Derek Achong

The moth­er of a sev­en-year-old girl who was pho­tographed with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing this year's Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions has sig­nalled her in­ten­tion to sue ra­dio talk show host Bar­ring­ton "Skip­py" Thomas over the al­leged­ly defam­a­to­ry posts he at­tached to the pho­to on so­cial me­dia. 

In a pre-ac­tion let­ter sent to Thomas on Tues­day, at­tor­ney Jen­nifer Farah-Tull, who is rep­re­sent­ing the woman who can­not be named to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of her daugh­ter, claimed Thomas' state­ments, made on his Face­book pro­file, were vac­u­ous, scan­dalous and mis­lead­ing. 

"(name with­held) states cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and em­phat­i­cal­ly that her daugh­ter does not flirt with adult men nor does she en­cour­age her to do so. She ve­he­ment­ly de­nies any and all al­le­ga­tions and/or in­nu­en­do of such be­hav­iour," Farah-Tull said. 

Farah-Tull claimed the post caused dis­tress and em­bar­rass­ment to the child and her moth­er, who op­er­ates a day­care cen­tre in her com­mu­ni­ty. 

"The na­ture of (name with­held)'s po­si­tion re­quires the high­est de­gree of trust and con­fi­dence in her abil­i­ty to car­ry out her du­ties when car­ing for chil­dren, which if hin­dered, will low­er her abil­i­ty to ad­e­quate­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly per­form and serve her clients and/or cus­tomers," she said. 

"Any at­tempt to blem­ish and de­fame her good name and rep­u­ta­tion puts her en­tire ca­reer in­to dis­re­pute and se­vere jeop­ardy," she added. 

In the let­ter, Farah-Tull said Thomas should have known that his post would have reached a large au­di­ence via so­cial me­dia and could have been re­port­ed in the tra­di­tion­al me­dia, as it even­tu­al­ly was. 

"You ought to have an­tic­i­pat­ed that there was a sig­nif­i­cant risk that what you said would be re­peat­ed giv­en the fact that you are a well-known pub­lic fig­ure as a po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist and ra­dio talk show host on Pow­er 102 FM and based on the fact that your post and the events that fol­lowed went vi­ral, con­sid­er­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go was made the sub­ject of your ridicule," she said. 

Farah-Hull al­so con­tend­ed that the pub­li­ca­tion was made with­out seek­ing per­mis­sion from the child's moth­er to use her im­age.  

"The right to one's im­age is an el­e­ment of the right to pri­va­cy and same was in­fringed by your reck­less ac­tions which have now left the child vul­ner­a­ble to sex­u­al groom­ing by sex­u­al preda­tors and pae­dophiles," she said. 

Farah-Tull sug­gest­ed that the dis­pute could be re­solved by Thomas if he agrees to is­sue a re­trac­tion and a pub­lic apol­o­gy, pay ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion and un­der­take to not re­peat the defama­tion. 

Thomas was giv­en un­til March 24 to re­spond be­fore the woman files the law­suit. 

The con­tentious pho­to­graph was tak­en on Car­ni­val Tues­day in Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra's 2020 pre­sen­ta­tion, Fleets In A Mid­dle East­ern Ad­ven­ture. Row­ley was a mas­quer­ad­er, while the woman and her child are mem­bers of the steel­band.

The woman and her daugh­ter are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai.