Former Clifton Boys’ Home employees acquitted of abuse charges
Published:Saturday | May 31, 2025 | 12:09 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
The three former employees of the Clifton Boys’ Home in Darliston, Westmoreland, who were arrested and charged in 2021 for allegedly abusing eight wards at the facility, have been acquitted of the charges following their latest appearance in the Westmoreland Parish Court.
Eighty-four-year-old Irene McDonald, her 62-year-old son William McDonald, and her 39-year-old granddaughter Rasheda McDonald were acquitted by presiding judge Steve Walters, after having their case heard in Savanna-la-Mar and then in Whithorn in the parish. The trio, who were represented by attorney Delford Morgan, were accused of abusing the eight wards between March 2016 and March 2021.
Irene McDonald, who was manager of the Clifton Boys’ Home at the time, was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and unlawful wounding. William McDonald, the facility’s assistant manager, and Rasheda McDonald, a housekeeper, were both charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Following Friday’s ruling, Reverend Hartley Perrin, the home’s former board chairman, told The Gleaner that, based on his interactions with the three McDonalds, none of them will return to work at the home.
“The three persons have been found not guilty, after all these years of going to and from court. Today [Friday] the case ended with them being acquitted, and it has finally been finished,” said Perrin, who is also the custos of Westmoreland. “Mrs Irene McDonald had reached the age of retirement and was just holding on a little longer [at the time when she and her relatives were charged], so she is out of it now. None of them have any intention of returning there.”
The three family members were arrested in September 2021 after a police probe determined that the eight boys, who were between ages 10 and 17 at the time, were physically abused by the trio.
William McDonald was accused of using an iron chair to hit the 17-year-old boy. On another occasion, he was accused of hitting a 15-year-old boy with a piece of board and dragging another boy down a set of stairs. Irene McDonald was accused of beating four other children, resulting in bruises and a wound to one of them, while Rasheda McDonald was accused of assaulting two boys.
The Clifton Boys’ Home, which was founded by the Anglican Church in 1961, was destroyed by a fire on January 15, 2017, and subsequently rebuilt beginning in 2019. However, in the aftermath of the 2021 abuse scandal at the home, the Anglican Diocese of Jamaica and The Cayman Islands appointed new management to oversee the facility’s operations.