If the jacket fits, punish her!
THERE are two losers in the game when a woman commits paternity fraud — the man who was incorrectly named as father, and the child who may have bonded with him. This deception is sometimes a calculated plan — perpetrated by women who have multiple partners and who may choose the partner with the best economic standing to father their children; or mothers who have multiple partners and truly do not know who the real fathers are.
The issue of Jamaican women committing this fraud is certainly not new — so ingrained is it in our culture that we have even coined out own term for it — jacket. For years men have brought up jackets, and the truth is often not revealed until a DNA test is required, often in immigration cases. At this stage, the men are hit with the painful reality that the children they have nurtured belong to other men.
There is even a law against it — Section 19b(a) of the Registration (Births and Deaths) Act states that any person who wilfully gives to the registrar any information which that person knows to be false shall be guilty of an offence and liable upon conviction to a fine not exceeding $250,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months. But what do men think? We asked, what do you think should be the punishment, if any, for women who knowingly give jackets?
Paul:
If the man doesn’t want the child or anything to do with the child and the mother, she should be made to refund any monies he had spent on her because of the pregnancy, and he should be able to sue her for deception and fraud.
Morris:
Five years imprisonment. Per child.
William:
I believe those women should refund at least 50 per cent of the money spent by the men on the children. The court should make that happen. I’m only sorry for the children who are old enough to find out, when they’ve already bonded with these men who they thought were their biological fathers.
Mark:
I would want back all the money I spent, even if she has to work for the rest of her life to pay me back.
Kirk:
I would leave if the child is a baby, but if the child is 10 years or older, it would be hard to leave so I would just continue being the child’s father, and forget about having any kind of relationship with the lying mother. I couldn’t ask for her to be punished though, because that would only hurt the child.
Jaime:
The child should be taken from her!
Matthew:
Life imprisonment! To give a man jacket and ask the man to take up a responsibility that is for another person, that’s criminal. To ask a committed man to take care of what you went outside and created in such a manner is really rough. I have no problem with taking care of a child that is not mine biologically, but make me know nuh man, so I can decide.
Marlon:
That punishment is not available out here. It’s the same for men with outside families — just neuter them both.
David:
Tell the child the truth and give the child to the right father — forget about the mother.
