SHELLEY ANN WALCOTT is not missing; neither did she abandon her children.
But she will not make contact with them until a court decides on her volatile relationship with their father Francis Joseph.
The 38-year-old woman has come forward after Joseph, her former boyfriend, appeared in the WEEKEND NATION of June 14 pleading with her to contact her three children who are living with him.
The mother of nine, who confessed that she did not want Joseph or even the children to know where she was living, said he had told “a pack of lies” about her.
Joseph had indicated that Walcott left the children – ages 12, seven and nine – alone in a room which she was renting and they turned up at his house sometime in May after she did not return home.
He said that he himself had not seen or heard her for two months – since April. He also said that Walcott had given birth to six children during their 12-year relationship but he was not sure which of the children were his since she was constantly between him and another man.
With that other man in the room with her during the interview, the woman – who has two of her youngest children living with her – denied that she abandoned the three who are with Joseph.
“I was living at my brother’s house which was in a state of disrepair and the oldest girl said she wanted to go by her father so I walked them to his house,” she explained, adding that she later found out that he took the children to the police station.
She said Joseph had been “mentally abusive” to her over the years and it was she who left his house last October because she could not take it anymore.
Walcott said that since then Joseph had caused her to be asked to leave two houses where she was staying because he would come around and “curse and get on bad”.
“I do not want him to know where I live. He does come into the neighbourhood and curse and get on bad. I do not want to go back to this man because he is wicked,” she said as she disclosed that he had removed her identification card from her brother’s house, photocopied her picture and placed it on posters saying that she was missing.
When asked about the paternity of her children Walcott reluctantly revealed that only two of them were Joseph’s biological children.
“He raised the boy who is living with him and he calls him daddy,” she said, adding that the others belonged to the “other man”.
And she was adamant that she would not be contacting the three children, “until I see a magistrate and tell the magistrate what I want done to this man”.
Programmed
She said: “He has the children programmed. The children does tell him where I am and what I do and make bad for me. They more for he than me. I am not against dealing with my children but as long as my children carrying back news and giving him – it will be a problem.”
She said she had telephoned the children three times since they were living with him but forgot to block her number on one of those occasions and someone kept calling her and not saying anything.
“I knew it was him so I take the sim card out of the phone and throw it away.”
Saying that she wanted nothing more to do with Joseph or the other man who had fathered her children, Walcott said she was trying to build a new life.
“I am trying to get away from both of them, especially Francis. Don’t care what I do for those children, he says I am not doing anything. He [did] this for me to think bad about myself.
“If he going and bring this to the public in the paper, he should learn to tell the truth. He does things and then play he is an angel but this man is a serious man to deal with.”
