CARIMAC Times 2016: The JREAM Edition Journalists Reviving Awareness of what Matters | Page 37

According to The American Academy of Pediatrics,
for a child to develop into a psychologically
healthy human being, he or she must have a
long-lasting relationship with an adult who is
nurturing and protective. The Academy added
that children who are shuffled from home to
home often develop attachment disorders, an
inability to trust, and an inability to cope with
the trauma of their childhood.
But Mallory was friendly on the surface.
Sterling said Mallory had been as rebellious
as any other children when she arrived at
Strathmore, but after her transfer, returned
worse, with several behavioural problems.
While Sterling refused to disclose those exact
‘behavioural problems’, another girl at the home,
*Shantal, said Mallory had engaged in sexual
activities with the older girls.
The next day, Child Development Agency officials
met with the girls, and Mallory was once again
whisked away to Homestead. Although Mallory
said the girls at Homestead are more violent,
she longed to go back. But her greatest desire
was to return to her foster mother, who lived
in Portland.
When Mallory spoke about her foster mother,
she smiled and clapped her hands as her words
rushed into one another excitedly.
One day she begged me to call her mother.
As Mallory spoke, her voice receded to a
whisper, and the light that once permeated
her expression faded. Her mother was sick,
immobilised by kidney disease and unable to
go to the hospital, or visit Mallory at the home.

As the call ended, tears trailed her cheeks, but
Mallory said nothing.
Akayla Noel’s story
When you look at Akayla Noel* you see a small
child, missing two front teeth, but her bright
smile is full of warmth. On the first day at
Strathmore, Noel greeted this interviewer with
the statement that her mother was dead. Like
someone making polite conversation, she told
me her mother had been chopped seven times.
It was only later that she said quietly to herself,
“I wish my mother were alive.”
Noel was quick and eager to share her past.
Smacking her lips and rocking happily side
to side, she said, at Christmastime, she was
with her family. She played with toys and ate
meals and received gifts for her birthday in
December. But when it came to her mother,
her voice softened.
“Dem tek out dem cutlass… Dem get fi cut up
mi mother…” she said.
After her mother’s death, Noel left her stepfather,
three sisters and younger brother to live with
her grandfather and aunt whom she claims
did not want her.
To Noel, the feeling was mutual: “I don’t want
a grandfather. Mi have a grandfather, but him
rude to me,” she said.
Noel recounted that at her grandfather’s, she
was forced to clean the yard and the house.
She said her grandfather and her aunt were
“wicked”, so she said she was wicked in return.

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