'Come home, Amoya!' - Mystery surrounds the disappearance of 14-year-old schoolgirl

Jolyn Bryan, Sunday Gleaner Writer

It has been 146 days since the family of 14-year-old Amoya 'Shenoy' Anderson has seen her and each day is more painful than the one before for her mother Cheryl Morgan.

On October 27, 2013, Amoya, dressed in black pants, a red shirt and black-and-red sneakers, left her house in Cumberland, Portmore, St Catherine. She has not been seen by her family since.

The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the third-form high-school student has left her family confused, hurt and fearful.

Though a resident of Port Morant in St Thomas where she lived with her mother and 13-year-old sister, Amoya was staying in Cumberland with a relative, to be closer to her father.

On the day of her disappearance, she left a 4-year-old child she was babysitting, her keys to the house, and a farewell note.

In the note, she wrote that she was tired of being a slave, and would be going home. All of her personal belongings, including her clothes, her school bag, school uniform and books were left behind.

But she never made it to Port Morant and her family has not seen her since. This has left them wondering if she was compelled to leave, enticed to or forced away.

Her mother, a practical nurse, describes Amoya as an obedient and quiet, but complex child.

Amoya is said to have loved to read, and was deeply religious even though she appeared to be having a relationship with a young man in the community who her mother disapproved of.

Her sister, Amanda, described her sibling as a quiet person, who was very sociable, but who, at the same time, didn't talk much.

Looked forward seeing sister

Amanda is also a student of the prominent Corporate Area high school that Amoya attended and looked forward to seeing her sister daily. She is especially devastated by her disappearance.

According to the family, Amoya, like her mother and sister, was very invested in church, and was baptised in a Pentecostal church in Portmore. It has been suggested that if she ran away from home, this could have contributed to her leaving.

"I have heard that people have been saying that it was only a matter of time before Amoya left, because all we do is go to church, school or work and come home. But if she was a bad child they would talk as well. People love to talk," said Morgan.

In the meantime, the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Amoya deepened when tearful messages from concerned family and friends on her page on the social network site Facebook were responded to by an update posted almost two weeks after she went missing."Stop searching for her, the little no manners b@#h she aint in Jamaica, she aint hurt and she is ok and as far as I knw she do not wanna have anything to do with her family," read the post.

Message on radio station

Morgan says she was also told by neighbours that a message was also left on a popular local radio station with greetings from Amoya to her mother and several friends.

"If I could speak to her, I would tell her to come home, whatever it is, if she is pregnant, if she has done something wrong, come, whatever it is, come home. I don't want to know why you left, just come," Morgan tearfully pleaded.

The worried mother said on the day Amoya went missing, she reported the matter at the Greater Portmore Police Station, but the police did not take a statement from the relative the child was living with until more than two months later.

According to Morgan, that is typical of the way the police have been treating the disappearance of her child.

'We did a walk through the Cumberland community in October just after she disappeared, and I spoke to someone who seemed to have information on my daughter's disappearance.

"I took it to the attention of the police woman assigned to the case and she told me that I should go back and talk to the person to get more information.

"I was so shocked. How could she be telling me to do that? Suppose he knew where my child was, and took me as well?" questioned Morgan who lodged a complaint with the Office of the Commissioner of Police.

Morgan said the missing-child notification, Ananda Alert, was not issued until she appealed to the Office of the Children's Advocate.

When contacted, children's advocate, Dianne Gordon Harrison said that while she was not at liberty to discuss the case, she was aware of Amoya's disappearance and every effort was being made to find her and return her to her family.

Efforts by our news team to contact the investigating officer at the Greater Portmore Police Station have so far been unsuccessful.