Mother appeals for help to find daughter abducted from UK to Jamaica | UK news

A UK-based mother whose five-year old daughter was abducted and taken to Jamaica is appealing for help to locate the missing child. Tau Rodriguez-Fairplay is believed to have been hidden in the town of Black River, which was devastated by Hurricane Melissa in October.

Her mother, Samar Rodriguez, a London School of Economics lecturer in human rights and gender, said Tau had been missing since early February.

Under a joint custody arrangement, Tau was sharing her time between Rodriguez and their former spouse, Athena Belle-Fairplay. But in February this year, Belle-Fairplay failed to drop off the child at a London train station where she had agreed to meet Rodriguez.

“At first I thought that trains were delayed, but eventually it became clear that Athena was not bringing back Tau,” Rodriguez said.

British authorities confirmed that Belle-Fairplay, also known as Natalie Bartlett-Foster, flew to Jamaica with Tau on 3 February, despite an order forbidding the child’s removal from the UK without court permission.

The abduction triggered a cross-border collaboration between courts and institutions in the UK and Jamaica. Authorities believe that Belle-Fairplay took Tau to the Jamaican parish of St Elizabeth, where she has family. Rodriguez travelled to Jamaica in April and hired a private investigator, but was unable to confirm Tau’s location.

In tears, Rodriguez said that fears for Tau’s safety had multiplied since Hurricane Melissa caused catastrophic damage to Black River, which was considered the hurricane’s “ground zero”. Belle-Fairplay’s family home in the town was said to have been severely damaged in the storm, Rodriguez said.

“I don’t know if my daughter is dead or alive. I just want to know she is safe,” said Rodriguez, who claimed that authorities in the UK and Jamaica had failed to act with urgency.

“Wondering where and how your child is, is a pain that no one should experience. Since the moment Tau was born, I have put all of my energy, love and intention into raising her. Now, this cruel and harmful thing has happened to her … and the process of finding her and getting her home has been nothing short of dehumanising,” Rodriguez said.

As signatories of the Hague convention for child abduction, the UK and Jamaica are both obliged to take steps to facilitate Tau’s prompt return to the UK.

The Jamaica Central Authority, the government body responsible for facilitating the country’s treaty obligations, said it had fulfilled its duties under the convention, engaging government ministries, departments and agencies, and schools and private entities.

But Rodriguez said “unclear institutional messages” had compounded a horrifying ordeal. “Hague convention signatories have an obligation to locate children who have been abducted and brought into their jurisdiction – but I’ve been told they can only ‘locate’ my daughter once I provide a location.

“Then, they insisted that because I actively searched [for Tau], they would do nothing more; that any attempt to locate her and serve the order from their own supreme court was a ‘courtesy’ that’s now complete! The end result has been ten months without any institution in Jamaica definitively addressing whether my missing daughter is safe,” Rodriguez said.

Nastassia Robinson, a lawyer in Jamaica who is supporting Rodriguez, said the case has been hampered by delays by the JCA and the authority’s insistence that it was Rodriquez’s responsibility to locate their ex-spouse and daughter.

“It’s unfortunate that this matter hasn’t been given the attention and urgency because a child is missing, but for some reason the Central Authority of Jamaica has repeatedly said the child isn’t missing because they’re with their mother. I don’t know how that conclusion can be made when we have no evidence of the child’s safety and well-being,” they said.

In a statement, the JCA said that despite not having a physical address for Belle-Fairplay, it was able to approach the Jamaica supreme court for an order to return Tau to the UK by serving the documents by email. It was also able to obtain a stop order to prevent Belle-Fairplay from taking Tau to another country.

The JCA said the case was “heavily hampered by the absence of a proper address to locate the child”. It added that it had learned that Rodriguez had enlisted a private investigator and police officers to locate Tau, which it was advised “had forced the wrongdoing parent deeper into hiding”.

The statement said it would be possible to initiate a national missing children alert in Jamaica, but added that the alert was not designed to locate children who were with a parent, so, under the system, “Tau would not be deemed missing”.

Rodriguez’s UK lawyer, Sarah Inchley, said that although the Jamaica supreme court had found that Tau was wrongly removed from the UK by Belle-Fairplay, in breach of Rodriguez’s custody rights, and “abducted within the meaning of the Hague convention”, there were gaps in the processes in Jamaica that made it difficult to locate and repatriate Tau.

“Where the significant problem has arisen is that the order is only enforceable if Tau can be found. And Athena has taken determined steps to conceal Tau to avoid this court process, to not obey the Jamaican Supreme Court order and to not comply with what is asked of her,” she said.

She added that Tau would be experiencing significant emotional harm by having been suddenly removed from a loving parent and from her life in London and everything that was familiar to her.

A spokesperson from the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office told the Guardian they had “raised this case with the Jamaican authorities, and we will continue to use every appropriate opportunity to do so”.

“The UK government takes international parental child abduction extremely seriously, and our staff stand ready to support those affected,” the spokesperson said.

Anyone with information regarding Tau’s location is asked to write to @FindTauJA on Instagram, findtauja@gmail.com, or to the British high commission in Kingston.