PORT-OF-SPAIN – Tragedies relating to the death of two babies, and also of sexual molestation of a 10 year-old girl and her 12 year-old brother involving family members, were prominently covered in the local media here yesterday.

One 28 year-old mother, Monica Rochard, was on Thursday being charged with the murder of her 18 month-old baby boy, burnt to death in a house fire, while Camla Ramoutar, mother of five, was blaming a magistrate for the death of her six-week-old baby girl, Crystal Kimberly Ramdass.

For the raped and abused 10 year-old girl and 12 year-old brother, two men, aged 22 and 27, were scheduled to appear before a magistrate in Point Fortin yesterday on charges relating to the horrors suffered by their victims.

According to the police, the mother of the girl reported how she was raped and her son forced to perform oral sex acts with the two men now in custody. The offences reportedly occured over the past two months.

The young victims claimed that during that period their “uncle”, their mother’s brother, would molest the girl while her brother was made to engage in oral sex.

That particular “uncle”, yet to be named by the police, subsequently invited another family member to have sex with the girl while her brother was in the room of the family shack located in a forested area. A medical examination of the girl confirmed that she was assaulted.

For the burning to death of baby Jameel last Monday, his mom, Rochard, appeared before Chief Magistrate Sherman Nicholls and was charged with murder. She was not required to plea and told the magistrate that she had no attorney.

Baby Jameel’s father, Jude Bonaparte, was in court and said he still loved his wife and would not implicate her. The case has been fixed for December 5.

In the tragedy involving the death of baby Crystal, her mom, Ramoutar, was reported in yesterday’s Express as recalling how very much advanced in pregnancy she was at the time of her sentencing to prison some 11 years ago, along with her common-law husband, Koon Jan Ramdass, for marijuana trafficking and illegal possession of ammunition.

She secured bail on appeal of her conviction and worked to maintain her children and pay bills while her common-law husband remained in prison. Then came the victory she had always expected – the overturning of the conviction by the Court of Appeal.

But the trauma she suffered and her inability to secure timely medical assistance for her baby, born seven days after her release on TT$50,000 bail (TT$6=US$1), contributed, Ramoutar thinks, to a worsening of Crystal’s heart-related sickness.

The baby died six weeks after birth and Ramoutar blamed the presiding magistrate in the case for sending her to prison in spite of her plea of innocence and then-evident advanced state of pregnancy.

She, however, recalls with some satisfaction how she had a photograph taken of baby Crystal when she was just a few weeks-old to show her father when he came out of prison.

The baby died three months before the father was also freed from prison. Ramoutar said she still finds it difficult to “forgive that magistrate”.