After pleading guilty to using an altered passport, a woman admitted that she had made the alteration.
However, Hermine Elizabeth Brown maintained, it had been a mistake.
She also pleaded guilty to possession of six birth certificates, which had been altered, and making a false representation on a work permit form.
Crown Counsel Lindsey Cacho presented the facts in Summary Court last week.
When Brown landed at Owen Roberts Airport, the Immigration officer who processed her observed that the Jamaican passport contained an altered date of birth. It said 1964 instead of 1962.
Brown was instructed to attend Immigration Headquarters where she was interviewed. It was subsequently determined that Brown’s actual date of birth was in 1960.
During her interview officers took her to her residence, where she handed over six birth certificates, each of which also had an altered date of birth.
Magistrate Nova Hall asked whose birth certificates they were. Mr. Cacho indicated that they were all Brown’s.
The magistrate then asked Brown if she had any explanation.
The defendant replied, ‘My passport got damaged and I tried to clean it up. The 2 disappeared and I write 4 by mistake. I was going through problems and not thinking right.’
Questioned further by the magistrate, she said she has worked here for four years as a domestic helper and the passport had been damaged here.
The magistrate asked why she did not get the passport rectified through the Jamaican consul. She said she didn’t know it would be a problem, just changing one date. She added that she did intend to get her passport changed and that she did get a birth certificate from Spanish Town with the year of birth as 1962.
The magistrate commented that a whole lot of entanglement seemed to have gone into this.
‘At the time I wasn’t thinking straight. I was messed up,’ the defendant repeated.
She received fines of $300 for each set of offences, for a total of $900.
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