Mum makes plea for rethink over son’s deportation
ADUDLEY mum is fighting to stop her autistic son from being deported to Jamaica after he was convicted of robbery as a teenager.
Joan Martin, 54, has led protests in London in a bid to stop the Home Office from sending her son, Osime Brown, to a place he left when he was just four years old.
Osime is currently serving a fiveyear prison sentence for robbery, attempted robbery and perverting the course of justice.
He is facing removal despite not having any family network or knowledge of the island since arriving in the UK as a small child. Mrs Martin has been protesting in front of the Home Office in London to stop his deportation order. A petition to support the cause has gained more than 33,000 signatures.
She says her family has been destroyed and her “baby boy is dying”.
Osime was charged in 2018 over the theft of a phone in a street robbery. The Home Office issued him with a removal notice in August of that year on the basis of the series of criminal offences he committed. He was due to be deported earlier this year until an appeal was lodged.
He is currently serving his fiveyear sentence at HMP Stocken in Rutland while the deportation row continues.
The family claims he has been clinically diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and has the mental capacity of a small child. He has spent much of his childhood in the care system.
His mother said she is now seriously concerned for his welfare and says her son has been selfharming in prison with hundreds of scars on his arms and body.
Describing her son, she said: “He was a loving boy, he was caring. He would never hit a person.
He doesn’t like to see people cry. “He would rather hurt himself than anyone else. Even when he has a meltdown he will punch a wal. He self harms as a way to get out of his anxiety but he never likes to see someone cry.
“He is the most loving child that I have out of my five children. He was in care and he was vulnerable. He is nothing of what he is being portrayed.
“Up until the age of 16 he had never had a criminal record. He is vulnerable and will be easily led.” The family is demanding that the deportation of Osime is stopped. “We have no family, the grandparents all died. His father is in America, all my family live in Canada and America, too. He hasn’t been back once. He doesn’t know Jamaica,” Mrs Martin said. “Jamaican culture is nothing like England.
“Not even going back
is
the problem. He has dyslexia, he is autistic, he has PTSD. Who is going to look after him when he goes out there?
“The Home Office has the audacity to say he is not culturally orientated to this culture.
“They are saying he is culturally orientated to a country he hasn’t been in for 17 years.”
She claims her son is being racially abused and has been beaten up inside prison – a claim the Prison Service denies.
“The trauma is unbearable. I am angry. I am broken and this has left me with anxiety and depression.
“It has destroyed my whole family. It feels like the rug has been pulled from under my feet. My baby boy is dying and I have to be fighting.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “It would be inappropriate to comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.”