Battered Woman - Impacts on Children

 

Mom accused of burning child called battered woman

By AZARD ALI Tuesday, October 23 2012

SHE is a battered woman who is forced to hold down two jobs to care for four children single-handedly and is in need of psychiatric evaluation.

So argued an attorney yesterday before a Princes Town magistrate, on behalf of Chrystal Bardouille, 28, who is charged with burning her five-year-old son, Miguel Gomes, with a hot eating fork. But Senior Magistrate Debra Quintyne said being depressed was no reason for Bardouille to not appreciate the wrong of burning a child. The magistrate, however, ordered the woman, of New Grant, Princes Town, to be sent for evaluation at the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital. Bardouille was arrested and charged under Section 3 (1) of the Children’s Act. The mother, who has three other children, ages six, seven and nine, has been in police custody since her arrest. Quintyne read the charge that on October 16, at Lengua Road, being in charge of a child under 18, the accused unnecessarily caused injury to the health of the child. Attorney Petronella Basdeo submitted to Quintyne that the Mental Health Act should be invoked so the court could send the mother for a psychiatric evaluation. Bardouille, she said, had been subjected to such physical and mental abuse by a man that in June she suffered a mental breakdown. Basdeo added the accused had been forced to do two jobs to take care of her children. She said, “My application is for the court to have her evaluated based on the fact that at the time of the alleged act, she had been under such mental depression that she could not have formed the mental capacity to know what she was doing to her child was wrong.”

Quintyne was, however, critical of Basdeo’s application, saying Bardouille went out to work after her “mental breakdown”.

The magistrate remanded Bardouille to the St Ann’s Hospital for evaluation. She is to return to court on November 5.

Source:  http://www.newsday.co.tt/crime_and_court/0,168153.html