Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Fa­thers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T is call­ing for ur­gent leg­isla­tive re­form af­ter da­ta col­lect­ed be­tween 2020 and 2025 re­port­ed­ly re­vealed that one in every three men test­ed was not the bi­o­log­i­cal fa­ther of the child they be­lieved to be theirs.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, the As­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent, Rhon­dall Fee­les, de­scribed the fig­ures as “alarm­ing” and said they point to a grow­ing so­cial cri­sis.

“Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2020 and Sep­tem­ber 2025, 440 tests were con­duct­ed on men who were told they were the bi­o­log­i­cal fa­thers of their chil­dren,” Fee­les re­vealed. “Out of those, 143 men—about 33 per cent—were proven not to be the bi­o­log­i­cal fa­thers. That means one in every three men test­ed was not the fa­ther of the child they were rais­ing.”

Fee­les said the da­ta was com­piled in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a ju­di­cia­ry-cer­ti­fied DNA di­ag­nos­tic lab­o­ra­to­ry. How­ev­er, he not­ed that the find­ings high­light se­ri­ous gaps in the le­gal sys­tem that leave men vul­ner­a­ble to what he de­scribed as “pa­ter­ni­ty fraud”.

“I ex­pect­ed one out of ten, pos­si­bly even one out of sev­en,” Fee­les said. “But to see one out of three means we have a crit­i­cal prob­lem in Trinidad and To­ba­go. That’s not just 143 men—those are 143 chil­dren, 143 fam­i­lies whose lives have been shat­tered.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion is urg­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy­mak­ers to re­vis­it the rec­om­men­da­tions of the 2018 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC), which ex­am­ined the per­ceived in­equal­i­ty faced by fa­thers. That re­port had called for manda­to­ry DNA test­ing be­fore main­te­nance or­ders are grant­ed by the Fam­i­ly Court.

Fee­les said the sit­u­a­tion has tak­en a heavy emo­tion­al toll on many men who dis­cov­ered they were not the bi­o­log­i­cal fa­thers of the chil­dren they raised.

“I saw the pain. I saw the dev­as­ta­tion,” he said. “These men walked out bro­ken. They don’t care about the main­te­nance mon­ey. What they care about is the loss of trust—the daugh­ter they held, the son they raised, the bond they be­lieved was re­al.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so high­light­ed cas­es in which men were al­most jailed for fail­ing to pay child main­te­nance, even af­ter DNA re­sults proved they were not the bi­o­log­i­cal fa­thers.

“Imag­ine be­ing sent to jail for a child that is not bi­o­log­i­cal­ly yours,” Fee­les said. “That is the re­al­i­ty men in this coun­try face be­cause the law pre­sumes fa­ther­hood with­out con­fir­ma­tion.”

Un­der cur­rent law, pa­ter­ni­ty is pre­sumed if a man is mar­ried to the child’s moth­er or signs the birth cer­tifi­cate. “For moth­ers, ma­ter­ni­ty is con­firmed through birth,” Fee­les said. “For men, it’s pre­sump­tive. There’s no DNA con­fir­ma­tion, no guar­an­tee.”

Fee­les said the as­so­ci­a­tion has shared its find­ings with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and the Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, urg­ing both of­fices to act swift­ly.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has said he’s ap­palled by the sta­tis­tics and has agreed to meet with us,” Fee­les not­ed.

“We will be dis­cussing laws to ad­dress pa­ter­ni­ty fraud and to make DNA test­ing manda­to­ry be­fore any child main­te­nance or­der is is­sued.”

He al­so called on the Chief Jus­tice to is­sue a prac­tice or­der re­quir­ing DNA con­fir­ma­tion be­fore main­te­nance de­ci­sions are made.

“We need to en­sure that no man is im­pris­oned or fi­nan­cial­ly bur­dened for a child that is not his,” Fee­les stressed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it has reached out to lo­cal uni­ver­si­ties and men­tal health agen­cies to study the psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects of pa­ter­ni­ty fraud and to de­vel­op coun­selling ser­vices for af­fect­ed men and chil­dren.

“This is Men’s Men­tal Health Month,” Fee­les added. “We’re us­ing this op­por­tu­ni­ty to high­light the emo­tion­al im­pact, the heart­break, and the need for prop­er sup­port sys­tems. This is not just a le­gal is­sue; it’s a hu­man one.”

Sup­port­ing the call, ther­a­pist Wen­dell De Leon said the is­sue is silent­ly de­stroy­ing fam­i­lies across Trinidad and To­ba­go and con­tribut­ing to a grow­ing men­tal health cri­sis among men.

Ac­cord­ing to De Leon, the re­duced cost of DNA test­ing has made such rev­e­la­tions more fre­quent, lead­ing to a “groundswell” of lo­cal pa­ter­ni­ty dis­putes. “This is not about at­tack­ing women,” De Leon clar­i­fied. “It’s about pro­tect­ing fam­i­lies. Be­cause when a man dis­ap­pears from a child’s life af­ter find­ing out he was de­ceived, that child wakes up one day and won­ders, ‘Where is Dad­dy?’ That aban­don­ment takes years of ther­a­py to heal.”

Pas­tor and coun­sel­lor Dr Clive Dot­tin al­so at­tend­ed the press con­fer­ence.

Ef­forts to reach the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for of­fi­cial com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful, as calls and mes­sages to his phone went unan­swered.