Magistrate reprimands and discharges woman for abandoning baby ten years ago

She had abandoned the boy in 2007 in a ward at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH) and has not seen him since.

Yesterday, a magistrate in San Fernando in freeing Hospedales- Charles of a charge of abandoning the child, told her that she must make every effort despite the predicament, to re-establish a connection with her son.

“It is never too late to reconnect with your child,” Senior Magistrate Gloria Jasmath presiding in the San Fernando Magistrates’ court, told the mother who was 24 years old when she was charged with the offence.

It was in November 2007 when it was alleged that Hospedales- Charles took Toby who was two years old, to SFGH where she placed him on a bed at Ward 13 and left.

A nurse reported the matter to the San Fernando Police Station when she discovered Toby on November 13.

H o s p e d - ales-Charles, of Enterprise Village, Chaguanas, was arrested and charged with child abandonment.

The charge alleged that she left her child, who was an infant, at the SFGH without the protection of an adult.

When she had appeared before a magistrate, no plea was taken and she was remanded into custody.

Hospedales-Charles was eventually granted bail after the police took a decision to proceed with the case summarily.

The case was called on several occasions before different magistrates in the San Fernando Magistrates’ court and on each, attorney Ainsley Lucky had announced that he was prepared to proceed with the case.

On one occasion, he told a magistrate that Hospedales- Charles wanted to plead guilty from the inception. Last week Monday, when she appeared before Jasmath, the woman pleaded guilty and Lucky made a stirring plea in mitigation for her, saying it had been her intention for the past ten years, to so plead.

Lucky said that Hospedales-Charles was a woman who had just turned 24 and she became a mother who was not fully equipped emotionally and physically, to take care for a child.

She has lived each day in regret since, he added, because the child was taken from her and given to the father.

Jasmath adjourned the hearing for yesterday for sentencing and when Hospedales- Charles re-appeared, she was in tears. The magistrate told her that keeping in mind that ten years had passed, and that her child had grown from two years to ten years without the mother ever seeing himthere would be no useful purpose in sending the mother to jail, she added. She reprimanded and discharged Hospedales- Charles and told her that she must make every effort to get to know her child who is, the court heard, living with his father.