‘Jacket’ blowback
Local clinics warn mandatory paternity testing could lead to violence
SEVERAL local paternity testing clinics say Jamaica is not ready for mandatory DNA testing at birth, as such a move could increase gender-based violence and illegal abortions.
The caution is even more palpable, given the experience of one operator of a paternity test clinic who shared that he has had clients who, fearing for their well-being, request factitious test results.
According to Gavin Oliver, managing director of Who’s the Daddy, a Mountain View based clinic with multiple locations, the situation leans more toward paternity misallocation, where women are unsure which of their partners is the father, rather than outright paternity fraud wherein they intentionally list the wrong man as the dad.
“In my experience, a lot of women don’t know, [but] we do get cases of deliberate fraud; women will call up and say, ‘Look, I’m going out with a very dangerous guy and he’s going to shoot me if he’s requested a DNA test, and I know he’s not the father. Can you give us a false DNA test?’” Oliver emphasised that these requests to falsify a paternity test is never done.
The concern was shared by 876 DNA Test Chief Executive Officer Terron Dewar.
“Jamaica has not demonstrated maturity in dealing with conflict; [the country] is not yet ready for mandatory DNA testing. Given the high adverse results that we’re seeing in Jamaica it can quickly lead to violence,” Dewar said.
He suggested that DNA paternity and relationship testing should be paired with the appropriate counselling and mediation support.
A 2023 study conducted by researchers at Northern Caribbean University (NCU), and published in the
International Journal of Current Research in Education, Culture and Society, interviewed just over 1,000 men about paternity fraud. It found that 4.8 per cent (51) of respondents stated that if they were victims of paternity fraud — in colloquial terms given a jacket, the name assigned to children who are subject to paternal discrepancy — they would abuse the mother [verbally or physically].
The clinic operators stressed that the women involved should be given some level of grace.
“Based on feedback from [most of] the mothers, they genuinely don’t know. It’s not them covering up for themselves, those inferences are supported by additional [test] requests,” Dewar maintained.
The prevalence of paternity fraud in the country has been highlighted in the past. The operators of the testing facilities with whom the Sunday Observer spoke explained that a high percentage of men presenting themselves for testing are not the father, with up to 70 per cent of them getting adverse results at some clinics.
Last year, 876 DNA Test compiled data and released a booklet of statistics for 2024 showing a 47 per cent rate of adverse results, meaning almost half of the men who had doubts and got tested were correct in their suspicions.
According to CEO Dewar, the company partners with doctors and other health care providers across the country to collect samples for testing. It has 64 locations across all 14 parishes in the country.
He insisted that the purpose of the data is not to sensationalise the issue.
“What we want to do is bring credibility to the space, and the credibility that we bring is our ability to report deep and credible data because of our distribution,” Dewar told the Sunday Observer.
Statistics from other facilities are even higher.
“We’re looking at 70 per cent of people who are being tested [receiving adverse findings]. The numbers that we’re using are coming from, for example, embassies. When we check our own figures, they’re actually something very similar,” said Oliver.
Director at Polygenics Consulting Olivia McKnight had a similar experience.
She told the Sunday Observer that at the 8 Melmac Avenue facility statistics showed a near 70 per cent instance of paternity discrepancy, but cautioned that the data was representative of a specific subset of people in the country.
“When we look at the stats coming out of our office, seven out of 10 people are not the father, but this is not a representation of the general population, because these are people who have doubts,” McKnight said.
When the Sunday Observer asked how many people made up that subset, McKnight said: “It would be hard to say, but we do have a lot of persons who reach out and do the service. It’s something that’s generally on people’s lists. Everybody knows somebody who this has happened to, or probably it’s them themselves.”
Dewar is convinced that the issue is cause for concern.
“It is our informed position [that] we have an identity crisis in the country,” he said.
Expressing similar sentiments, Member of Parliament for St James Central Heroy Clarke had vowed in 2021 to table a Bill in the House making testing mandatory at birth.
However, statistics showing high instances of jackets is exactly why the people running testing facilities do not think the country is ready for any State-mandated testing.
Oliver believes the issue is multifaceted.
“I’m seeing a positive; people will know who their father is — that’s a positive. But what are the negatives? — the violence, and a huge rise in illegal abortions, because if you’re pregnant and you don’t know who the father is, and you know it’s going to be revealed when the baby is born, you don’t want to run that risk,” he maintained.
McKnight, though, argued that, “Women should not be demonised for wanting to know for sure, because a lot of them feel guilt that they don’t know for sure who the child’s father is.”
The NCU study also found that 4.9 per cent (52 men) of respondents stated they would commit homicide or suicide, while the majority (900 or 84.3 per cent) believed paternity fraud is wrong.
“Knowing that a child that you care for 18 years isn’t yours, or even for two years, it’s heartbreaking. So if they need support, we try to provide that kind of support,” McKnight said, admitting that Polygenics has dealt with cases of suicidal men and has had to escalate the issue to mental health professionals.
The effect on the child was also explored by McKnight.
“The child [getting] a result out of the blue that this man is not their father, that can affect their mentality — can have so many impacts psychologically, financially, and then the real father not knowing the child, it’s going to be hard to establish that relationship,” she said.
All the clinics who spoke to the Sunday Observer indicated that counsellors were on hand to help families work through issues that arise with DNA testing.
It’s not only a mental toll that paternity misallocation or fraud can take on families, there are medical concerns as well, explained Compton Beecher, chief analyst at Caribbean Genetics lab at The University of the West Indies.
“Once we verify that there was an exclusion, there must have been another party,” he said.
“Paternity is one thing, but then you are now having multiple partners, you are now exposing those partners to STDs (sexually transmitted diseases)… and this is now unknown to the other party, that party might have another partner and that’s how the whole thing just spreads,” Beecher said.
He acknowledged, though, that there are other social issues contributing to the levels of STDs in the country.
Other genetic and medical issues can also arise, he explained.
“In the past [this] is how some people used to find out that they’re not the father. You’d have to do blood grouping to know if you can give blood in the event of your child being sick and that’s how a lot of fathers actually [discovered], because based on the grouping it could not be a possibility that [they] were related to this child,” he said.
Meanwhile, McKnight suggested that testing could be done prior to birth. At the same time, Dewar pointed out that while the average testing age is around eight years old, babies only hours old are routinely tested.
Despite their caution on widespread mandatory testing, the clinics are encouraging people who feel the need to confirm paternity to get the tests done while their children are young.
A paternity test kit is seen at Polygenics Consulting. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)
Two employees of Polygenics Consulting give an example of the buccal swab aspect of a paternity test. Photo: Naphtali Junior
An employee of Polygenics Consulting displays a model form of a paternity test.