Pregnant mother promised weekend freedom

Founder of the Eternal Light Community, Debra De Rosia, has been named as surety for pregnant mother of nine Kezi Doughty. Doughty was sentenced to five months in jail last month after after San Fernando magistrate Alicia Chankar convicted her for wilfully abandoning her children last year.  

Yesterday, High Court judge Maria Wilson named De Rosia as Doughty’s surety after lawyers Pennelope Beckles and Peter Taylor argued for a variation of Doughty’s $50,000 bail. She is expected to be released over the weekend or on Monday. Taylor, in a telephone interview yesterday, said upon Doughty’s release she would stay at one of Eternal Light Community’s homes for women.

“It will be a clean break for Ms Doughty and her family. Doughty had appealed her jail sentence and $3,000 fine. Chankar granted her $50,000 bail to be approved by the Clerk of the Peace. At yesterday’s hearing Wilson removed the approval and named De Rosia as surety for Doughty’s $50,000 bail.

Taylor said he was pleased that Doughty will be released and her twins, due in September, will not be born in prison. “It would have been a most unfortunate thing if, on the 50th anniversary of Independence, that those two unborn children would have to live with that stigma that they were born in prison,” he said.