Where’s my daughter?

It has been more than six months since Dr Samar Rodriguez, a London-based academic, last saw her five-year-old daughter, Tau Kleio Rodriguez-Fairplay. Tau was abducted in February from her home in the United Kingdom by her other parent, Athena Belle-Fairplay, and taken to Jamaica. Despite securing a Supreme Court order for Tau’s return, Rodriguez says her daughter remains missing.

Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics, has pursued every legal and diplomatic avenue to bring Tau home – filing a criminal case against her ex-partner, Athena Belle-Fairplay, in the British High Court; submitting a Hague Convention application; and working with the Jamaican Central Authority (JCA). Yet, more than half a year later, there has been no resolution.

“I don’t know how to explain how scary it is. She (Tau) is my absolute reason for being,” Rodriguez told The Sunday Gleaner. “This is a high-pressure situation with somebody who I believe is not very stable or capable, so I don’t know what that pressure creates.”

She said that Belle-Fairplay, who is also known as Natalie Bartlett-Foster, was born in England to Jamaican parents who had previously resided in Black River and Spice Grove in St Elizabeth.

The couple moved from America to England when Tau was 10 months old, but got divorced in 2021. Over the years, Rodriquez said they enjoyed a relatively amicable joint-custody arrangement, with both of them playing their part.

But about a year and a half ago, things changed when Belle-Fairplay expressed her intention to move to Jamaica with Tau. The UK courts denied her request after social welfare assessments concluded that relocation would not be in Tau’s best interest, particularly given Belle-Fairplay’s unreliability in maintaining communication.

To protect Tau, a Prohibited Steps Order was issued by the Central Family Court in London, preventing either parent from removing her from the UK without permission.

However, Belle-Fairplay reportedly disobeyed this order, and vanished with the child in February.

“The last time we saw each other, I was doing the regular drop-offs. It was just normal. She acted like everything was normal,” Rodriquez recalled.

But passport checks later confirmed Belle-Fairplay left the UK on February 3, arriving in Jamaica with Tau.

Rodriguez filed a Hague Convention application with the UK Central Authority on February 11. It was transmitted to the Jamaican Central Authority (JCA) that same week and acknowledged on February 24.

The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction – ratified by both Jamaica and the UK in 2023 – establishes protocols for the swift return of children wrongfully removed from their country of habitual residence.

Between 2019 and 2023, the JCA, which functions under the remit of the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) – facilitated the return of 33 children to Jamaica under the convention. However, data on returns from Jamaica to other countries was not available.

Rodriguez accuses the JCA of treating her case with indifference and delay, prompting her to fly to Jamaica in April to conduct her own search.

“From the start, I encountered a chilling attitude: ‘it could be worse – I think she’s fine, she’s with her mother.’ That was said to me by an official in April, two months after Tau vanished. This assumption – that a mother cannot kidnap, even when she steals, defies a court order, and cuts off her social media and communication with friends – reflects a dangerous gender bias,” she said.

“It ignores the reality that parental abduction is a form of child abuse and that most child abuse and neglect occurs with maternal perpetration. It erases the harm done to children when they are forcibly uprooted, isolated, and told they can forget the parent and family they love,” she said.

In an August 5 email to the JCA, Rodriguez also raised concerns that Belle-Fairplay may be exploiting systemic biases – particularly around gender and homophobia to avoid scrutiny. Although Jamaican law targets male same-sex intimacy, LGBTQ+ individuals often face discrimination, which Rodriguez fears may be contributing to a lack of urgency in her case.

The August 5th email correspondence to the JCA seen by The Sunday Gleaner, Rodriquez also suggested that her ex-partner was relying on the agency deprioritising this matter due to homophobia, a concern she was assured would not influence the investigation.

Jamaican law criminalises same-sex intimacy between men, and although its enforcement is infrequent, people from the LGBTQ community often face widespread discrimination.

The Hague Convention’s applicability is not affected by the parents’ same-sex status, as it governs cases of international parental child abduction and focuses on the wrongful removal or retention of a child and access to them.

Rodriguez says she provided the JCA with extensive information – addresses, phone numbers, nicknames, and photographs of Belle-Fairplay’s Jamaican relatives. She also hired private investigators, contacted schools, and reached out to the Ministry of Education herself due to what she describes as bureaucratic delays.

On June 26, Jamaica’s Supreme Court ordered Tau’s immediate return to the UK. Rodriguez claims the JCA has failed to act decisively to enforce it.

Rodriquez also accused the JCA of not being persistent in its effort to facilitate the enforcement of the Supreme Court Order of June 26 for the return of Tau to England, and being inconsistent in its communication about using the Ananda Alert system, a tool that helps to share information about missing children.

She said she was initially told that the JCA would end efforts to locate Tau after enlisting the Ananda Alert team on the 5th of August, but about an hour later was told that this course of action would not be taken as the JCA “was not looking for a missing child in the natural sense”.

She said she was then informed that she would need to fly to Jamaica, report Tau as missing at a police station, get a receipt from the police, forward it to the JCA for them to share this with the Ananda Alert team.

In a response to The Sunday Gleaner, the Jamaican Central Authority rejected Rodriguez’s claims, stating that it has “gone beyond standard protocol” to locate and return Tau.

The JCA said the case was officially referred on February 18, and within a week, it launched coordinated efforts with the CPFSA; the Ministry of Education; the Ministry of National Security, the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency; and the Supreme Court to expedite the case. . Five addresses were searched – one in Kingston and four in St Elizabeth – and the agency sought legal alternatives when no definitive address could be verified.

“An application to the Supreme Court cannot be made without verifying the address, and in this instance, where the checks proved to be futile, we had to make an application to the court for substituted service via the defendant party’s (Athena Belle-Fairplay) email. Notwithstanding, the defendant party did not acknowledge nor engage the court. The court has however granted the order for the child to be returned to the UK – thereby fulfilling the mandate of the Central Authority and the convention,” it said.

However, the JCA also criticized Rodriguez’s “unsanctioned private actions,” such as hiring her own investigators and seeking independent police assistance, stating that these efforts have “complicated ongoing efforts”, “compromised the case and strained relations with communities”.

The agency also maintained that it had provided Rodriguez with the necessary steps to activate the Ananda Alert system, which it said would be “the last resort in a search of this nature”, but was still awaiting her compliance.

“The JCA remains committed to exhausting every legal, investigative, and collaborative avenue to secure Tau’s safe and lawful return,” it said.

Rodriquez, in the meantime, has issued a public appeal to help locate her daughter.

“I am asking the Jamaican public: if you see Tau, if you know Athena, please come forward. Help me bring my daughter home. She deserves to be safe. She deserves to sleep in her own bed, play in her own park, and feel the love of the family that has raised her since birth. Because right now, Tau is not just missing from me – she is missing from her life,” she said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com