The word “guilty” made one mother relive the horrible moment when she learned that her two sons were molested.

She held her belly and shook her head as an inexplicable anger rushed though her body in the St Mary Parish Court last Wednesday, when Sheridan Shepherd, the man who was charged with buggering seven minors including her seven and 13-year-old sons pleaded guilty to the charges laid against him.

Shepherd was charged with six counts of buggery, five counts of indecent assault, and one count of grievous sexual assault on June 17, 2021. He stood in court and admitted guilt to all the charges, and is to be sentenced on Wednesday.

The mother told the Jamaica Observer that she has waited for this moment for over a year, but when the moment finally came, it was just too much to handle.

“When we went to court, it was the last case that was called up. When the clerk of the court was reading out the charges, he pleaded guilty to every charge… all of them. The court turned upside down. When he pleaded guilty, it just brought me back to the night when me find out about the whole situation,” she said.

“After all of that, we got emotional. Three parents were there and we just break down. If it was up to me alone, he would have to stay in prison for the rest of his life,” she continued in a cheerless tone.

According to reports, a young girl in the same community as the woman and her sons made a report to her grandmother about Shepherd in June of last year, which was followed by similar reports from the six other children. Immediately after, Shepherd was held and severely beaten by irate residents before police intervened.

When the Sunday Observer spoke to the 13-year-old boy last year July, he shared that he was having therapy sessions and expressed his dislike for them. However, he was very optimistic.

“God is working,” he said.

This year, after hearing that his abuser pleaded guilty, he smiled.

His father, who was wounded at the time, said he considered Shepherd a “good friend’ whom he also said “is a yute weh mi look out for enuh. Any likkle thing mi give him.”

But following Shepherd’s guilty plea, he said, “Yes man, him know seh him guilty suh him affi plead guilty. A dat him fi get. The pickney dem nah tell no lie pon him.”

The man said his younger son was the one who detailed to him what had happened.

“Him tell me exactly what happened. Me and him kinda closer,” he told the Sunday Observer.

The mother, however, who was at court, said though it was a good moment, it induced a flood of emotions between herself and some parents of the other abused children.

“When they called the first child’s name, it hit me but I was listening out to hear my children’s name. So, when I heard my children’s names being called, I can’t even tell you the feelings I had. Me hold me belly. I had to hold my belly and shake my head. It just brought back all dark feelings inside of me. I just felt angry,” she told the Sunday Observer.

When she went home and told her older son, he didn’t have many words as is customary.

“I told my big son and he just smiled. He is not really talkative just like his dad, so he just smiled. I don’t really talk about him [Shepherd] around them like that because I want to get it out of their mind. Only if I go court and something occur and I find it fit to say to them,” she added.

Now, the woman looks forward to Shepherd’s sentencing this week for the ultimate relief.

“They told us that if we don’t wish to be there when he’s getting the sentence then we don’t have to but if we want to we can come. I want to be there. I was there from the beginning and this is the end of it so I want to be there. Him pleading guilty, that’s not justice served for me. When I hear the sentence, I will say justice has been served,” she said.

Going to court time and time again, she said, was exhausting but necessary.

“Believe me, sometimes me get up and me say to my sister, ‘Me nuh really wah go. Me tired fi see this boy.’ I’m just tired to see him. The last court day, they way how I was physically tired, I had to stretch out on one of the court benches. And I said to myself, look how this boy make me deh a courthouse a lay dung pon bench,” she recalled.

“Sleep a kill me. Some days I get up and I just don’t want to go. Now, I kinda had it out of my mind because we got a long break from him in terms of not having any court dates. And then when the time for the return of the court dates came up again, I just started to get frustrated because I just want it to be over. I am spending money that I don’t have but I have to be there just because of my children.”

She noted that her main concern was that he would’ve got off scot free after abusing her sons.

“I am not only speaking for my children protection; I am speaking for other children too. If he got off of these charges, he will go to other places and go do the same thing again. If it was spoken about by the little girl, him woulda still out here a molest other children.”

And the woman added that she believes other children from the community were victims.

“In my observation around the area that we live, my feeling is that other kids were molested too, but they are afraid to come forward and talk about it. He was around a lot of children… a whole heap of children. Children used to ride come pon bicycle down a him house… a whole lot of them,” she said.