Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A 23-year-old Venezue­lan woman who ini­tial­ly told po­lice she found a new­born aban­doned in a card­board box in South Oropouche has since ad­mit­ted she is the ba­by’s moth­er. She is as­sist­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors but is not in cus­tody, and po­lice have not ruled out charges. Of­fi­cers said she con­cealed the birth and filed a false re­port.

The in­fant, dis­charged from hos­pi­tal last Fri­day, is now un­der the care of the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

Res­i­dents of South Oropouche ex­pressed shock and sad­ness. “I was shocked. It re­al hurt me that some­thing like that hap­pen, but you don’t know what she was go­ing through to do some­thing like that,” one res­i­dent said.

Her for­mer em­ploy­er, where she worked for about four months, said they had no idea she was preg­nant. “She usu­al­ly wore bag­gy cloth­ing and gave no in­di­ca­tion she was ex­pect­ing. I was sur­prised when I heard that,” he said. The woman has not re­turned to work since the in­ci­dent.

Last Thurs­day, she and a 47-year-old Trinida­di­an man ar­rived at the Oropouche Po­lice Sta­tion with the new­born, wrapped in a blan­ket in­side a black plas­tic bag. She ini­tial­ly claimed she dis­cov­ered the ba­by cry­ing in a card­board box along St Mary’s Road near the South Oropouche Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

The child was tak­en to the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal for med­ical at­ten­tion, and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty was con­tact­ed.

Child psy­chol­o­gist Dr Sarah Sub­han said child­birth can take a heavy toll on a woman’s men­tal and phys­i­cal state, es­pe­cial­ly in cir­cum­stances of dis­tress or iso­la­tion. “There may be high lev­els of dis­tress and pos­si­bly low lev­els of so­cial sup­port for the moth­er. Oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions are fear, iso­la­tion, men­tal health is­sues, vi­o­lence and trau­ma. The um­bil­i­cal cord still be­ing at­tached sug­gests both moth­er and ba­by were not at­tend­ed to med­ical­ly,” she ex­plained.

Sub­han not­ed that aban­don­ment is trau­mat­ic for both moth­er and child. “The child would have been born in cir­cum­stances of high stress lev­els with their ba­sic needs be­ing un­met. This has long-term con­se­quences for the child.” She sug­gest­ed greater pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness about the op­tions and sup­port avail­able to moth­ers who may be un­able to care for their ba­bies.