Gambling mom 'neglected baby'

2006-10-11 07:35

Gishma Abrahams

Port Elizabeth - A baby girl found in the warm sun in a bakkie in the parking area of the Boardwalk Casino, has again highlighted concern for children of parents who gamble.

The sun was beating down at about 09:00 when security guards from the casino complex broke open the bakkie's door to remove the baby, aged about three months, while the mother was apparently inside the casino.

Not a single window of the bakkie was open and the doors were locked. A security guard on routine patrol saw the baby in the bakkie.

The baby's mother apparently told the guards she and a friend were going to the casino to fetch her handbag that she accidentally left behind the previous evening.

Charged with child neglect

She wept as she answered police questions.

Members of the child protection unit later took away both women, with the child tied on the back of the friend, to formally charge the mother with child neglect.

The general manager of the casino complex, Mervyn Naidoo, said the mother was found as she and her friend walked from the casino to the bakkie.

He said it was standard procedure to step in when children or pets were left in vehicles without supervision.

Naidoo said there were notice boards everywhere warning parents not to leave children or pets in vehicles.

Strict measures were in place to take action against parental negligence.

"The police and the child protection unit are notified immediately and a charge is laid against the parent or guardian."

Superintendent Conad Engelbrecht of the child protection unit said the case would be investigated.

If it was decided the mother had been negligent, she would be charged.

One of Die Burger's reporters, Tanya van Heerden, took matters into her own hands last year when she saw a five-year-old boy and his older sister sitting at the casino's fountain at midnight.

They gave her their mother's cellphone number, but when she contacted the woman, the parent verbally abused her.

Worked with compulsive gamblers

Clinical psychologist Dr Marilyn Davis-Shulman, said in an insert called Casino Kids on October 8 in M-Net's Carte Blanche programme on the problem, that she had seen the impact of gambling on children.

She has worked with compulsive gamblers for the past 10 years.

She said those children ran a bigger risk of developing problems later in life than children who grew up in a safe, predictable environment.

- Die Burger