The girl is mine! - But fatherhood hangs on DNA evidence

In its recently concluded 'Paternity Puzzle' series, which started mid-April, The STAR invited couples - overwhelmingly former couples, as it turned out - having issues with putting the fatherhood of a child beyond doubt to tell their stories publicly. Those with the most compelling tales would be given a DNA test.

David Bernard was one of the men involved in the Paternity Puzzle, he and his former partner's story published on May 4. However, unlike the stereotypical evasive man, Bernard was not trying to avoid fatherhood. He is determined to prove that the six-year-old girl is his.

"I know that is my child and the mother keep saying, 'You must do a DNA'," Bernard, who lives in Washington Gardens, St Andrew, said. However, after many years of not seeing the girl who he is convinced is his daughter, although her mother claims that the child is for another man, in February "she take her over to me and say is my time".

"She was saying is a policeman's child. The people in the community say is not true, the child resemble me," Bernard said. The 'resemblance test' has also been applied within his family. "My grandmother pass her. My brother pass her, my friend pass her. My mother don't see her yet," Bernard said.

close-up view

Although Bernard was convinced that the child is his from she was born in 2005, he first got to be close to her when the girl was five years old. "She went to a friend's yard and a friend said your daughter up there, so I went," Bernard said.

Since February, when the girl's mother capitulated and allowed Bernard access to the child, Bernard says, "I have her like Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I give her snacks and lunch money. She going to graduate and I pay part of the fee."

Bernard says the child "is the only one my name call for" and he is eager to do a DNA test to prove scientifically what he is already convinced is true. "I am willing to do it. If they tell me tomorrow, I am ready right now," Bernard said. "That's the only one my name on. That's why I want to take care of her. Everything I did not get I want her to get it. My mother did not have the money for me to finish school. I want her to go to good school."

However, there is always the possibility, however slight, that he is not the girl's father, and Bernard says if this is so, his emotions will change. "The love not going to really stop. I will see her and give her things, but the love is not going to be the same … . I will hug her same way, but I not going to give 100 per cent," Bernard said. "If is not my child, you have to move on and do something else. I have to leave the mother with her child. I maybe feel hurt, but a so."

Still, he adds, "If the test say that she is mine, that would strengthen the love."

And there is always the possibility of fathering more children. "If it come, I can't turn it back. I have to accept it. I want it," Bernard said.

- M.C.