Alisha Sargeant said she was just nine years old when a boy struck her in the left eye and kicked her in the chest in Queen’s Park, The City.
Today, she is 25 and says the boy who attacked her seems to have vanished; the school she once attended turned a blind eye, and the High Court case meant to deliver her justice has never gotten off the ground.
Alisha and her mother, Gale Sargeant, are lamenting that the last 13 years have been a masterclass in systemic failure – a gruelling journey through a legal maze that exhausted their finances, compounded their trauma and left them staring at an empty courtroom.
“I got no justice,” Alisha says, her voice breaking with emotion that has fermented over more than a decade and a half.
“It affected me greatly. Even still up to this day, now that I’m a mother, it still affects me greatly.”
The incident remains etched in Alisha’s memory, but it was not an isolated one. For a time, she told the Sunday Sun, she was repeatedly bullied by that boy. Gale sadly recalls the many times her daughter came home from school complaining that the boyand his friends had beaten her, taken away her lunch, and even thrown her school bag over the fence.
Gale said she went to the school management many times. One day, furious after receiving a call that the boy had injured her daughter, Gale went to the school with a friend, afraid her emotions would get out of control, but said the reception she received was chilling.
“I said, ‘I come about the incident about this child beating my child all the time’. The principal looked at me and said, ‘Get her from my desk. Get her from my desk’.”
Gale went to the police. They listened, but the next day, the bullying continued. Left with no other choice, she pulled her daughter out of the public school system and placed her in a private school, even though it was a crushing financial blow.
“I had to pay school fees. I used to get a line of credit to help pay. I had to pay for hospital visits. I had to pay for medical reports. I not only suffered physically, but emotionally and financially.”
But a few months later, as fate would have it, her daughter and the boy would meet again as their individual schools gathered for sports in Queen’s Park. It was February 4, 2011. He wandered over to Alisha’s side of the grounds.
“I can recall him coming over,” Alisha remembers.
“He struck me in my left eye. He had a spray can or something in his hand, and he knocked me in my eye and he also kicked me in my chest as well.”
Gale remembers the call she received that her daughter had been injured. She managed to get to the Park where she saw Alisha lying on the ground bleeding, surrounded by teachers, police and students. She admitted she lost it, especially when she realised it was the same boy she thought she had finally gotten her child safely away from.
“I was really looking to kill somebody that day,” Gale admits, the raw emotion still palpable.
“My limbs felt heavy. I couldn’t move. I got on bad. I was screaming, ‘How could you let this happen to my child’?”
She also stormed into the offices of the nearby Ministry of Education, but again, she left feeling let down by the response.
Gale said her daughter was traumatised and even afraid to go to school. She added neither the Ministry of Education nor the school offered counselling. It was only after a colleague heard Gale lamenting at work that she was directed to Supreme Counselling.
Alisha also remembers crying almost every day, the trauma deeply embedded. Even a chance sighting of her attacker years later on Baxters Road, The City, triggered an immediate surge of anger.
Determined to hold the responsible parties accountable, Gale did what the system demands: she sued. She brought a lawsuit before the High Court against the boy and his father, the Ministry of Education, the school and the Attorney General.
But then, the real nightmare began.
With no money to pay a lawyer, Gale, who once worked in a law firm, used what little knowledge she had and filed the lawsuit herself. However, she was later summoned by a judge who informed her that her filings were incorrect and suggested she get an attorney. She managed to scrape together $5 000 and went to a recommended lawyer.
Then came the revolving door of the judiciary. The case bounced from one judge to another and then to two Masters of the Supreme Court. Even more disturbing was her inability to get in touch with her attorney. Gale pointed out that he moved offices several times, and at one point, she unexpectedly received an $8 000 bill from a legal firm informing her that her attorney had joined them and they had taken over her matter. Gale insists her attorney never communicated this transition to her.
To make matters worse, the boy they sued seemingly disappeared. Reports from 2018 indicate police issued a missing person’s report on him, and rumours suggested he had died.
Two weeks ago, Gale met with a court official who informed her that the case may no longer proceed through the court.
Gale is angrier now than she was the day she got the call from the Park – especially now that she has discovered her daughter was entitled to legal aid assistance, a right that was never communicated to her.
Alisha looks back at a childhood she said was derailed by violence and a legal system that offered nothing but adjournments.
“When it comes to frustration, it’s like, am I going to get justice? It hurts me very, very, very much.”
Gale refuses to let her daughter’s story be buried in a backlog of court files. She is speaking out because she believes the system is sending a dangerous message to the next generation.
“We are telling society that you could do anything and through loopholes, people can get away with this nonsense,” she said.
“Therefore, you’ve got a society where people are very angry because of no justice. What more should I have done as a mother? I went through the proper channels.”
For Alisha, now navigating the anxieties of motherhood herself, the lack of closure is a heavy feeling she still cannot shrug off. The boy who struck her in the Park may be gone, but the system that failed to catch him is still very much intact.
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