– Mentally ill woman caged for 17 years
– Crippled woman forced to live in sheep pen for 20 years

Two West Coast Berbice women – one mentally ill woman and another crippled – were Monday rescued from shocking conditions of abuse and neglect.

Officers of the Probation and Social Services Division of the Ministry of Social Protection in Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice) have now placed the women in medical care after discovering the conditions under which they were forced to live.

The mentally ill woman, said to be aged 31, was found living in what the officers described as a “cage” some distance away from the family home at Belladrum village. She was completely naked at the time officers visited and the stench of faeces and urine, the Officers said, was overwhelming.

There was no bed, no furniture, not even a piece of cardboard on the floor, the officers said. They learnt that the woman had been kept prisoner in that enclosure by her parents and relatives for the past 17 years.

“The mother told us that she would bathe her by throwing water on her through holes in the wall,” the officers said.

Meanwhile, the crippled woman, said to be 39, was found living in horrific conditions in an outhouse that Officers described as a sheep pen, near where her relatives lived “in a spacious house” at Weldaad Village.

She was found in a dirty and unkempt condition and the living quarters reeked of urine and faeces, they said.

The woman told the Officers that she had been living in the sheep pen since taking ill some twenty years ago.

She alleged that while sharing the pen with animals, she was frequently beaten by her mother for not keeping the enclosure clean.

Social Services said that it was ironic that the relatives of both women had been collecting social assistance money for them. (Full details in Tuesday’s print edition of the Guyana Chronicle)