Monster mom - Mother and her two children slapped with long prison sentences
Published:Saturday | May 7, 2016 | 12:00 AMBarbara Gayle
Today is a special day in Jamaica when mothers are honoured, pampered, and showered with love and gifts, but 46-year-old Lorraine Peralto of Gibraltar Housing Scheme, St Mary, will not be celebrating Mother's Day with her children.
Instead, Peralto will be spending the day behind bars, having been convicted of the vicious act which left a 15-year-old girl with her left eye ripped out.
Peralto will also have to consider if she has been a good mother to her two children, who are also behind bars.
The three were convicted in the St Mary Circuit Court of wounding with intent, and last month Justice Carol Lawrence Beswick sentenced them.
"She should be jailed for life," one policeman remarked as he questioned what kind of mother would encourage her children in wrongdoing.
"A mother aiding and abetting such a vicious act to another child is frightening. I have seen the sadness on the victim's face and I know the missing eyeball is going to affect her for the rest of her life," added the policeman.
In the meantime, Betty Ann Blaine, who heads the lobby group Hear the Children's Cry, said: "I am calling on mothers this Mother's Day to be peacemakers and to teach their children to be peacemakers."
Teach good values
According to Blaine, while the children should take responsibility for what they did, if Peralto had played her role as a mother, she and her children would not have ended up in prison.
"The greatest thing a mother can do is to teach her children good values, such as being loving, kind, caring and honest," said Blaine.
Peralto and her 21-year-old daughter, Kadian Downer, are each serving 15 years in prison for wounding with intent, while her 19-year-old son, Revlon Downer, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The son was given a lesser sentence because he was a juvenile when the offence was committed in 2013.
The court was told that the complainant and the three accused lived in the Gibraltar Housing Scheme at the time of the incident.
Trio attacked teen
On October 26, 2013, the complainant, a teenage girl, was walking home when Kadian blocked her path, pushed her in the chest and they began fighting. During the fight, Revlon held the complainant from behind. Peralto came up and threw a knife to her daughter, telling her to kill the complainant.
Kadian took the knife and stabbed the complainant over her left eyebrow, rupturing the eyeball, which resulted in the eyeball 'popping out' from the socket. Peralto used a stone to hit the complainant in the chest.
The police took the complainant to the Annotto Bay Hospital, St Mary. She was later transferred to the Kingston Public Hospital where she was admitted for 10 days.
The court was also told that Peralto and her family and an adult relative of the complainant had a disagreement on the morning of the incident, and later in the day the complainant was attacked.