REMANDED prisoner Vanessa Schroeder, 39, on Tuesday staged a protest just below the roof of the lone female penitentiary in Berbice, where she highlighted her accusations about acts of harassment and injustice that were meted out to her by named prison officers.

Withstanding the blazing mid-afternoon heat and armed with a Coca-Cola bottle filled with water, the prisoner drew the attention of media personnel and passersby after mounting on the metal trestle just outside the building which housed the female prison. She then alerted persons about what she wanted the world to know.

According to her, during her thirteen years of imprisonment, she was ill-treated by named officers who were in the habit of harassing her.

“First they get me in a cell. I am not supposed to be there. I supposed to be in the dormitory… They want to kill me, they always locking me up. Officer [name stated] showing me signs how she would cut off my neck. I fed up…They putting me in the cell and only loosing for an hour or so,” she ranted, before being urged by officials and the media to descend and return through the window which led into the female block.

Apparently satisfied that her voice was heard by the relevant personnel, she then complied.
In the meantime, efforts to contact prison officials on this matter proved futile.

During a telephone conversation with the defendant’s father, Ewart Cameron, of Lot 1646 Central Amelia’s Ward, Linden, this reporter was told that Vanessa Schroeder, a mother of five, had been convicted on two charges stemming from the deaths of a brother and her sixteen-day-old baby. The prison sentence totalled 13 years.

The sixty-eight-year-old pensioner recalled that after his daughter completed her sentence in August 2013, she visited him and he gave her $200,000 to assist herself. A further $200,000 was given in January 2014 for her to invest in business, and an additional $50,000 was given to her during the Linden Town Week.

“I have done all I could for Vanessa. I will not allow any child to ruin my life. She served sentences for double murder, her brother and the three-week-old baby…now she is in prison on damage to property charge. She pelted a minibus in Georgetown and damaged the windscreen. She will have to stay there. I have no more money to spend on her. She did nothing with what I gave her,” he lamented.

Meanwhile, according to court reports, Schroeder was initially charged with the murder of her then sixteen-day-old baby but pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter before Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, who had imposed a ten-year imprisonment.
However, prior to handing down the sentence, a psychiatric report by Dr. Bhairo Harry had revealed that Schroeder was suffering from a treatable organic brain disorder.
He had stated that she would need life-long medical treatment for the brain damage which could have occurred in her mother’s womb or later in her life.

(By Jeune Bailey Vankeric)