Sean Luke's mother: No justice, no joy, no closure

PAULINE Bharat, the mother of six-year-old Sean Luke, feels she has received no justice, no joy and no real closure, after a High Court judge delivered a guilty verdict on two men accused of killing him 15 years ago, in March 2006.

Sitting in the garage of her family's home at Henry Street West in Orange Valley, Couva, Bharat spoke from her heart.

Occasionally she stared with tear-filled eyes in the direction of the nearby bushy area where Sean's body was discovered.

She showed reporters pictures of herself and Sean embracing in happier times.

"That was a happy Pauline.

"When I woke up this morning. I prayed as I prayed every day. I said, 'Father, let your will be done. Whatever happens today, it's your will and not mine.'"

On the guilty verdict on her son's killers, Bharat said, "I just paused there and I took it in. It brings me no joy.. This brought me no joy at all.

"My faith is not in people, my faith is in the Most High. I have turned myself over to him, for him to do his will."

Bharat said the accused, Akeel Mitchell and Richard Chatoo, did not realise "it still have another place that they have to face. Even though they faced (judgement) here, whatever happens...this is man's law..."Bharat said the judgement awaiting Mitchell and Chatoo "is worse than this one."

But on the trial she commented, "This is the system and I am grateful that the system finally brought it to an end."

While Bharat said she will somehow find the strength to live the rest of her life, she said, "It's not over for me. It is not going to be over for me, until I reach on the other side...where I can finally hug my son and kiss him...and have that joy that the Most High said you would get that joy.

"That is what I am waiting for. I am waiting for that day."

But until then, she said, "I will still have to scream into my pillow and bawl down in the night when the whole of Orange Valley is sleeping and nobody would know what Pauline is going through."

Sean Luke’s memory lives on

She will never forget Sean.

"He is part of me. How could I forget?"

While Sean's murder happened 15 years ago, it does not feel that way to her.

"It feels for me like it happened just yesterday, just today. It doesn't change.

"They say time does heal, time does change. That is a lie! That is a lie from the pit of Hell! It doesn't change! You just learn how to deal with it. That's all!"

She said from the verdict, she got "some kind of closure but not real justice. I can't get justice. I can't.

"I want my son. That is the justice I want."

The trial took too long, she felt.

"I used to think that I was probably going to die and not get any justice. I had given up and I said whatever happens, happens."

“His killers should repent”

Recalling the violent way Sean was murdered, Bharat wondered if Mitchell and Chatoo felt any remorse for their crime.

"I don't know if it's haunting them, but I hope it does, and they repent, and it is up to the Most High to grant them whatever mercy.

"I know what is in store for them. It is not pretty."

She wished no one else would ever endure the pain and suffering she and others did over the last 15 years.

"It is a loss-loss situation. They lost their freedom and they lost everything that they planned to do in their future, and they took my son. That's my loss. They took my son away from me too. It's not any win-win thing. It is not anything to be happy and joyful about."

During the trial, things were spoken about that she heard for the first time.

"I stopped listening to it (the trial). It would just add on more and more things that would haunt me. Horrible things."

Bharat said the pain she is suffering "is not a physical something that you could see and touch. This is a something....that understanding that you have to come to...and you have to lean on the Most High God. He is the one who gives me...I don't know about the other people...but he gives me the strength to go on every day.

"God is a god that sees tears, you know. He saw my tears. He knows what I have in my heart."

As she spoke with reporters, Bharat showed some of Sean's personal items, such as his kindergarten school certificate; a scrapbook filled with pictures of him in Carnival costume and sketches of Carnival characters; and an album containing a collection of rare postage stamps in disarray.

Looking through Sean's stamp collection, Bharat said she had promised to help him organise his collection, but never got the chance.

"Sean, we never got to do this."

Older brother disappointed about delay

Sean's older brother Damien Lumfai, 42, said: "The verdict is what it is, based on the evidence presented."

He too was disappointed with the length of time the trial took. Lumfai was concerned that the verdict said the Forensic Sciences Centre did not have the DNA machinery working in proper order.

"That's what caused the delay in the DNA submission. That is extremely disturbing."

In hindsight, he said, the length of time to get justice in TT "needs to get a closer grasp.. in terms of prioritising and giving people justice."

Lumfai said it was ridiculous for people to be waiting in prison for 30 years for their trials to begin.

But the main issue for him, he said, "is that my brother died. He most likely died a very, very painful death. It wasn't a sudden and painless death.

"This is not something you can reverse. It happened already."

He said Mitchell and Chatoo did not just kill a six-year-old boy.

"They killed someone who had hopes and dreams, who had loved ones who had hopes and dreams for him."

Lumfai said a big part of him died with Sean, 15 years ago.