SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

When Ja­son Park­er (not his re­al name) was repa­tri­at­ed from ISIS-con­trolled Syr­ia at the age of one with his moth­er, he had no birth cer­tifi­cate or doc­u­men­ta­tion to val­i­date his iden­ti­ty. His moth­er, Tri­cia Pe­ters, kept her son at home for sev­en years be­cause she could not get him in­to a school. On her own, as his fa­ther was killed in Syr­ia, she did her best to home-school Ja­son who was deemed state­less.

In 2023, Ja­son was grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship by the T&T Gov­ern­ment, and Pe­ters was able to en­rol her nine-year-old son in a school along the east-west Cor­ri­dor. Pro­vid­ing Ja­son with an ed­u­ca­tion was all Pe­ters had wished for. But this turned out to be her biggest night­mare.

Twice last month, Ja­son, a Stan­dard One pupil, was sus­pend­ed for 12 days for a string of bad be­hav­iour. The mis­con­duct ranged from fight­ing, telling chil­dren he would send them to meet their God in Heav­en, break­ing class­es, and us­ing ob­scene lan­guage to­wards his peers.

Pe­ters con­sid­ered re­mov­ing her son from the school dur­ing the sus­pen­sion, but she changed her mind when she un­der­stood the boy need­ed to in­ter­act with chil­dren his age. Two days af­ter re­turn­ing to school, Pe­ters said she heard fresh com­plaints that Ja­son had uri­nat­ed on the school’s com­pound and writ­ten ob­scen­i­ties on a piece of pa­per, which he hand­ed to one of his class­mates to give to his teacher.

When Pe­ters learned that her son’s at­ti­tude had been de­te­ri­o­rat­ing, she be­came fu­ri­ous. The school has been telling Pe­ters that Ja­son is not set­tling in class and needs to im­prove his be­hav­iour. She feels Ja­son has been mis­be­hav­ing be­cause some­thing is dis­turb­ing him, and she is un­able to iden­ti­fy the source of his dis­com­fort.

De­spite her des­per­ate pleas for help from the au­thor­i­ties, Pe­ters said she was not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. “I have not been able to reach my son. Some­one needs to get in­side his brain to find out what is trig­ger­ing his ag­gres­sion,” she lament­ed.

Grow­ing up in a com­mu­ni­ty stig­ma­tised by gang and gun vi­o­lence, Pe­ters said there are chil­dren her son’s age who are hold­ing guns and deal­ing drugs. “And what is his fu­ture? And then they go blame the par­ent. We see­ing where it hav­ing crime. I don’t want my child to fall vic­tim to be­ing a mur­der­er. I want a bet­ter life for my son. I want my son to get a fair chance in life even though all of his rights were tak­en away by the State.”

Out of a class of 12 stu­dents, Ja­son placed fourth in last term’s ex­ams.

Job­less and state­less af­ter re­turn­ing from Syr­ia

In 2015, Pe­ters left Trinidad with her com­mon-law hus­band, who claimed he was go­ing to Turkey to play pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball. “I was preg­nant with my son when I mi­grat­ed,” she re­called. The cou­ple end­ed up in war-torn Syr­ia, where Ja­son’s fa­ther joined the ter­ror­ist group ISIS and lat­er lost his life in the con­flict zone. Ja­son, who was born in the Mid­dle East, be­came fa­ther­less. Moth­er and son were repa­tri­at­ed in 2017.

En­ter­ing T&T, Pe­ters was faced with many ob­sta­cles, as she could not ac­cess so­cial wel­fare, health care ser­vices, or ed­u­ca­tion for her son be­cause he nev­er ob­tained a birth cer­tifi­cate. Ja­son was deemed state­less.

To this day, Pe­ters can­not get a job de­spite knock­ing on sev­er­al doors. For sev­er­al years, Pe­ters, a sin­gle par­ent, had to home-school her son at their Mal­oney home un­til he was grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship by the State.

“They are not say­ing why they are blank­ing every­thing.” In the first few weeks of school, Pe­ters said Ja­son kept com­plain­ing of be­ing bul­lied. She al­so re­ceived re­ports that Ja­son was fight­ing in school, dis­tract­ing pupils, play­ing with toys in class, and hid­ing in the toi­let dur­ing school hours. “It’s the same com­plaints over and over.” Pe­ters said pupils in the school would eat Ja­son’s snacks, and on one oc­ca­sion he was stabbed in his hand.

“I kept telling him don’t hit back, go to miss.” Then there was a fight among the chil­dren at the Mal­oney Com­mu­ni­ty Swim­ming Pool, and her son was fin­gered as the trou­ble­mak­er. “I know it takes two to fight, but my son was sin­gled out.” Pe­ters ad­mit­ted to beat­ing Ja­son a few times to keep him in line, but she re­alised her method of dis­ci­pline was not work­ing. “It made no sense.” As a re­sult, Pe­ters kept Ja­son away from school for two months. “And then I re­alised he needs to in­ter­act with his peers, so I put him back in.”

This time, when Ja­son re­turned to school, Pe­ters said her son re­fused to take any lash from his class­mates. “So every time he goes to school and some­body hits him, he would fight back. I know he’s mis­er­able; I know he’s mis­chie­vous. I know he does wrong things,” Pe­ters said, plead­ing for some sort of pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­ven­tion as she can­not do it by her­self.

How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion took a turn for the worse when Ja­son was sus­pend­ed for sev­er­al in­frac­tions last month. The com­plaints levied against Ja­son, Pe­ters said, have been wor­ri­some.

“It just be­came more dif­fi­cult. They could ex­pel my son from school.” On Thurs­day, Ja­son’s moth­er said, teach­ers made him spend half of the day by him­self in a class­room. Pe­ters said her son nev­er so­cialised with chil­dren for eight years and just could not seem to fit in. She said most of Ja­son’s child­hood was tak­en from him.

Ac­cord­ing to Pe­ters, mov­ing Ja­son to a dif­fer­ent school would al­so not be the so­lu­tion. Last month, Pe­ters said she told the school that sus­pend­ing her son was not the so­lu­tion and re­quest­ed coun­selling for him through the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD). Pe­ters said she was in­formed that oth­er chil­dren need­ed the ser­vice and that Ja­son would have to wait his turn. “I in­quired how long I would have to wait for my son to be coun­selled, but they couldn’t say. I don’t know if it is be­cause he was born in Syr­ia and he came from ISIS they are treat­ing him so. I see it as no­body cares. He is be­ing vic­timised. To me, it comes like op­pres­sion be­cause every morn­ing he gets up, he does want to go to school. I have been seek­ing help all along.”

Pe­ters ad­mit­ted she had to seek coun­selling up­on her re­turn to fight the trau­ma and men­tal an­guish she faced in Syr­ia. “Coun­selling was nev­er of­fered to me. I had to look for coun­selling.” As a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, Pe­ters said, “I nev­er come home and get my­self in­volved in no Mus­lim gang. I dealt with all of this and nev­er got my­self in­volved in the (wrong side of the) law and still all yuh want to vic­timise me.”

A dis­tressed Pe­ters said she can’t tell the school how to run their in­sti­tu­tion, but her son needs ur­gent help. In a brief in­ter­view with Ja­son, he told the Sun­day Guardian that he hates school and doesn’t like his peers.

Gads­by-Dol­ly says Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices help­ing; mom says it’s not true

Re­spond­ing to Pe­ters’ claims on Thurs­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly stat­ed in a What­sApp mes­sage, “This stu­dent has been re­ceiv­ing the at­ten­tion of the SSSD since April. Both in­di­vid­ual and group ses­sions are part of the in­ter­ven­tion which con­tin­ues.”

Pe­ters said, how­ev­er, she had no idea what coun­selling the min­is­ter was re­fer­ring to. On Fri­day, she was still not con­tact­ed by any­one from the SSSD.

He needs help–crim­i­nol­o­gist

There must be an in­ter­ven­tion plan, or he'll end up a sta­tis­tic.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira said Ja­son needs a prop­er as­sess­ment and in­ter­ven­tion plan. "That is what is sup­posed to be done. Every­body who is re­turn­ing from the war zone must be prop­er­ly as­sessed over a pe­ri­od of time." As long as this is miss­ing, Figueira said, this lit­tle boy will end up be­ing an­oth­er sta­tis­tic. "He would end up an­oth­er vic­tim." Figueira said Ja­son was act­ing out of rage. "The rage arose over the fact that he was brand­ed, ex­clud­ed, and se­clud­ed. He was not giv­en the prop­er in­ter­ven­tion, which is his cop­ing mech­a­nism. The rage has im­mersed him. He is sim­ply lash­ing out and needs help." Figueira said Ja­son was be­gin­ning to re­alise that he was not like oth­er chil­dren. He said it was un­just for Ja­son to be home­schooled for sev­en years. "He should have been so­cialised. The on­ly way he could have so­cialised was to fit him­self in­to oth­er groups and learn what it is to be part of a so­cial or­der. The lit­tle boy was nev­er taught that. He grew up in a vac­u­um. He was alien­at­ed from so­ci­ety."

Coun­cil­lor of­fers to as­sist with coun­selling for child

Coun­cil­lor to reach out Mau­si­ca/Mal­oney coun­cil­lor Stephan Wat­t­ley has of­fered to help Ja­son. Wat­t­ley said he could rec­om­mend Pe­ters for in­ter­ven­tion with a coun­sel­lor that he knows. "I can of­fer that to him. I can reach out to his mom." Wat­t­ley said he knows of Pe­ters and her son's case. In a re­cent dis­cus­sion with the school, he said it was sug­gest­ed that a holis­tic pro­gramme be im­ple­ment­ed to help men­tor and guide stu­dents in need of in­ter­ven­tion. One sug­ges­tion, he said, was to bring role mod­els with­in the com­mu­ni­ty to lec­ture to the chil­dren. Their goal is to make the pro­gramme sus­tain­able once it starts. "We re­alise that the com­mu­ni­ty has all the in­flu­ences around them."

The pro­gramme, which is in the plan­ning stages, would tar­get chil­dren "that prob­a­bly give the most trou­ble," Wat­t­ley said. Wat­t­ley, a past stu­dent of Mal­oney Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, said he would of­ten hear teach­ers com­ment on how dif­fer­ent this gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren is from the pre­vi­ous one. "Just look­ing at things dai­ly in the news and hear­ing all these things hap­pen­ing all over in our lit­tle space, we need to try and do some­thing to in­ter­vene. You can't do it too late. Those per­sons over the age of 16 are prob­a­bly set in their ways. We need to grip them from a ten­der age."