A mother whose child was kidnapped just over five years ago says she can never forgive the woman convicted of the crime. However, she wants to know what motivated the heinous act.

“I just want for one thing to happen, just to ask her why she stole my baby, knowing that she lost a baby herself. I will never forgive her, neither will I forget the pain I went through for four months,” 22-year-old Aaliah Wray said in a victim impact statement ahead of Anniesha Ramsay’s sentencing in the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston on Thursday.

Ramsay, who had pleaded guilty to child stealing in December last year, had been found with the baby boy, Nyyear Frank, four months after the abduction in a Kingston community, following investigations.

She was, on Thursday, handed a two-year suspended sentence by Supreme Court judge Justice Leighton Pusey, with a stern warning to avoid running afoul of the law within that period as she would not only be made to serve the two years behind bars but also the time for the new crime.

The baby had been cruelly snatched from his mother while she was walking with him along Rousseau Road in St Andrew on October 13, 2019. It was reported that three men pulled the mother and child into a motor car and, According to Wray, they “kicked” her from the vehicle after wrestling the child from her.

The mother of the now five-year-old Nyyear, in the statement read into the records of the court on Thursday afternoon, recalled finding her son four months after the abduction.

“I was very happy to be reunited with my child but I was unhappy with the living conditions, and he was very slim. Since the day he was taken from me it put me into a state of depression, even now. I cried several nights, lost sleep, lost weight, and even though he is with me now I am still traumatised because I am afraid to take him on the road, thinking that the same thing will happen again,” she said.

According to Wray, she no longer takes taxis because of flashbacks about the incident in which she was kicked from the vehicle when her baby was stolen.

“I don’t trust anyone, apart from my family, with my baby. He is going to school now and I make sure the school is just three minutes away from where I live. I do random checks and make calls to the school. At times when I am walking on the road and I see other mothers with their babies and they are on their phones, I walk up to them and tell them to be careful on the road,” she said in the statement.

Wray said when individuals, from time to time, approach her when she is on the road or at work saying, “Nuh your baby dem did tief?” it causes her to “break down and cry”.

Noting that she was only counselled once, Wray said she is “still going through” and has learnt to “deal with it on my own”.

As for her son, she said, “I am overly protective of my child. I told him not to take anything from strangers, and not to get into any car or have anyone tell him mommy send for him. I don’t know how or when I am going to tell my baby boy what happened to him…I am still nervous about that. This matter impacted me a lot where I have learnt not to trust anyone.”

On Thursday, Justice Pusey, in stating that he was uncertain whether he had got the sentence perfectly correct, said, “sentencing is not an exact science, it is not something we can put numbers in and run a programme and come out with the perfect sentence, and so that is one of the things that is troublesome in this matter”.

Justice Pusey, in pointing to Ramsay’s admission that after having lost a pregnancy she was in “a dark place”, said “the caution statement shows her as naïve, vulnerable, but also unfortunately willing to go through back channels to get a child to replace the one that she lost. In relation to this matter, I certainly am not sure that I have gotten this sentence perfectly correct.

“The first question in matters like these is whether it is a custodial or non-custodial sentence. There are some cases where it is almost automatic that the sentence is custodial, and a non-custodial sentence might be an exception. There are other cases in other circumstances where the sentence is almost always non-custodial, and a custodial sentence would be rare. This case falls right in the middle in terms of determining whether it should be custodial or non-custodial,” the experienced jurist said.

Justice Pusey said arguments for a custodial sentence contemplate the level of the trauma experienced by the child who was taken and his mother, and “the maybe prevalence or notoriety of these cases”.

“We have heard about these cases much too often in the press. I say ‘maybe prevalence’ because I do not have any statistics or indication as to whether the cases have increased. It may be that matters are being more often reported, I don’t know, but I think most persons in society will agree that it seems as if we hear about these cases more and more.”

He said another factor leaning towards a custodial sentence “would be the need for deterrence”.

“This is something which is so serious that the society must indicate through the courts that this sort of thing is not something which is being encouraged and that the court will act,” he said.

However, in coming down on the side of a non-custodial sentence Justice Pusey said, “In this case, there is no evidence that the accused was part of the initial taking away of the child; she was not the person in the car or seemed to have been involved in that activity at that stage. Another factor is the age of the accused — at the time she was 21 years old and the law says we need to treat young offenders in a particular way, and also she has a very good social enquiry report.

“These factors are important because we have to have a balancing act in these matters. Most of the persons who are involved in this particular crime, or many of them, do so out of serious hurt and pain. The court has sympathy with the accused person, she indicated her own trauma and her own painful circumstance, but the court has to balance this with the pain, and trauma, and the circumstances of the complainant,” he said further.

Justice Pusey said in arriving at his decision he also “took into consideration the fact that the accused spent about four months in custody”.

“This offence has a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment. I am of the view that the appropriate sentence in this matter, when I consider all the circumstances, is a sentence of two years, and I am going to suspend that sentence for two years. What Miss Ramsay will have to understand is that a suspended sentence means that if she reoffends in any way, she will go to prison for the new crime, plus she will spend the two years for this crime,” he said.

Adding that he was of the view that the suspended sentence with supervision will put Ramsay “in the best possible position”, Justice Pusey said, “both the mother and the child who went through these circumstances, we celebrate her for her consistency in this matter and her determination to do everything possible to get her child back — like most Jamaicans mothers would do. I know sentences don’t usually satisfy those persons wronged but I feel like the sentence in this matter is appropriate”.

Wray, who sat virtually still for the duration of the sitting, upon hearing the decision seemed to melt, using her palms to wipe away the tears that streamed down her face. Moments later, shaking her head from side to side, she used her T-shirt to wipe her wet face before giving way to silent sobs.