THE road to justice is beginning to feel like a long, heart-wrenching one for a St Mary family.

And now, that anxious and eager wait for one man to pay for what he has done stretches into the new year, at least.

Two brothers, ages six and 12, were among seven victims of Sheridan Shepherd, also of a St Mary address, who was charged on June 17, 2021 with buggering seven minors. Shepherd was charged with six counts of buggery, five counts of indecent assault, and one count of grievous sexual assault.

On July 20, 2022, more than a year later, Shepherd pleaded guilty to all the charges laid against him and was supposed to be sentenced the following week on Wednesday, July 27. However, that date has been pushed back multiple times.

The most recent, Thursday, December 15, was postponed until January 2023 – still leaving a deeply hurt family without a conclusion. The boys are now seven and 13 years old.

On December 1 when the Jamaica Observer contacted the mother, she said, “It’s taking forever but I waited for this so long, so I can wait some more.”

It was a totally different response on December 16.

“I felt a little disappointed at first but then I looked at it and said from him a go get sentenced, him a go get it. I said I can hold on and wait until the next date to come and for the sentence to be handed down, but when they set a next date and that date comes and then they put it off, and then they go back again and make a next date just to put it off again until next year, this is going on for too long,” the boys’ frustrated mother told the Sunday Observer.

The day he pleaded guilty the woman said she held her belly and shook her head as an inexplicable anger rushed through her body in the St Mary Parish Court.

It was difficult, she said, noting that the final battle is Shepherd’s sentencing, which has proved to be a drag.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how fi explain mi feelings at this point. Too much of this now. Too much put off and push back. I just want this fi done and be over with right now,” she lamented.

On Thursday the mother travelled from St Mary to the Supreme Court on King Street, downtown Kingston, along with some parents of the other abused children. She spent $1,400 on public transportation alone.

“Mi tired. Mi a leave from St Mary to Kingston and a pay how much fare and then when I go, it is disappointment,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“Plus, I leave out quite early and didn’t get the chance to prepare anything so I have to get something on the road to eat and come back. It’s getting to me now. It is the same sentiment across all the parents.

According to reports, a young girl in the same community made a report to her grandmother about Shepherd in June, 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.

Betty Ann Blaine, founder of advocacy group Hear the Children’s Cry, has expressed disappointment at the scant regard towards families waiting for justice. Blaine told the Sunday Observer that far too often families are re-traumatised by elongated court proceedings.

“This would not be the first case. There are many others like that — these kinds of stories that we’ve been hearing over a long period where families that have undergone those kinds of tragedies and trauma are re-traumatised by the delays in our courts. Nobody takes into consideration the cost that some of these families have to bear, particularly if they are travelling from rural Jamaica to Kingston to attend court.”

Blaine said moving beyond the broad family, the actual children who were targeted and abused are old enough to understand the situation, and said the delays can only serve to mentally frustrate them.

“It’s not just closure for the adults [as] children are very, very smart. One is seven and one is 13. These are children old enough to understand what is going on, and when we talk about bringing some kind of closure to these kinds of cases that can be so traumatic, we must also take into consideration the feelings of children,” she argued.

“They are not stupid. They know. They too will be affected when they see that the person who violated them in that way has not been sentenced. What about the children?”

Meanwhile, the boys’ mother told the Sunday Observer that for her, the constant delays have somewhat planted seeds of doubt in her mindas it relates to a “fair” sentence.

“It has come across my mind many times because I know the justice system; I know how it is. What you expect is not what you get but I leave my vengeance to God. They are just doing their part and God will do the rest so whatever they give him, I have no control over it so I have to work with it and let God does whatever He will do,” she said.

Blaine added that it is time for a “big call out” letter to be written to Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, “…to say, ‘Sir, we need your help.’ It can’t be that families experience this kind of thing and then there are delays and they have to find the resources to travel to court. It is clear, certainly to me, that we need to get a response from the chief justice of Jamaica. Clearly something has to be done.

“We hear these cases over and over again and we want to call for his intervention. He needs to tell us how this kind of situation can be improved upon.”