WHEN Lavern Morgan sees children heading home from school she hopes she’ll see her daughter coming back home to her too.

It’s a painful hope because, sadly, it will never happen.

Her 14-year-old daughter, Raven Wilson, who lived with her in Top Hill, St Ann’s Bay, was reported missing on Friday, October 19, 2018. After a frantic community search the teenager’s body was found two days later, about 6:30 am, in a garbage bag with the throat slashed.

“I would be sitting on the veranda and see her coming home and a suck her finger. Now that school started back, it affect me even more because I am seeing the kids in their uniform and I can’t see her. I just hope and pray I will see her coming in her uniform,” Morgan told the Jamaica Observer in an interview, noting that her daughter had left at 6:30 am for school, and was expected to return about 2:00 pm after picking up her niece.

Speaking to the media for the first time since 2018, Morgan said that the images she has of her daughter’s body are still fresh.

“When I go to court me always a pass out and those things, but God will keep me up. I don’t know how I go through that. Some of the times it is like my body lock down — even up to now,” she said.

A team from the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) provided grief counselling to Raven’s relatives and residents of the community.

The grieving mother disclosed that at one point she contemplated suicide after being overcome by her daughter’s gruesome murder.

Raven was a third-form student at Ocho Rios High School, where counselling sessions for children affected by her death were conducted.

“If I didn’t have family and never have friends to care for me, honest to God, I wouldn’t deh here a talk right now. One of the times me did want fi take my life. Me did want fi take my life because it is like I just tell myself that it nuh make no sense me live — but it is friend and family,” she said.

In April this year Raven would’ve turned 18. Each birthday since her death has been painful for the family but Morgan pointed out that because her daughter would’ve become an adult this year, the pain is a lot more excruitating.

“I have a son; he is 26. Him big, so Raven was the baby and worse, she was sickly — but he takes it hard as well. You have a time when him just lock away. Him nuh come out. When it was her 18th birthday, oh my God! It affected me so much. A true people nuh know how me miss her. Me miss Raven so much. Just thinking about what happened to her, every time I ask, ‘God, what could’ve happened that morning?’ We live in a community weh we a nuh strangers; we are family and they really do something like that to her? Me just want the answer,” Morgan told the Sunday Observer.

“Me not telling no lie, it affect me bad. When it touches April when it is her birthday, it lick me; it lick me bad [to the point where] I go back in [to the state] where I was coming from. It affect me same way.”

Two days after Raven’s body was found, her schoolbag was located at a premises in the community. The following day the St Ann’s Bay police took three men into custody in relation to her murder.

According to the police, the men were held on Market Street, St Ann’s Bay, and were questioned by detectives. However, they were eventually released after it was determined that they were not involved.

In November 2018 two 15-year-old boys were charged in relation to Raven’s murder. One was charged with murder, and the other, accessory after the fact to murder. Police said Raven was with one of the boys on the day of her disappearance, and the other reportedly helped to throw away her belongings and then helped to dispose of her body.

Morgan went to court last Tuesday and, almost four years later, there was still no conclusion.

“It was put off again until October 17. And October is not a good month for me. It happened in that month and it is just going to open the wounds. When it come on to dem time deh it is just like me is a crazy woman. It affects everybody,” she related.

Her younger sister, Nadine, told the Sunday Observer that Morgan has no recollection of Raven’s funeral because she was not present.

“She never know nothing about the funeral. She blacked out completely. She has no memory of the funeral. We had to have her at a different place and a rub her down with alcohol and stuff like that,” she said.

Dr Beverley Scott, child and family therapist, told the Sunday Observer that because of that, Morgan hasn’t completed “grief work”.

“She’s traumatised and she has not found closure yet. She has distorted the grief because she did not get help to handle it, and a part of the distortion is denial, and that is why she is expecting her daughter to come back home. She has not accepted what has happened. She must do her grief work. At the top of the list of grief is the loss of a child. That is 100 per cent grief on the scale of grief,” Scott explained.

“She experienced the most extreme grief that anybody could experience — the loss of a child. She needed thorough grief counselling so that she could handle her grief work. She could develop mental problems, post-traumatic stress disorders, and anxiety problems as well. She would not have seen the child go down in the grave… she doesn’t know where the child is because she wasn’t at the funeral. Closure is very important.”

Meanwhile, Nadine, too, is still reeling from her niece’s death.

“I don’t even want to go back to that day. Only God can tell. Only God. The Friday when we hear that she didn’t come home from school and my sister call me and tell me, I called her friend and him seh him never see her. We all over the place; up and down. Up to Saturday morning we never sleep; we were on the road searching.

“I saw the news about a girl that died and tears came to my eyes. I felt it. I didn’t know that we were going to be in that position little after.”

Nadine added that she tries to comfort her sister, especially when Raven’s birthday comes around.

“For her birthday we always try to be around her so she doesn’t feel lonely or left out because Raven always deh around us. So we try to not leave her alone.”

Meanwhile, Morgan shared that her daughter’s death was particularly painful because she escaped death many times before, since she was just a little girl.

“You know when you have a little child who born sick and you cherish him so much? Raven go to death door and come back with the asthma. She go to death door so many times and survived, only for this to happen. That’s why I ask God what could have happened fi dem take her life. Only if I did know what would happen that Friday. Oh God Almighty. I cherish Raven. Me cherish Raven so much. Me cherish that little girl,” she said, the pain obvious in her voice.

“I had to rush with her to hospital many times. Oh God! Me do hairdressing and I even had to run leave people with cream in their hair and go to her. As them call me and tell me seh Raven sick, it nuh matter what I am doing, I have to run because I just tell myself that if I don’t reach, she a go dead. Nobody cyaa save her life; a me alone have to save her life,” she continued.

“Fi go foreign, I never leave her. Because me nuh wah deh a foreign and hear that Raven asthma take her and I am not here. Me never leave Raven! Every time yuh see me, yuh see Raven.”

Child advocate and founder of Hear the Children’s Cry, Betty-Ann Blaine called on the chief justice to speed up cases involving the murder of children so as to release the affected families from prolonged anguish.

“This case was a horrendous case in 2018. So it was public and, in the typical style, it becomes a nine-day wonder and we don’t hear anything about these cases after that. We don’t hear that these parents and family members are suffering. We assume that these cases are resolved in our courts but many of them are not. It takes years — and that is unacceptable,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“This is not unusual, but it’s quite concerning. I’m talking about how very slow it takes, many times, for the courts to move on these cases. I’m not sure our judiciary fully understands the kind of trauma, the kind of grief, or the kind of suffering that these families go through when these cases drag on and on without being resolved. It’s like an open wound,” Blaine said.

“I’m calling on the chief justice to look at these cases. We need the answers as to why some of these cases take so long. I suspect that it has to do with the investigative process and the kinds of evidence that is collected. But even so, why should it take so long? It’s been a perennial problem.”