Trinidad: Father charged with abandoning 2-year-old child

(Trinidad Guardian) A 44-year-old fa­ther was grant­ed $50,000 bail when he ap­peared in court charged with will­ful­ly ne­glect­ing a two-year-old boy.

Nko­ri Matthews plead­ed guilty to the charge when he ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Mar­garet Alert in the Siparia Mag­is­trates Court on Mon­day.

But af­ter con­tra­dict­ing the pros­e­cu­tion’s case against him, he plead­ed not guilty. Matthews was ac­cused of leav­ing the child alone at his Ab­by Street, South Oropouche home on De­cem­ber 2.

The child’s un­cle re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the Oropouche Po­lice Sta­tion.

Cpl Tay­lor of the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit was ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate. Po­lice checks showed that the boy’s moth­er is cur­rent­ly abroad in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land in the Unit­ed States. The child is now in the cus­tody of oth­er rel­a­tives.

Tay­lor charged Matthews un­der Sec­tion 4 (1) (a) of the Chil­dren’s Act, which stat­ed that where a per­son has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a child and wil­ful­ly as­saults, ill-treats, ne­glects, aban­dons or ex­pos­es the child or caus­es or pro­cures the child to be as­sault­ed, ill-treat­ed, ne­glect­ed, aban­doned or ex­posed in a man­ner like­ly to cause that child suf­fer­ing or in­jury to his phys­i­cal, men­tal or emo­tion­al health, he or she is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, to a fine of $5,000 and to im­pris­on­ment for six years or on con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment, to a fine of $50,000 and to im­pris­on­ment for ten years.
The mat­ter has been ad­journed to Jan­u­ary 7, next year.