‘I still haven’t seen my son’ - Prison sentence hangs over grandma’s head in child abduction plot

A grandmother caught in the middle of an international child custody battle has been ordered to serve nine months in prison as a desperate Jamaican father turns up the pressure to have his son returned to him from the United States (US).

However, Daisy Raymond, a retired teacher, will remain free for three months, a last chance for her to try and convince her daughter and the child’s biological mother, Lacy-Ann Raymond, to comply with an order of the Jamaican court that the eight-year-old should be returned to his father, Desmond McKenzie.

No order was made against Lacy-Ann Raymond, who is now a fugitive in the US, according to McKenzie. A warrant was issued for her arrest in January last year after she failed to appear in a New Jersey court for a scheduled custody hearing, he said, citing court documents.

The 41-year-old Portland man has not seen his son since August 2018 when Daisy Raymond took him to her daughter in the US for the summer holidays under an agreement that she would bring him back by September 3 in time for the start of the new school year. The child will celebrate his ninth birthday next week.

She returned to the island without the child and brushed off requests for information on his whereabouts, McKenzie claimed.

The punishment was imposed by Justice Courtney Daye in the Supreme Court last Wednesday, the outcome of an application made by McKenzie’s attorney, Lorenzo Eccleston, after the grandmother failed, over a two-year period, to comply with two orders by another judge that she return the child to his father.

“The first respondent, Daisy Elizabeth Raymond, is sentenced to nine months imprisonment. The execution of the order is suspended for three months from the date hereof,” Daye ordered before offering the retiree a glimmer of hope.

“The first respondent, upon compliance with the order [to return her grandson to his father], may apply to the court to purge her contempt by the reduction or discharge of the sentence.”

Causing an elderly woman to languish in prison was not part of the plan when a devastated McKenzie began his legal fight to be reunited with his son, he acknowledged during an interview with The Sunday Gleaner last week.

“That was not what I set out for and that was not the intention to send anybody to prison. My intention was just to get the return of my son,” he said.

“This is just a last resort, you know, and I’m hoping that she does what is needed and it doesn’t have to go that way because she has choices. She has an option … . She has all of three months.”

Daisy Raymond’s attorney, Dr Mario Anderson, did not respond to requests by The Sunday Gleaner for an interview for this story.

It was yet another legal victory for McKenzie in his quest to be reunited with his son, but he is not ready to celebrate.

“I still have not seen my son. … I am hoping that this will put some fear into her to do what she is supposed to do.”

Two-year Tug-of-war

His attorney believes this is the closest they have come to resolving the two-year emotional tug of war.

“It’s the nearest possibility of hope that best efforts or reasonable steps will be taken to have the child returned to the jurisdiction into the custody care and control of my client,” Eccleston said.

“With imprisonment – loss of liberty – hanging over her head, it is my hope that she would plead to her daughter to do the right thing and return the minor child to the jurisdiction,” he added.

McKenzie recounted his visit to Daisy Raymond’s home on September 3, 2018, after she returned from her US trip.

“I called and she came out and I told her I am here to pick up my son. She was like ‘he’s not here’. So I’m like ‘where is he?’ She said he is with his mom and she went back inside and closed her door,” he charged.

He detailed, in a previous interview with this newspaper, the mental anguish he suffered in the ensuing days.

“I’ve been to the doctor, I’m not sleeping, I’m restless,” he said during a January interview.

The situation was compounded, McKenzie claimed, when Lacy-Ann first told their son he was not going to back to Jamaica.

“He called me on WhatsApp and he was saying, ‘Daddy, you know Mommy said she not taking me back? I don’t know what she talking about. Are you coming to get me’?” he said, recounting the last words he heard from his son.

In December 2018, following the hearing of a motion filed by McKenzie in the Jamaican Supreme Court, Daisy Raymond and her daughter were ordered to return the child to his father “forthwith”.

Eccleston insists that the order was served on the grandmother, but said “nothing happened”.

McKenzie simultaneously took his fight to the family division of the New Jersey Superior Court, which scheduled a hearing for January 25 last year. Court records show that Lacy-Ann Raymond did not show up.

Bench Warrant

“A bench warrant for the arrest of the obligor is hereby ordered. The obligor was properly served with notice for court appearance … and failed to appear,” read a section of the court documents seen by The Sunday Gleaner.

On his return to Jamaica, the Portland resident was greeted with news that Daisy Raymond had filed a legal motion seeking to be removed from the case. The motion was dismissed.

In November last year, the Jamaican Supreme Court issued a second interim order granting McKenzie sole custody of his son until his original case is completed, and again directed Daisy Raymond and her daughter to hand over the child “within 14 days” or be held in contempt of court.

McKenzie estimates that he has already spent more than $2 million in legal and other costs in his quest to be reunited with his son, but said he has no plan to stop.

“Definitely not, you know, because I don’t think that a son should grow up without his father,” he insisted.