Stranded American’s parents praise local Child Protection Agency for taking away baby

Oct 29, 2013 News

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The parents of an American woman, , Dellicia Honore, who was recently deported to her homeland without her baby, have praised the local Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA) for taking possession of the infant.
Dellicia Honore, 37, returned to the USA last Saturday after spending a week in the observation ward of the Georgetown Public Hospital, where she was committed by an order of the court, after she was found wandering in the streets of Georgetown with her four day old child.
The CCPA had seized Dellicia’s baby, claiming that they had rescued the child from possible neglect from his mentally unstable mother.
Contacted via telephone at their home in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, Anita Honore and Francis Richardson believe that the step taken by the child protection agency was timely.
“I’m glad that they took that step because I know she was incapable of taking care of that child…That wasn’t a good idea for her to wander around with a small infant child like that, newborn. She couldn’t take care of herself much less a baby.
The Child Protection Agency knows how to take a child and protect it; that’s what they do and they make sure the child is taken care of well,” Anita Honore told Social Activist Mark Benschop yesterday.
Benschop had been integrally involved in the welfare of the American woman ever since the baby was taken away by social workers attached to the Ministry of Human Services.
Dellicia Honore was handed over to US authorities in Miami last Saturday and spent a couple of days in a hotel under the watch of Psychiatrist Dr. Alfredo Castanedo.
She was later released and is expected to be reunited with her parents in Louisiana some time today.
Anita Honore said that she last saw her only daughter eight years ago after the woman left New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
By then they had already noticed some signs of her mental illness and were taking steps to treat it.
“She started this on Good Friday 2004. She was perfectly balanced; she was in school, very smart young woman…She was teaching special education in the school system here in New OrIeans, and it was like overnight this just happened.
“She was fine but the next day we heard from her she was not fine. She was in a relationship with this young man and I’m leaning towards believing that he gave here something, because it was like flipping a pancake, just overnight, quick,” Honore said.
The young Honore had first moved to Dallas and then took off for Denver, Colorado after falsely claiming that she had friends there. That was eight years ago.
Her parents believe that she made the decision to move away from them to avoid being pressured into maintaining the strict medical intervention that was prescribed for her mental illness.
“Eight years we’ve been going through this,” the mother said.
The young woman had told Guyanese authorities that she was born in Guyana and had been abducted when she was four years old and taken to the United States. However her mother said that while she has heard that story before it is far from the truth.
“That is awful, it never happened …it really breaks my heart. Dellicia was very well raised and treated with love,” the mother declared.
According to Miss Honore, if her daughter had been using her medication her condition might have been better.
“There’s medication she can take; she refuses to take medication, that’s what’s going on that’s why she’s in the state she’s in, she would not take medication,” Miss Honore stressed.
She said that the family is prepared to take the child once he is allowed to leave Guyana.
The woman had registered the baby in Guyana, making it a bit more difficult for him to travel without a United States of America passport.
“We’re grandparents and we’re always concerned about children, no matter what,” Ms Honore said, adding that she would try to make contact with both Guyana and US authorities to ensure that the child is sent to them in New Orleans instead of a foster home, as is the case with some of her daughter’s other children.
Francis Richardson, Dellicia’s father indicated that he was surprised that his daughter ended up in a place like Guyana.
“I don’t even know where Guyana is…it’s in Africa huh?” he asked.
He was surprised to learn that Guyana is actually in South America.
“Oh! South America? From the information we got, yeah, we thought it was in Africa,” Richardson said.
“She moves around a lot you know, to really pinpoint where she is,” he added.
He too is pleased that the local child protection agency took the child away from his daughter when they did.
“That’s the best thing because I don’t know what she was gonna do with an infant just rolling around like that, they do need care,” Richardson said.   A source who was dealing with the woman’s case while she was in Guyana had indicated that the decision to take the child from Honore was not a rash one.
“We cannot put the child in her hands right now at such a tender age. It would be insensitive to the child’s needs,” the source explained.

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