A mother is alleging that her eight-year-old son, a student of St Angela’s Primary School, has been abused by teachers and students on numerous occasions with no action being taken by the authorities. But school and ministry officials have denied knowledge of such abuse.
According to June-Ann Bishop, her son Kenardo Glyne has been abused by teachers and students several times, resulting in several injuries, the latest being a gash on his mouth which required five stitches.
On Thursday afternoon, Bishop brought the injured boy to Stabroek News and he had a visibly swollen face and was unable to speak.
Bishop, relating what had transpired, said her son arrived at the Thomas Street school around 8am to sit his annual end-of-year examinations, when another student ran and pushed him into a rubbish bin. Subsequent to being pushed into the bin, Glyne was hit in his stomach several times.
Based on accounts given by the child to his mother, his face immediately began swelling and a wound on the left side of his face started bleeding. He related to his mother that he went up to his classroom and subsequently began vomiting.
“The head teacher just wipe off the lil blood and put on a plaster on his face,” Bishop said, adding, “that is sheer wickedness because his parents were never contacted. Then he vomit in the classroom and the teachers asked him to clean it himself. Is that how they treat students?”
Bishop, a vendor at Bourda Market, told this newspaper that after school was dismissed her son went to her stall and began vomiting blood.
“When he come and start vomit blood I jump in a taxi and rush he to the hospital and the doctor look after he and stitch up he mouth and say that if he vomit blood again he will have to be admit he,” she stated.
She said that owing to being hit in his abdomen her son was complaining of intense abdominal pains. However, the doctor did not examine his stomach and just prescribed some Panadol. She was later told that the hospital did not have any of the prescribed medication.
The woman said she is disgusted by the actions of the school’s head and claimed that this was not the first instance of her son being abused. She said the first time he was poked with a pencil in his eye. The second time he was beaten by a teacher and his skin was swollen and the third time he was scratched about his body by another student resulting in injuries.
She said that all matters were reported to the School’s Welfare Officer at the Ministry of Education, whose name she gave as Sharon Harris, but accused her of dragging her feet on the matters resulting in them going nowhere.
Contacted yesterday, Harris said she was not the welfare officer of the school and further that she had no knowledge of the case. She was appalled at the mother’s attempt to implicate her, noting that the woman did not know her.
Harris referred Stabroek News to the officer responsible for St Angela’s, Simone Madramootoo, who told this newspaper that the only way they could know of such issues is if the school sends a report. She indicated that Glyne’s mother visited her office yesterday and she was advised further.
Madramootoo denied knowledge of the issues reported by Bishop, stating that yesterday was the first time she was hearing of an incident involving the child. She promised a thorough investigation.
Headmistress of St Angela’s Gladys Dickson-Damon said the matter was first reported to her some time around 12 pm on Thursday, when a teacher who was testing the child observed his swollen face. “His teacher was testing another class, so when the teacher observed his face she called his class teacher, who told her that she don’t like dealing with blood,” the headmistress said.
She added that the other teacher cleaned the child’s face and dressed it. Dickson-Damon said she was told that the child was accidentally pushed into the garbage bin and she also stated that it was the first time an incident involving the child was reported to her. “I only came here in March of this year so I do not know about any other matter that he may have had,” she explained.
When asked about the school’s guidelines for dealing with such matters, she said they normally speak to the children and inform them of what is right and wrong but there is no written procedure that they adhere to.
