Kid 'lost' in jail system
Published:Sunday | July 10, 2011 | 12:00 AM
The past week has been a gut-wrenching one for Raquel Morgan. Last Sunday, she visited the Bridgeport police lock-up with food for her 15-year-old son, who had been detained for a few weeks, but he was not there. The minor had been transferred to another facility and his mother was not informed.
Police personnel at the police station told her that her son had been transferred to the Metcalfe Street Secure Juvenile Centre in Denham Town, Kingston. The news came as a surprise to Morgan as her son had been remanded until August 4 when he is to face charges of breaking and entering. He was among a group of boys who allegedly broke into an elementary school and stole food and money.
When she visited the recently opened juvenile facility in Denham Town the next day, Morgan was told that her son was not there either.
The distraught mother of four went home and cried. Morgan's mother, Jennifer McKay, phoned the Bridgeport Police Station and was told that her daughter's second-born was actually more than 80 miles away at a children's home in the parish of Manchester. Details provided by a policewoman on duty revealed that the boy had been moved since June 24, more than a week before his mother's visit.
Morgan's anxiety mounted when she called the Manchester-based home and was told that her son was not at the institution. However, after a second call, she was told that her son was indeed at the children's home, but she could not visit him for another three weeks because he needed time to "recuperate, or something like that".
Morgan is now sceptical about her son's whereabouts. "I don't know for sure if he is there, or if he is OK," said the petite mother while speaking with The Sunday Gleaner in the living room of her Old Braeton home in Portmore, St Catherine.