MARY BROWN was told that there was an abduction attempt on her child as she entered the school gate to pick him up and attend a parent-teacher meeting on a Thursday evening.

But the information did not come from a member of the faculty. She was told of what could have been by a vendor who had helped to prevent the abduction.

At first, Brown did not believe the story. A high school teacher for 16 years, she had faith in the system and expected that if any such attempt took place she would have been told by the principal or a senior teacher.

"I really never thought it was serious because I said in case something like that happened, somebody would have contacted me."

But the attempted abduction did happen. And nobody called.

"I asked my son ... what had happened and he told me that somebody was pulling him and telling him that I was waiting in a car to give him money."

Brown was now convinced that her son was almost abducted. She waited until the question-and-answer segment of the parent-teacher meeting, which was being moderated by the school board's chairman, to raise the issue. Up to that point, no member of the school's faculty told her what transpired.

very serious

Brown was fuming. "I am upset because I was not contacted. I am upset because somebody was pulling my child and it doesn't come off as if it was serious, and I find that it is very serious in this time when they are abducting children," she said with a huge sigh, still burdened by the weight of the incident.

After she raised the issue, the school's principal, Robert Gillies, told her that he did not contact her because he "never saw it as an attempted abduction".

"He saw it as a man using children to get money from people who come on the school compound," she said.

"He is saying that (the man) is somebody who frequents the compound to try to get money, so he uses children to get money," Brown added.

When asked about the man pulling the child, she said the principal told her that the man "could be pulling him to get him to stand beside him to get money".

"I don't get it. I don't get that he sees the seriousness of it," Brown said.

When our news team spoke to Gillies last Thursday, he stuck to his guns.

He still thinks the man was just using the boy to gain the sympathy of other parents in his bid to solicit money.

However, Gillies admitted that it was not an attempt to abduct the boy. He said he got his information from one of two security personnel hired by the school.

Brown went to the Half-Way Tree Police Station to report the matter. She gave them the information but after waiting for a long time to formally file a complaint, she decided to leave because she had to get back to her job.

liaise with police

At a meeting Brown had with Gillies last Monday, the principal reportedly promised that he would liaise with the police to have them beef up their presence on the compound.

But that has failed to calm Brown, and dropping her child at school, which was once routine, is now, emotionally, a Herculean task.

"This morning (last Monday) when I went there ... it was one of the hardest things to leave him there," Brown said.

"I'm scared but I cannot stay there with him until the bell goes at 7:45 a.m. because I have to reach work by 7:30 a.m. It is just a scary thing. Nobody can know just how it feels until they experience it, nobody," the mother added.

The eight-year-old is her only son and she is still struggling with the emotional trauma of knowing that he was almost abducted.

"It is just something where you get up in the night and you look at your child and you just say, 'What if?'" Brown said.

She has resorted to sleeping in her son's room just to ensure that he is safe.

Brown said her eight-year-old is not really traumatised. He is seemingly insulated by his innocence, as he has not grasped the gravity of what could have happened to him.

But she struggles with what could have been. "It's terrible. Because you don't know what this person would have done and you don't know if you would ever find your child again," she said, her voice breaking as she fought back tears.

Name changed upon request.

tyrone.reid@gleanerjm.com