Cindy Raghubar

A cler­i­cal court er­ror may have caused a 34-year-old moth­er of sev­en to lose cus­tody of two of her chil­dren.

Laven­tille res­i­dent Natasha De Sil­va is now seek­ing any le­gal aid she can get to as­sist her in re­gain­ing su­per­vi­sion of her chil­dren.

The sin­gle moth­er has al­ways tak­en care of broth­ers – Nathaniel and Tyrese, aged four and five – and was fight­ing for full cus­to­di­al rights at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate's Fam­i­ly Court.

But when she missed her last court date, due to an er­ror she claims was made by a court of­fi­cial, Mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet ruled in favour of the boys' fa­ther, De­clan Ash­ton.

She had end­ed her re­la­tion­ship with Ash­ton over three years ago and has been go­ing through the cus­tody bat­tle two years now. Her last court ap­pear­ance was on June 7 when the mat­ter was ad­journed to Au­gust 23.

But one week be­fore the court date, De Sil­va said she re­ceived a call from the court, a num­ber she is fa­mil­iar with hav­ing dealt with nu­mer­ous mat­ters at the in­sti­tu­tion, where an of­fi­cial said the mat­ter was post­poned to Oc­to­ber 27 for 10.45 am.

It wasn't un­til the day af­ter Au­gust 23, when the boys' fa­ther came with po­lice of­fi­cers to her home at Priz­gar Lands, Laven­tille, and took her sons from her care did she re­alise some­thing was wrong.

"I have re­strain­ing or­der against this man. It is a con­stant bat­tle with this man. It's hurt­ing me day and night and the mag­is­trate gave cus­tody of my chil­dren to this man," De Sil­va said.

She said the let­ter pro­vid­ed by po­lice re­vealed the rea­son for the in­ter­im or­der for le­gal cus­tody to the chil­dren's fa­ther was be­cause De Sil­va was ab­sent on Au­gust 23.

"In the court, by the sec­re­tary who does write down every­thing from the court, it have that I was locked up so he got le­gal cus­tody of Nathaniel and Tyrese," De Sil­va added.

At her neat­ly packed away rent­ed Og­a­ro Road home yes­ter­day, De Sil­va fin­gered through her call log point­ing out to the T&T Guardian when the call came in on Au­gust 15 at 11.40 am. Calls to the num­ber con­firmed it be­longed to the Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Brought to tears as she told her sto­ry, De Sil­va said it was hurt­ing her im­mense­ly to know her sons were go­ing through that.

"They are just ba­bies and they have every­thing they need here by me," she said.

De Sil­va, who works at a Barataria bak­ery, told the T&T Guardian she was ac­cus­tomed to re­ceiv­ing calls from clerks at the court and so did not sus­pect any­thing un­to­ward when she got the call telling of the change in the date.

"They call if there is a time change or if a mat­ter post­poned be­cause a mag­is­trate is not avail­able. So is a cus­tom­ary thing, so that's what make me know well right, that's the court num­ber yes, the mat­ter post­poned, so I didn't pay it any mind. Is the court num­ber but I didn't know this time was a fraud­u­lent call for me to lose my two kids," she said.

She said all she want­ed now was as­sis­tance to pur­sue le­gal chan­nels to get back her boys and then seek le­gal re­dress.

She added: "I not ly­ing to tell any­body, this is hurt­ing me, I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't func­tion prop­er­ly. It have me in a kind of state of de­pres­sion.

"And they telling me the mag­is­trate made her de­ci­sion and I have to wait till the mat­ter is called back on Sep­tem­ber 27."