Rhon­dor Dowlat

In­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers have ob­tained an of­fi­cial state­ment from a 28-year-old moth­er of two who is al­leg­ing she was abused by a rel­a­tive for over a decade.

The state­ment was tak­en from her on Sun­day fol­low­ing an in­ter­view with head of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Snr Supt Jayson Forde. In­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers al­so were able to ob­tain med­ical records from the re­spec­tive health in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where she sought treat­ment af­ter sev­er­al at­tacks to add to their file.

The woman and her two chil­dren – ages sev­en and five – are now said to be un­der po­lice guard at an undis­closed lo­ca­tion af­ter the TTPS' in­ter­ven­tion. Po­lice sources said yes­ter­day an ar­rest was im­mi­nent.

Ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the woman post­ed on Face­book, re­cent pho­tographs she took of her­self show­ing blue black marks, cuts, bruis­es and a blood­shot eye that she sus­tained last week dur­ing an al­leged con­fronta­tion be­tween the two. The young woman is the wife of an au­to deal­er from Ch­agua­nas.

When the T&T Guardian went to the busi­ness place yes­ter­day, the busi­ness­man was not there and his em­ploy­ees said he could not be reached.

When told the T&T Guardian was en­quir­ing about the al­le­ga­tions of abuse sur­round­ing their boss, one of the work­ers said he (his boss) was cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing on dis­cus­sions with his at­tor­neys and there was noth­ing more to say on the is­sue.

When the T&T Guardian called the per­son­al cell num­ber be­long­ing to the busi­ness­man, a male voice an­swered and took a mes­sage and said he would have it de­liv­ered to him (the busi­ness­man) per­son­al­ly.

He al­so said he would ask him to re­turn the call but up to last night the busi­ness­man had not con­tact­ed the T&T Guardian.

Speak­ing out pub­licly for the first time on her al­leged ex­pe­ri­ence, the woman claimed she has been a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence for the last 12 years, hav­ing got mar­ried when she was 16 years old.

The most re­cent in­ci­dent oc­curred last Wednes­day (Ash Wednes­day) when she was al­leged­ly stabbed in the face and hand. She was treat­ed at the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

Al­so, on Wednes­day evening, her two chil­dren were al­leged­ly dropped off at the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion with­out food, wa­ter, clothes and mon­ey by a close male rel­a­tive.

The fol­low­ing day (Thurs­day), the woman said she had been bad­ly beat­en in front of a Char­lieville car deal­er­ship. On the busi­ness' Face­book page on Sat­ur­day, the woman ad­mit­ted she had tried to walk away count­less times but was al­ways forced to re­main be­cause of the al­leged threats.

The woman's post­ings were shared across the board by al­most all who read and viewed them on Face­book.

Thou­sands of com­ments were al­so made in sup­port of the woman and her chil­dren.

On Sun­day, the TTPS is­sued an of­fi­cial state­ment say­ing the woman will re­ceive coun­selling from the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit and the chil­dren will be re­ferred to the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit and the Chil­drens' Au­thor­i­ty.