Father wants peaceful resolve

Candace Logan, whose mother, Daisy Ramesar, is reportedly searching for her, said yesterday she wanted to stay with her father, Johnny Logan.

Johnny Logan whose former wife, Daisy Ramesar, has reportedly been searching for Candace, one of her three children, walked into the Newsday office yesterday to take issue with Ramesar’s allegations that he had taken away the three children. The children have been with him all the time and this was well known to people in Arima. It was a former friend, he said, who took Crystal and David to their mother. Crystal and seven-year-old David, were last week reunited with their mother after five years while the couple’s second daughter Candace, who was with her father, yesterday said that she was happy to be with him. When asked if she wished she’d gone with her siblings to her mother’s place, Candace said she didn’t really want to be there and that she was happy with her father but wants to reunite with her brother and sister.

Throughout the interview, Logan, who is currently staying at his sister’s home in Arima, stated that he always stayed with the Lord. Even now, he said, he was not one to judge his wife. He doesn’t hate her, and was even prepared to reconcile with her. “But I would want to visit at any time. But for peace sake, let us resolve this situation amicably. Do you think if I had anything to hide I would be walking the streets so freely?” Logan asked. Logan said that five years ago, while working on an estate in Talparo, he would go home on Saturdays to give his wife money to help with the care of the three children. Knowing that he would only see them on weekends, Logan said he first asked his wife if it was alright to take the job and she agreed.  At the time they had just moved to Malabar Branch Road in Arima, he said. “One day I came and I found the entire place that I was living in emptied out,” said Logan, who added that his wife went to live with someone else in Samaroo Village.

Logan claimed that he made a report to the community police in the area and said that when they went to the house, they found all his belongings. He accused Ramesar of leaving the children. “Everybody in Arima knew that I took care of Crystal, Candace and David. At the time, David was just only two years old. It wasn’t something easy for me to deal with, but I never resolved it by being violent, or tried to go and bring any harm to her. I wouldn’t say that it didn’t cross my mind actually, but the fact is that before even considering that, I had to look at the welfare of my children and what was going to happen to them. So I went about seeing about my children, and now for her to come on television and make these kinds of statements, I find it very difficult.”

Logan said that for the seven years they were married he knew his wife as Dassie Logan, and not Daisy Ramesar as stated in a newspaper report. Logan said members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints visited his wife and tried to counsel her, but that she never wanted to come back. “In fact she used to tell me that she going by her grandmother in Chin Chin Road in Cunupia to do washing, cooking and ironing because her grandmother was ill but when I got in contact with her grandmother, Poonia Ramlal, she told me, ‘I ent see my daughter for months upon months!’ “It is ridiculous for her to say I abducted the children?” said a puzzled looking Logan who went on, “the children were locked up in the house for a couple of hours until I came home from work that day to find them there and all my belongings gone.” Logan then turned to Candace who was sitting on his lap and asked her, to relate what had happened. The child said that one day her mother moved everything from the house, “locked us up in the house and gone with every single thing. She left us all on our own. My little brother was only two years, I was only four years and my big sister was only about six years old when she left us. I was small and I can’t remember everything that happened, but I remember that I was beaten, and that is my story.” Candace said she didn’t know why she was beaten.

He said that he remained in the family house for another two years and boasted that when villagers saw him with his children, their hair was well combed, their clothes tidy and they looked decent walking the streets. On the allegations made by his estranged wife, Logan has challenged her to come face to face with him and instead of fighting, sit down and resolve the matter together. “I am not a beast. All I know is that she is living in Tunapuna with the children and I wouldn’t take myself up to go there to look like if I harassing her. I’ve never done it, and I have no intentions to do it either,” he said. He accused a former friend who took two of his children to their mother as an opportunist. While he admitted that his children often spent time with the friend, he said that the visits were on the friend’s invitation. This was corroborated by nine-year-old Candace.