when no one is around to protect her. Our efforts to reach Mr. Lorne Theophilus proved unsuccessful.
