Kids given drain water to drink

A POINT FORTIN couple was last night charged with burning the body of their 18-month-old girl after she died at home and disposing of her bones near a river.

The 70-year-old man and his 36-year-old wife, who were sent for psychiatric evaluation yesterday, are expected to appear before a Point Fortin magistrate today charged with three offences under the Cremation Act. The file was sent to the Director of Public Prose-cutions (DPP) Geoffrey Henderson who yesterday instructed the police to charge the couple with conducting a cremation without a relevant licence, cremating human remains in an unauthorised site and disposing ashes in a place not prescribed under the Cremation Act. Investigators said there was not enough evidence to charge the couple for any other offence. Meanwhile the couple’s three other children, undernourished and with sores over their bodies and dressed in rags are in hospital being treated. They are a six-year-old girl and two boys aged four and two, who were taken away by the police and to the San Fernando Hospital, They were found to be small and skinny for their ages. Their parents gave them drain water to drink. The source said they hardly spoke and kept to themselves. Most of times, she said, they slept.

The cremation of the child and the condition of the other children have left deep grief and  dark gloom in Salazar Trace, where the elderly man and wife lived with the children in a small rundown shack, which is surrounded by overgrown bushes. The children were given obscene names by their parents and were never allowed to leave the house. Their meals consisted of yam, caraillie, dasheen and fig. The little baby, who died, was fed sugar water instead of milk formula. Their drinking water came from the river and sometimes drain water. Neighbours said the couple and their children never wore clothes, only old pieces of bags wrapped across their waist. The children slept on top of old pieces of cloth and the inside of the shack was littered with broken bottle, pieces of iron, dingy old wares and other scraps. Villagers said whenever they tried to offer the man any kind of assistance he would curse them and chase them away. The children were kept like prisoners, and forbidden to speak with anyone in the area.

The chilling tale started six years ago when the woman moved in with the elderly man and got pregnant. The 70-year-old man, who described himself as a spiritual doctor, delivered all the children home. They were never registered, never vaccinated and never sent to school. When contacted yesterday an official from the social welfare department told Newsday that they were not aware of the unsanitary condition under which the children lived. The official said that the matter was now in the hands of the family unit services and probation department, which would be responsible for placing the children in a home.