Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While he says he and his moth­er are still trau­ma­tised af­ter a home in­va­sion at his Bel­mont home on Mon­day night, co-founder of the non-gov­ern­men­tal re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tion Cham­pi­ons of the Trans­fig­ured Christ (CTC) Kyle Dar­d­aine has cred­it­ed God for strength­en­ing their re­solve through the in­ci­dent.

Dar­d­aine, 46 and his 72-year-old moth­er Lin­da Dar­d­aine were at their Bel­mont Val­ley Road, home at around 10 pm when they were con­front­ed by two men wear­ing black masks.

The men forced their way in­to the house, where they tied the hands of both moth­er and son with tie straps, be­fore steal­ing iPhones, cell­phones, wal­lets, two Sam­sung tele­vi­sion sets and a white Mit­subishi Sportero.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at their home yes­ter­day, Dar­d­aine said he was still shak­en.

Re­call­ing the or­deal, Dar­d­aine said he felt that the ban­dits made a mis­take by tar­get­ing him as he lived sim­ply and did not have any large sums of cash or valu­ables that would be en­tic­ing for crim­i­nals.

“Even telling them (the ban­dits) that I am a re­li­gious broth­er, this is a re­li­gious house... we don’t have mon­ey. We don’t have a busi­ness, we run an NGO, a Catholic com­mu­ni­ty.

“Every­body in the com­mu­ni­ty knows that this house is af­fil­i­at­ed with the Church.

“There were a lot of ex­ple­tives where they were threat­en­ing to kill me and the gun was in my face and they start­ed to count down and that was when I had no choice to re­lent from hold­ing the gate.”

While in the house, Dar­d­aine said the ban­dits re­alised there were not that many valu­able items to steal, re­call­ing the sight of one of the ban­dits strug­gling to dis­mount one of the tele­vi­sions from the wall mount.

Through­out the or­deal, he said both he and his moth­er con­tin­ued to place their trust in God to de­liv­er them safe­ly from the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Once they tied us up on the ground and had us in the liv­ing room, I said, ‘Mom, let’s just pray the rosary,’ while they com­ing to me, they curs­ing, they put the gun to my head, we kept pray­ing the rosary aloud.

“If I had to say any­thing to any­body... I mean, pray­ing peo­ple get harmed too, look at our sit­u­a­tion, but what else can you do?

“You can try and se­cure your place as best as pos­si­ble, but what else is there to do?”

Re­spond­ing to re­cent re­marks from Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der that the Home In­va­sion Law was ef­fec­tive in treat­ing with crim­i­nals, Dar­d­aine dis­agreed, not­ing that the re­al­i­ty for many com­mu­ni­ties was much dif­fer­ent.

“I guess sto­ries like ours are an in­di­ca­tor, or it tells you that some­thing is not hap­pen­ing and some­thing isn’t work­ing.

“You may say to your­self that this thing may help, but some­thing is not work­ing ob­vi­ous­ly.”

A me­dia re­lease is­sued by the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain on Fri­day con­firmed that the Dar­d­aines were the vic­tims of a rob­bery and called on the Catholic com­mu­ni­ty to pray for them as they re­cov­ered from the in­ci­dent.

The Cham­pi­ons of the Trans­fig­ured Christ was found­ed in 2000 and is in­volved in youth and young adult min­istries, so­cial out­reach pro­grammes, while of­fer­ing re­treats, spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion and coun­selling.