Rumshop dad loses daughter, 9, to her sister

A FATHER who was accused of taking his daughter to rumshops in a village in south Trinidad, has lost his battle in court for custody of the child.

She is a girl, age nine, and is from Fyzabad, who up to recently lived with her father, who has two other elder daughters from a previous relationship. The other daughters are married and live with their respective families.

But one of the daughters, 37, in 2017 decided to file an application in the Siparia magistrates’ court for custody of the child. During a hearing of the custody application last month, she told the magistrate that she had filed the case against her own father because she was fed up of people in the village complaining to her.

Their complaint was that her nine-year-old stepsister was often seen in rumshops with their father.The daughter filed the custody hearing since January 2017, according to court records, which came up before former magistrate Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds in the same court. Ramsumair-Hinds is now a High Court judge and as a result, the case was transferred to Ava Vandenburgh-Bailey.

The daughter also contended that people complained that the father, who is an alcoholic, even used the child as a means of soliciting money from other customers at bars, and used it to buy rum.

On December 12, 2018, the daughter further complained that her father was unable to care for her stepsister because he was out late at nights with the girl.

He has attended every custody hearing, in which he challenged his daughter’s application.

On December 12, however, Vandenburg-Bailey made an interim order that the daughter should be granted custody of the child. She also ordered the father was to be granted access to the child only on alternate weekends from Fridays at 5.30 pm to Sunday at 3 pm.

The magistrate also ruled that the father was to pick up the child and deliver her to the daughter only at the Oropouche police station.

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