(Jamaica Observer) A local business leader has beaten up men who have fathered multiple children and refused to support them and labeled them “enemies of the state” in need of “imprisoned” or “forcibly sterilized”.

According to Robin Levy, Group CEO of the Jamaica Co-operative Credit Union League, bringing such men to justice is no solution.

“I think that some of these gentlemen who have 10, 12, 15 children and don’t care about any of them are enemies of the state. They contribute to intergenerational poverty, they contribute to situations that lead to sexual abuse and many other things, and instead of the court simply telling them to pay a small amount of money to support one or two of the children, should it be imprisoned or forcibly sterilized, ”a disgruntled Levy said Wednesday after a speech by District Attorney Paula Llewellyn, QC, outside the Rotary Club of downtown Kingston on Wednesday.

The DPP had in a presentation titled “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child: Myth or Reality in This Age of Child Abuse,” which moved Rotarians to explain that the influx of child sexual abuse cases is in many cases associated with Situations in which mothers have to look after several children whose fathers are nowhere to be found.

“What we don’t see is when relationships break up and you have a lot of frustration with these mothers because the fathers disappeared, so they get into different relationships. We saw it in the files where everyone sleeps in the same bed… ”said the experienced prosecutor.

“What the police and we as prosecutors see [are] Situations in which mothers pimp their girls. They don’t work and either pimp the child to the stepfathers or [to] other men in the ward, ”she remarked.

The DPP said breaking the cycle would require sustainable public education programs aimed at changing mindsets.

“We need to let our young women know that the generational curse can be broken by making sure you are educated and / or have skills that can be acquired,” she said, calling for some form of ‘two’ resurrection is Better Than Too Many ‘family planning campaign run by the National Family Planning Board in the 1970s.

This, she said, “so that many people in our society don’t just look at the theory of begging and subscribe to it – that at 25 you have three, four, five children and only look for one handout or looking for baby father number (six ) and if this baby father comes into the house because everyone is sleeping on one bed, he will exploit the child who comes up ”.

“We have to talk about these things, we have to keep these conversations going, and we have to be ready to point out in many of these churches that it is wrong. We need to get up and be counted, ”she said.

When asked what to do with fathers who do not stand by their children, she said, “Let me be very clear, I am a single mother and my daughter’s father was always involved from day one, but a large part the whole question how? A wife will have many children; the decision is up to the wife.

“In many of our women’s minds, part of the public education program needs to be geared towards determining your destiny when it comes to the number of children you will have. It has to be understood that if you are not working and you have no skills and you are going to have four or five children, you automatically put your children at a great disadvantage, ”she continued.

“I agree that through public education we have to find a way that seems to be the only way, and we have to start in schools … power over your body and the whole question of how many children you can have.” should stay with you, ”she added.

A summary of custody and alimony cases filed in the Family Division of Parish Courts between 2017 and 2019, obtained from the Jamaica Observer, showed a total of 2,795 custody cases were filed in 2017; 2,814 in 2018; and 2,814 in 2019.

In the same period, 7,172 maintenance cases were submitted in 2017; 8,003 in 2018; and 7,450 in 2019. According to the data, an annual average of 4,775 fathers are held accountable for failing to pay their share of child benefit. This number includes subpoenas for repeated offenses and enforcements. The data also showed that most of the fathers tried were under 40 years of age.

The “Two is Better Than Too” campaign has been credited with lowering the birth rate at a time when Jamaica’s overall fertility rate was over six children per woman. In 1975, a few years after the campaign began, the rate dropped to 4.5.