Food vendor pleads for custody of her children and grandchildren
Popular Belizean food vendor Gloria Jimenez is in a protracted battle with the Department of Human Services for custody of her three children. The kids were taken away from her and placed into foster care three years ago. Since then she has been trying desperately to regain legal rights over the children, whom she contends were taken away from her unlawfully. Jimenez’s two grandkids are also under the guardianship of the Dorothy Menzies Child Care Center. While there are multiple sides to this ongoing saga, Jimenez maintains that she is a fit parent, who has done everything within her means to make a life with her children. She says she’s being denied the opportunity to spend the holidays with her kids.
Gloria Jimenez
“I feel bad because I can’t get my kids fi Christmas. So I was just angry and before maybe I do something wrong or maybe I hurt the social (worker) or something. Better I just try cut my hand and try ease down myself because I feel it. you know that I get up twelve o’clock in the night the twenty-fifth and I have nobody to hug and say happy Christmas babies or nothing. That’s sad. I love my kids; I want my kids with me. And I’m fighting two years, three years now right here coming and I am fighting hard for my kids. I even go out there and asking people for help so that I can finish my house. Now that I finish my house, I got three bedroom, kitchen, hall, bathroom, water; they deny my kids still yet. I don’t know what is the problem, what they have against me; I don’t know. And then my son tell me that it look like dehn want adopt them to some white people in the states. I do not agree with that sir. I am not agreeing with my kids getting out of Belize. No.”
Reporter
“Were you ever taken to court? Was there ever a legal procedure that ended up with your kids being taken away?”
Gloria Jimenez
“No, I never get…when they took away my kids, I never had no court paper or nothing saying that they are getting my kids in custody. It is after when they beat up Claudia Zetina is when I get a summons to appear in court in San Ignacio. That’s about maybe a three months after. Because I don’t know the law that is why they are taking advantage of me. And I’m trying to get a lawyer in January. I am fighting hard for my kids. Because when I go there, my kids cry everyday and say mommy I want to go home. They bawl at my kids and say I noh wanna see any of you crying because when yo ma go you will see. And I say how you mean you will see? You can’t knock my kid. If I never knocked them sir, social could never say they found a mark on my kids. I never lash them. I punish them and you know how I punish them? Maybe not seeing TV or I put them to kneel down with a book in their hand. But I am not going to bomb my kids; I am not going to do that.”
Reporter
“What is your request to the social?”
Gloria Jimenez
“Well I di request to them make dehn please give me my kids for the Christmas. I di beg them with all of my heart, even the ministers weh di listen to the news. Make them please get contact with me and give me my kids. I want my children.”
News Five has made several attempts to get a comment from the social workers in San Ignacio but so far we have been unsuccessful.
Lady, the law hears your cry; but you will have to curb your internal anger before you talk about reunion with kids.
What sort of crap were you yapping about in your Ch 5 interview? Go back and listen to yourself. You sound like a vicious, dangerous woman.
“I feel bad because I can’t get my kids fi Christmas. So I was just angry and before maybe I do something wrong or maybe I hurt the social (worker) or something. Better I just try cut my hand”
It doesn’t always mean that she is crazy for saying those things, she is hurting inside because of not having her kids. Heck I would destroy Belize if mind were ever taken from me. I feel you Miss. An I been to that children home before those kids are out of control. Hope you get them back.
This needs investigating further. We’ve heard only a portion of this story. This woman might be traumatized at having lost her children…has a cause been fully established? What horrific deed could this mother have done (so different from the many households where children are openly violently, verbally.. mistreated and nothing is done) to have merited this separation from her kids.. could there be something more sinister going on??
i guess uncle benji you are just an ignorant @$s with no sense of humor. if you notice i did not even use caps in you name you know why because you are just and ignorant brat. that mother deserve to be with her children unlike you who probably deserve to be with the dogs for being so negative minded. go back and look at yourself in the mirror and then think.
Uncle Benji, your more like Uncle Tom. Of course she is angry. This system is screwed up. The children out there that really needs help they don’t reach out to. These people are full of crap. Miss, the truth is your kids are worth money to these social workers, that’s why they don’t want to give them back to you. Adopt my ra$$. They are going to sell your kids to these people, that’s what it is.
There palms are getting grease to send your kids that way. Legal human trafficing. See the non-sense. These social workers in Belize don’t care nothing about your kids, just their financial gain from your kids. Just like the Passports, and Visa. This is the UDP way. And you all vote for these tyrants.
And listen to how they treat these kids. Seemed that these kids are now in a hostile situation. Worst off than they would with their Mother. That’s why you always hearing of these kids running away from those places. They are not in a loving environment with these people. Then they sell them to these people who bring them to the states and turn them into their personal SLAVES. That’s the fact. We heard that before. Makes me sick. But GOD is not sleeping. What goes around comes around. When the Devil turn back into them, they want to know why. It’s you all treachery that earns the Devil’s right to you souls.
Miss, make it personal with these damn social worker. They want to make your life a living hell, find a way to make theirs. That the only way to get JUSTICE in Belize. As justice is for the rich and UDP connected.
WHAT THE HECK WRONG WITH GRINGA!!!! PLEASE!!!!!! FOR GOD SAKE PEOPLE DON’T PASS COMMENT IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE TRUTH.
THIS WOMAN IS AN ABUSER!!! SHE HAVE GIVEN AWAY DOZEN OF HER CHILDREN, ASK MR PENNEL!!!!
SHE ABUSE HER CHILDREN, SHE ABUSE HER NIEGHBOURS, SHE LIVE WITH A YOUNG MAN 18 YEARS, SO WHAT YOU EXPECT FROM HER???
GRINGA YOUR CROCODILE TEARS NO MOVE ME, SAN IGNACIO AND SANTA ELENA KNOW YOU GOOD.
I DON;T KNOW WHY THE COURTS NO REFER GLORIA JIMENEZ ALSO KNOW AS GRINGA FOR PHYCIATRIC COUNSELING???
This story is completely one-sided. Why were the children removed from her home? Vital information missing here….. if you can’t get the information from the other side, hold the story until you do. Viewers can’t make heads or tails of this one, just a woman wanting her kids with no explanation of why she doesn’t have them in the first place. Come on…