FOR 16 years, she thought her mother's husband was her father and he too had come to accept her as his daughter since there was nothing to suggest otherwise. Everything went to plan, until one day, in anger, her mother broke the secret she had been clinging to since her daughter's conception.

"One day, we were having an argument and she blurted out, 'Gweh, you don't even know your father', she recalled, confessing that the revelation left her not only distraught but totally confused. And as if to add insult to injury, this woman, who asked for privacy, said her mother started calling her a "jacket".

After moving out and breaking all ties with her mother, she said she went on a search to find her real father. She eventually found out that he was living in England and to her relief was willing to do a DNA test which later proved that he was her biological father.

By this time, she had dropped out of school, unable to focus because of the emotional turmoil her mother's deception had caused. So when her father told her he was going to file papers for her to migrate, she was ecstatic.

Today she has lost much more than respect for her mother, she has also lost her identity and her dreams and aspirations have all but gone up in smoke.

Lanny Davidson, founder of Fathers in Action, believes that a number of children today are like the woman above, bearing the consequences of their mothers' secrets. But unlike the mother in this case, they are secrets some women would go to great lengths to conceal.

"It mash them (men) up and it mash up the children too and the families," said Davidson who has over the years spoken to men who have unknowingly worn "jackets" only to find out later that they weren't the perfect fit.

In referring to statistics he explained came out of the family court a few years ago showing that 34.5 per cent of Jamaican men tested turned out not to be the father, Davidson described Jamaica as the "jacket capital" of the world.

He said the figures are much higher today, if one considers the number of men who get testing independent of the family court.

"The men who do it privately are not the same types who do it through the family court. Through the family court, it is the men who are paying the court for maintenance, who claim the child is not theirs. But for the private labs, the men just quietly want to find out," he said.

Psychologist Dr Leachim Semaj believes that paternity fraud is one of the best kept secrets among women. However, it is a secret that is becoming increasingly difficulty to hide with the prominence of DNA testing as a requirement for certain procedures such as United States migration. This is most times when most of what is hidden comes to light.

"It is showing up as quite a bit of discrepancy in terms of even many persons in their 20s and 30s, somebody is filing for them and it is turning out that who was alleged to be there father is not," said Dr Semaj. "We here in Jamaica, we talk about men having multiple relations, but now the evidence is showing that women are quite agile themselves."

He believes more than anyone else, the children are the ones who suffer the most when the truth is revealed.

"Here is a child who would have grown up with one identity, one self-definition, only to find out in their 20s and 30s -- and some even later than that -- that the person who you thought was your father is not and you have no way of actually identifying who your father is," Semaj said.

Another woman, still smarting from her husband's family questioning her every chance they get, tells All Woman that though she thinks her husband suspects that one of the children bearing his name isn't his, she is sticking by her story that the child is no bastard -- at least until her husband confronts her.

Blaming American talk show host Maury Povich for making the paternity testing issue more mainstream, she says she has been watching for years to see whether her husband would raise the issue, which he so far hasn't.

"My son is very light-skinned and both my husband and I are dark-skinned," she said. "Even the children I had before marriage favour me, but this child distinctly stands out. And to make things worse, the two children that came after the boy are dark too."

She said though, that instead of dwelling on the fact that indeed, she had slept with another man around the same time she got pregnant, she tries to pass off her son's colour as "one of those genetic things".

"My mother is lighter than I am, so I explain to people that he got his grandmother's colour," she said. "My husband has never said anything to me, but people have made little comments. But he's now 16, and he has my husband's last name. We don't have any problems now. Why stir up trouble?"

Davidson said he has seen and heard about a few of cases over the past few years where men have sought to get their children to migrate with them, only to find out that they had been maintaining jackets. One such was that of a Jamaican man who attempted to get his family to come and live with him abroad after he had secured a job, only be told that his son wasn't his based on the DNA test results.

"This man really didn't care even then, but that child could not go on to get a green card, and so that child is left back here," he said.

Then there are those DNA tests that are sanctioned by the court in matters pertaining to the maintenance of the child. These court-appointed DNA testings too have also helped to "let the puss out of the bag", he said.

Davidson believes that while a few women have mistakenly identified their child's father, the majority blatantly lie to hide the fact that they cheated.

"Usually it is when a woman has multiple partners, she just pin it on one. The thing is that the gardener, the caretaker, she can't call his name, so she has to call the company executive, or the doctor or the one who would be a better father," he said while noting that there are also cases where married women who have cheated pass off their children as their husbands', because they don't want to give up their "wife" status and the trimmings that come along with it.

Male Desk Representative at the Bureau of Women's Affairs and senior policy analyst Dave Noel Williams, believes that paternity fraud should be a criminal offence in Jamaica, given the emotional trauma it causes in families.

"You can't have a man fathering another man's child only to find out that it is not his own," he said, adding too that men who are the recipient of "jackets" are sometimes ridiculed by their friends.

To avoid the emotional trauma, Davidson encourages men in doubt to do a DNA testing if they think fathering another man's child is not a responsibility they want.

"Some men don't want to know, some men love the child and they are not interested. If they are my children now -- and I have two children -- I am not doing no DNA test, I don't even want to know if they are not mine, because I love them too much for that," he said.

But most men it seems have been showing a genuine interest in proving the paternity of their children. Early this year, singer Jah Cure was proven not to be the father of a 10-month-old child, after doing a paternity test. He joined a list of countless others both here and overseas who were all proven not to be the father of children they were told they had fathered.

In doubt? Get a DNA test done in Jamaica

In the space of just two years, local DNA centre Caribbean Genetics (CariGen), has witnessed the doubling of paternity testing, and chief forensic DNA analyst Compton Beecher believes the increasing distrust some men are having towards their children's mothers could be the reason for this.

"In about 2007, we were getting about 600 cases and now last year, I think we got about 1,100 cases," said Beecher who has been at the University of the West Indies-based centre since it was established in 2005.

He said while the centre has no contact with those requesting the test, about 30 per cent of those who have called enquiring about their services are men. He said too that some of the women calling are sisters and mothers who are concerned that their male relative might be supporting a child that is not theirs.

While not wanting to discuss the specifics of the cases dealt with such as why they were requested in the first place, Beecher confirmed that a number of men in Jamaica were indeed supporting "jackets".

"I couldn't give you a percentage, but it is disturbingly high," said Beecher when pressed to provide statistics.

Because the facility only processes the samples taken, most of those requesting paternity tests usually visit one of the collection sites in the island or the region. The results are then sealed and sent to the lab which does the testing and sends them back sealed.

Some men also opt to purchase a collection kit for $28,000 from one of the sites.

"A lot of them do what we call a personal test, and basically the mother doesn't have to know what they are doing. So they just basically get a collection kit and they basically take a sample from themselves and from their child and they just take that and do the testing. So nobody really has to know what they are doing. And a lot of the cases we get are like that," said the forensic analyst while noting that, "60-65 per cent of the cases were personal cases last year".

Within three to five working days a father can know whether he is legitimate or not.

Meanwhile, a supervisor for the Mico Lab, which is one of the collection sites for paternity testing, said far more men are now requesting paternity testing, prompting her to say that, "We are [now] doing this test as a routine test".

"I remember two years ago, very rarely would you have persons coming to the lab to do the test, but now, it's a lot. I think I can say everyday, we have done a test," said supervisor Onejda Baptiste.

She added: "Most times they (men) call and they find out if we do the test and we tell them what's the procedure to do the test and they come and do it. Because they don't need a request from the doctor, they just come and do it," she said.

But under no circumstances Baptiste said, do they ask these men the reason for the test. Even so, for those who share this information willingly, she said it's usually because they want to be sure of paternity, or because of a legal matter.

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