SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The 92-year-old woman res­cued by po­lice from what has been dubbed “A house of hor­ror” in El Do­ra­do has been pro­gress­ing well at a safe house.

This ac­cord­ing to the head of the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit of the TTPS, ASP Claire Guy-Al­leyne, who has been over­see­ing the woman’s case since she was res­cued.

“She is frag­ile so we have her go­ing through med­ical and psy­choso­cial treat­ment in the home,” Guy-Al­leyne said yes­ter­day.

She said the woman is yet to be in­ter­viewed by po­lice as they were al­low­ing her to be­come com­fort­able in her new en­vi­ron­ment.

The woman, who will not be iden­ti­fied, was tak­en by po­lice from her home which she shared with a male rel­a­tive on De­cem­ber 30, three days af­ter a neigh­bour found her ly­ing in the rain out­side her home sur­round­ed by piles of garbage and un­able to stand on her own.

The neigh­bour, La­toya Greaves, con­tact­ed an am­bu­lance but when first re­spon­ders ar­rived, the woman’s male rel­a­tive re­fused to give them per­mis­sion to take her for treat­ment.

Three days lat­er, the rel­a­tive re­moved the woman from a hos­pi­tal where she was re­ceiv­ing treat­ment and al­leged­ly dragged her back in­to the garbage-strewn house.

When she was told the woman was back in the house, Greaves jumped the con­crete fenc­ing, en­tered the house and made sev­er­al videos show­ing the amount of garbage and the poor liv­ing con­di­tion the woman was en­dur­ing. She post­ed those to so­cial me­dia, start­ing a cam­paign for the woman to be res­cued that end­ed lat­er that evening with the in­ter­ven­tion of the po­lice.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Greaves said she has vis­it­ed the woman sev­er­al times since then.

She said de­spite the woman’s age, she was able to re­call sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of her past which she shares with Greaves.

“She is do­ing very well in the safe house, she re­mem­bers a lot of her life, she is aware of what is go­ing around her…she seems to be very well tak­en care of, she is well-groomed, her hair is combed, her nails, new clothes, she is very hap­py,” Greaves said.

She said the male rel­a­tive has not been seen since po­lice res­cued the woman.

“He has moved out since the of­fi­cers took her from the house, he has not come back to the area or the house.”