By AZARD ALI Monday, September 3 2012

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GAVE BIRTH: Kezi Doughty, a mother of 11, who gave birth to her twin daughters on Saturday is seen yesterday at the maternity ward of the San Fernando...

SHE WAS well into her pregnancy when she was jailed three months ago for abandoning five of her nine children. On Saturday, Kezi Doughty gave birth to twins — baby’s No 10 and 11 — at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH).

The 33-year-old woman’s twin daughters weighed seven and eight pounds respectively. Yesterday, hospital authorities kept relatives and the media away from Doughty’s twins on the grounds that the babies are being treated in the maternity ward’s neo-natal unit. But while Doughty was allowed to nurse her newborn twins, nurses kept instructing her not to leave the unit with the babies when relatives asked to see them.

On June 28, Doughty was six months pregnant when she was jailed for five months by a San Fernando magistrate for abandoning five of her nine children at King’s Wharf in San Fernando, where she lived in a shack.

The magistrate, Alicia Chankar, ordered the five children be made wards of the State and they have since been placed in a Children’s Home. Doughty was charged with wilful abandonment of the children while she went to take a bath in the sea on the wharf.

Doughty, according to the charge, had left one of the children sleeping on a sponge in the shack. The other children were seen wandering on the Public Transport Service Corporation terminus on King’s Wharf. With Saturday’s birth of the twins, Doughty now has six boys and five girls.

When the sentence was passed by Chankar in which Doughty was also fined $3,000, she screamed and threw herself on the floor.

Police officers had to lift her, but Doughty was literally dragged when she fell flat on the steps of the courtroom.

Doughty immediately began serving her term in prison, but days later attorney Peter Taylor filed an appeal on the grounds that the sentence was severe. Chankar granted $50,000 bail, but Doughty was already placed in the prison’s infirmary for medical attention due to her pregnancy. Doughty’s relatives were unable to post bail and Taylor applied to a judge in chambers for a variation of the bail terms.

On July 13, Justice Maria Wilson agreed to the application to allow founder of the Eternal Light Community Home, Deborah De Rosia, to stand as a named surety. Doughty was released from jail and had been staying at the Home where arrangements were made for her to seek regular medical check-ups.

Last week, Doughty was admitted to the SFGH and at about 1.45 pm on Saturday, doctors delivered by Caesarian section the first of the twins. Two minutes later, the second was delivered.

“I’m happy now and everything is over. But I want to see my other five children (who are now wards of the State),” Doughty said.

Yesterday, Taylor visited Doughty and informed her that she would be allowed keep the twin girls. “While her five children are wards of the State in accordance with the magistrate’s ruling, Kezi can keep her twins,” Taylor said.

Taylor will take the twins to the Eternal Light Community home in Tunupuna where she would nurse them while she awaits the appeal of the case.

“Kezi Doughty is a victim of societal neglect. Worse, is the fact that Kezi is made to pay the price, while the one responsible for fathering these children is not made to account to the court,” Taylor said.