Bound, dehydrated 2-year old rescued from North R/veldt house

Ranks from the East La Penitence Police station on Tuesday night rescued a two-year-old abandoned child from a North Ruimveldt house, earning high praises from head of the Child Care and Protection Agency, Ann Greene. The child was found alone in a bedroom on the upper flat of a two-bedroom house on Hummingbird Street, under a bed, with his hands tightly bound behind his back.

The North Ruimveldt from which the child was rescued.

He has been admitted to the Georgetown Public Hospital for observation. This was after the occupants of the lower flat of the house alerted the police when they went to check the source of water pouring through the ceiling from the upper flat. Occupying the upper flat is an elderly gentleman who was the only adult in the house at the time. The child’s female guardian, who is paid to look after the elderly man, has been taken into custody and is expected to face abuse and child neglect charges. She claimed she has also been taking care of the child ever since his mother left for the interior a year ago. But although the child was frequently seen with the woman at the house, the elderly man claimed that he had no knowledge of the toddler being there. Some occupants of a section of the bottom flat who carry on a business told this newspaper that they were about to leave the premises around 17:00 hours on Tuesday when they noticed water coming down. A male employee of the business went upstairs to check and while combing the floor for the source of the water, he saw the child lying under a bed. The worker hurriedly went back downstairs and informed his female colleagues who themselves went to check. Upon seeing the child they tried calling him out from under the bed but he did not budge. “He took a long time to come out and when he finally came out, we noticed the hands were tied at the back. So we decide we got to call some authority,” a female who works downstairs told Kaieteur News. She said that they first tried to contact the Human Services Ministry but were unsuccessful since it was after 17:00 hours. They then turned to the police who responded promptly. “They came and they took him away. They say they will take him to the hospital,” the woman said. She explained that the child appeared very malnourished, and this was confirmed when he indicated that he had eaten nothing recently. “He is small and he did not say much…He look to me like if he didn’t eat for a long time,” the woman stated. She said that the elderly man expressed surprise when he learnt that the child was in the house. According to the woman they had previously seen the child on several occasions but missed him for a few days, recently. She said that when they enquired from the guardian the whereabouts of the child, she would tell them that he was with his grandmother, “when all the while he was upstairs tied up.” “The last time I asked her for him was three days ago,” the woman stated. Kaieteur News was told that the woman previously left the child by himself in the house and went out. The woman believes that the child’s guardian would bind him and leave him in the room to prevent him from going outside and from being seen by the elderly man of the house. “When the police took him, we were happy to know that he was in safe hands and we leave and go home from work,” the woman said. The guardian was subsequently arrested a few hours later. Head of the Child Care and Protection Agency Ann Greene was loud in her praise for those who were involved in the child’s rescue. She told this newspaper that her social workers informed that when the child was discovered, he was “all smelly. When I saw the child (Wednesday), he was a battered child…There were signs of maltreatment and mistreatment and he was a child who was in need of immediate care.” According to Greene, their first task was to get the child medically examined and then launch an investigation. She said that her agency is always open for persons to call in with information regarding abandoned and abused children. She said that even outside working hours, persons can contact their hotline telephone number 227-0979. “This is not the first child that we have rescued for the year. We have been responding to our hotline. We get calls every day on our hotline…Since we finish rescuing one we have to go out and rescue another,” Greene said. “The police did real well; the persons who informed them too. I’m feeling really satisfied that persons now are responding…We’re getting people to understand that child protection is everybody’s business,” she added.