Young mother wants a home for her family of nine

A 33-year-old mother of eight who claims to have run away from an abusive relationship two weeks ago after reaching her breaking point is crying out for help.

Tachima Brathwaite [not her real name], who is now in hiding with her youngest child, a baby, said she is in dire need of a housing solution for herself and her children. She said she had no choice but to pack her things and run from what she has described as the shack in the yard where she has been living for many years.

She said seven of her children are fathered by the alleged abuser, who is also in his 30’s, and two of them are still with him, while she has left the others with relatives.

“I didn’t want to come to the paper because I know people always ready to judge and discriminate, but this is my last resort and only hope, because I have tried everything else. I find myself crying because it hurting me to know that my children away from me because it never happen before.

“And I know this affecting them because I could feel in my heart them hurting. I need somewhere for me and my children, I begging for help. To tell you the truth, I started to feel suicidal. I started to feel like I can’t do this anymore. But I said, no and told myself I got to go and I just leave,” she said.

“I just had to go before I do something because without me what will happen to my children? Who will be there for them? It is only me that there for my children. I am not going on no drugs or in no different direction to help me cope, because I want the best for my children and I fighting for it. This is years of hurt that led me to run. I was on a cliff because it was that much for me,” she added.

Brathwaite, who is unemployed and unable to pay for a rental property, said it has been difficult to remain in contact with her children as she needs to, because she does not own a cellular phone.

After a friend contacted Barbados TODAY making an urgent appeal for the abused woman’s case to be highlighted, a tearful Brathwaite lamented that since leaving, she has been to several government agencies asking for assistance, but her efforts have been unsuccessful.

In fact, she said it has been over 12 years since she has been going to the National Housing Corporation (NHC) and telling officials there that she is in need of a house for herself and her children who range in ages from one to 15 years, because she wanted to leave the relationship.

“For years this going on, and for years I going out there looking for help because I know it was not a good place to be. I would go with tears in my eyes, frustrated and depressed, and I would just get turn back, and then I would got to go back into that abusive relationship and life.”

Brathwaite is now staying in a friend’s living room space with her infant child, but noted that her time to leave is fast approaching. The mother said she is also worried about the welfare of her other children since she is also aware that they too may have to soon leave where they are.

The young mother said she would accept a house, regardless of size, or even if it is in the rural part of the country, because she knows she has to “do what it takes” to change her life for the sake of her children.

“What hurting me most is that I going out there and looking for the help and I asking and I putting my case to housing and other people and I am not getting any help. I even went to the Member of Parliament. I went everywhere I could possibly go and no help at all. And then I get a lot of discrimination because I got eight children.

“I get it from my in-laws, people on the streets and sometimes I even face it when I go to the places to get the help. People would ask ‘what you doing with all of them children? Somebody tell you to go and get them children?’ But I get my children and they are my responsibility. They didn’t ask to be here and I do take care of my children. It is just that sometimes life does get a little difficult and people need help,” she said.

Brathwaite said it is also hurting her to know that school is scheduled to re-open on September 21 and her children are not ready and are in different households when they should be together at this time preparing for their first day at school.

The mother said she also found the courage to leave where she was because her children were also exposed to unfavourable treatment from relatives.

According to her. It eventually became tiring hearing her children being told to go home, even when they go over to the main house on the same property, asking to use the bathroom.

“And the children would come back cross crying and these things really affect me as a mother who wants the best for her children. All I am asking for is for a house that I could raise my children in a loving, caring and peaceful way that them could go long to school and be good and not got to come home and worry about what happening.

“His family don’t want me there. They would tell him things like ‘them children aint yours, she bring them children here for you’. What got me is that I there in the house all the time, sometimes.

“I just peeping through the window for months, aint going anywhere but to get the groceries and back. It is a bad place to be. I run because my big daughter was saying mummy I cant take it anymore and it started to hurt me because once my children affected I affected too,” she said.

The young woman lamented that she is also dealing with a matter where an older child in the neighbourhood allegedly sexually abused her eight-year-old son, but she is yet to receive satisfaction from authorities who claim the alleged abuser is a minor.

“Look, I just had to get out of that neighbourhood and away from the years of verbal and physical abuse,” she said.

Brathwaite, who is currently on welfare assistance, said she is willing to work once the opportunity for employment arises. She said over the years she has embarked on at least two entrepreneurial projects but was unable to continue for various reasons.

She said at one point she attempted to cook and sell food and was even running a small shop where she lived, but that operation became seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Then the next door neighbour opened a shop too. And then with COVID-19 things went right down and I had to close, plus I had the children. I believe in my own business because that is my love. But if I have to go out there and work, I would do it because I love to work. I don’t just like to sit down and depend on nobody,” she said.

Brathwaite said someone contacted the Business and Professional Women’s Club for battered women on her behalf and they were told that she may be able to seek refuge there for three months but will only be allowed to have the baby with her.

“But they are saying too that they are full and they don’t even know about the baby right now. And all my children young and need to be with their mother. Right now my aunt got three and she wants me to come for them because she is willing but not able and I told her I was coming back for them in two weeks and that time gone,” she said.

Barbados TODAY contacted the President of the National Organisation of Women (NOW) Marsha Hinds-Layne about Brathwaite’s plight. She said NOW has a long list of women in similar situations. However, Hinds-Layne said she will contact the necessary social services and see what could be done for Brathwaite.
anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb