Court forces dad to send back kid to US
Published:Wednesday | April 27, 2022 | 12:10 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
A local businessman who had kept his son out of school since 2019, except for two months of summer classes while reportedly pretending he was enrolled at the American International School of Kingston (AISK), was recently ordered by the Supreme Court to return the 10-year-old to his mother in the United States (US).
The boy has since been reunited with his mother after he left the island earlier this month.
The businessman had challenged the request for the boy's return on the basis that the child would be at grave risk if he was returned to his mother.
The boy was sent to live with his father for a year after a series of behavioural issues, resulting in him being suspended from school on a number of occasions.
The parents' names are not disclosed here to preserve the child's privacy.
In a recently published judgment, the mother, an American nurse, had said that a verbal agreement was made for the child to live with his father after a psychiatrist found that the absence of male influence in his life may have been a behavioural trigger.
However, after the mother found out that her son had not been attending school, she requested, in April 2020, that he be returned to her as academic attendance was one of the conditions on which he was sent to Jamaica.
Reacting to the father's refusal, the mother filed an application in the US in August 2021 for the return of the child under the Hague Convention.
According to the mother, when she enquired about her son's schooling, his father sent her a receipt from AISK but she later discovered that her son was never enrolled there.
Consequently, the woman said she enrolled him in an overseas online programme while the case was progressing, but the defendant prevented the child from engaging in the classes.
The claimant also accused the defendant of demanding money from her on several occasions, even though one of the agreements was that he would be responsible for the child financially. She said the father had even demanded money for school.
At the same time, the claimant indicated that she had voluntarily sent him money for the child's care on a number of occasions.
She had also indicated that following her split from the defendant in 2017, she had cared for her son up to 2019 without any help from the father.
But the businessman, in his defence, asked for his son to remain on the island, claiming he had settled in and that his aggressive tendencies would be rekindled if he was returned to his mother.
While conceding that he had not enrolled the child in school, the businessman claimed he had not only made attempts to have him attend Hillel Academy but had also homeschooled the child and had secured a tutor in February 2020.
He, however, dismissed as untruth reports that he had sent the claimant receipts from AISK.
The father also challenged the claimant's report about being solely responsible for the child up to 2019, stating that he had given the mother money for childcare although he had never honoured the maintenance order as she had no need for that payout.
Judge Lorna Shelly-Williams, however, concluded that the defendant had failed to uphold his part of the agreement and ordered that the child be returned to his mother by April 13.
“I do not find that if [the child] is returned to the United States of America, he would be placed at grave risk,” the judge ruled.
Among the orders made were for the father to be provided with a psychiatrist's report for the child every six months and to have telephone contact at least five times per week.
Attorney-at-law Bianca Samuels represented the businessman.
The complainant was represented by Charles Young.