Heartbroken!

“I feel like I’m going to jail!” were the last words Karl Russell heard from the nine-year-old special-needs child he had in his care for four years up to February 22.

Russell is not a born Jamaican man. However, he was born in Manchester, United Kingdom, to Jamaican parents.

The British native repeatedly visited Jamaica for the last 34 years and bought a house in Whitehouse, Westmoreland, with the hope of enjoying his retirement in our tropical climate.

While in a local shop in Westmoreland six years ago, he overheard a conversation where someone went into a frenzy about a four-year-old child who was posted on Facebook as being up for adoption.

“I said, ‘What?’ she said, ‘Child for adoption’ and I said, ‘This can’t be right!’ I said maybe I could help this person. Maybe she just needs financial help, whatever, and someone got in touch with the woman and she brought the child to me over six years ago, and she literally just handed him over,” Russell told The Gleaner.

He further explained, “She left the child without telling me that he was disabled. He was born with spina bifida, which is the twisting of the spine. His was incredibly twisted in. He could barely walk and also he was incompetent and later on I found out he was deaf in one ear and had water on the brain.”

The child also has club foot, which is the same condition that afflicts 19-year-old Jellisa Williams, whom The Gleaner reported about on March 3. She has never been to school as a result of her condition.

His biological father, who is now deceased, lived metres away from Jellisa in Culloden, Westmoreland, before his sudden death two years ago at the age of 27 years.

IMPROVED HEALTH

Unlike Jellisa, the boy was lucky enough to have Russell pay for special shoes, so he can now walk with more ease.

Russell said that the child’s biological mother, Racquel Farquharson, tried her best but needed assistance, so he started paying for the healthcare services needed to improve his health status.

“I took him in and when I was going to work overseas, I was going backward and forward, but leaving him in a de facto adoption with someone I knew in Kingston, a good friend of mine. So, for the first four years that was the situation,” Russell, who is 58 years of age, told The Gleaner.

Russell then decided to emigrate to Jamaica, because he was told that he has to reside with the child to be considered for formal adoption.

“So, I started the [formal] adoption in September 2018, and it took the Adoption Board 18 months to agree to the adoption, which is unusual because I was told it would take six months,” he said.

He continued: “Then in 2020, January, the Adoption Board agreed to the adoption and I came home to go to the court for what would be a quick process of finalising the adoption, with the intent that I would stay here because I have a house here, I was going to retire.”

Another reason why he started the adoption process was to make it easy to be able to take Odean overseas for more medical attention.

“For two years, it’s just been backward and forward, and I’ve had him the entire two years, and I’ve been here for two years, of course because of the pandemic, and I was homeschooling him because schools wouldn’t take him because he was disabled,” Russell, who is a university lecturer who teaches online, told The Gleaner.

Russell said he had to search and seek help from the Ministry of Education and Youth to get a school in Westmoreland to accept the child, where Odean’s cousins also attend school.

“The adoption came up again in October [2021] and I didn’t attend the hearing because I had COVID-19 and the judge made an order that I had to take the child to Bustamante Hospital [for an assessment] and then the order didn’t come until January 11 [2022], so three months the order wasn’t ready and then she wanted me to bring him on the 22nd of February, so I had four to five weeks to sort out what she wanted, while keeping Odean in school,” Russell explained with tears in his eyes to The Gleaner.

While crying, he continued: “I couldn’t take him to Bustamante [because he had school], so I took him to a paediatrian here in Sav[anna-la-Mar]. He wrote a letter… but the judge didn’t want that. She wanted me to take him to Bustamante and that was the downfall of the case.”

TAKEN AWAY

He told The Gleaner that the Family Court judge, on February 22, ordered that the child be taken from him immediately and contact was to be made with the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA).

The child then became a ward of the State and was taken to the Glenhope Place of Safety. Odean’s mobile phone was also taken away from him.

The situation has left not only Russell heartbroken but his maternal grandfather, Paul Farquharson, and his paternal grandmother, Lucille Plumber Rhoden, in distress.

They are upset with the judicial system for taking the child from someone who is willing to pay for the care and protection of the child, which they all cannot afford.

“We no have di money and a him help we. Anything you can do fi help we get him back, we’d appreciate it. We want him back a wi foot,” Farquharson pleaded when The Gleaner visited his home in Culloden recently. This while Plumber Rhoden, who also lives in Culloden, cried continuously.

She is hoping the judge or the court will have a change of heart, and return the child to them.

“He never looked hungry; not naked, not dirty. We never see anything on him that he is not getting care… He did the surgeries and he had to be wearing the pampers… He was well-taken care of. Words cannot express, it just cannot explain how this gentleman take care of that child,” Plumber Rhoden told The Gleaner.

She said when Russell went back overseas to work on one occasion, he ensured the child was taken care of by one of her relatives in St Elizabeth.

During an interview with The Gleaner, Farquharson, who is now overseas, is furious about the decision of the judge.

She said they have decided to go to the court to have the adoption done the legal way, but feel instead that they are being fought by the system.

“His father died. I give him [Russell] the opportunity to be his father, so I don’t know why the judge keep on fighting… Why mi son have to deh in a place of safety when him have a father?!” she said.

Farquharson added: “Mi nuh feel good bout di situation and di judge keep on a talk to him [Russell] some kind of way when he goes to court.”

She said the child has already been taken several times to neurosurgeons at the Bustamante Hospital for Children in Kingston, and he was well taken care of, so she does not understand the reason for the judge’s insistence for Russell to take the child back to the hospital.

When The Gleaner sought clarity about the case from the CPFSA, and whether the child would be returned to either Russell or the mother, the agency responded via email: “Based on discussions with our senior director, the matter is before the court, and the decision to remove the child from the care of the complainant was the court’s. The CPFSA has no further comment, as the matter is out of our hands.”

When Russell was informed of the agency’s response to The Gleaner, he recalled once more the boy’s last words:

“Daddy! Daddy! I want to come home, daddy! I want to come home Daddy! Odean just started to call me daddy from literally weeks [after living with me],” he said with tears in his eyes.

Russell has been granted one visit to see the child at the Glenhope Place of Safety.

He has retained the services of an attorney to help with his battle of formally adopting him.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com