Mom seeks help for mentally challenged son

October 08, 2025
 Olive Ottey, 60, has never stopped fighting for her only child.
Olive Ottey, 60, has never stopped fighting for her only child.
Olive Ottey is pleading for help for her mentally challenged son,  Lenroy Ebanks.
Olive Ottey is pleading for help for her mentally challenged son, Lenroy Ebanks.
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Despite having to walk with a stick, and barely able to stand after sitting down, Olive Ottey, 60, has never stopped fighting for her only child.

But today, with arthritis racking her body and her son battling mental illness, the Spanish Town resident is crying out for help.

"I am seeking some assistance for me and my son, Lenroy Ebanks," Ottey pleaded. "I am on medication, he's on medication. He's mentally challenged. The living condition of the place he is staying is very, very poor. The next thing is, most time mi want to give him the medication and nuh have no food. Mi really don't have anything at all right now."

For decades, Ottey worked her hands raw to take care of herself and her son. A vendor by trade, she sold sheets, curtains, mats, towels, and even back-to-school supplies whenever she could afford to buy goods. But with her health failing and medical bills piling up, her little hustle has collapsed.

Ottey raised Ebanks alone from birth, having very few relatives to lean on. She poured every dollar into his education and well-being.

"That was a bright boy. When he passed for Jose Marti Technical [High School], I was proud. Him very good at English, and him did improve in maths," she said. But a business deal to help her pay for Ebanks sitting the regional exams did not come through in time.

"Mi did plan to pay for seven subjects, but mi couldn't manage. Everything crash," she said. "One of the teachers said I should have come back and say something. I never knew that I could, because she said if I had come back, even the two free ones (exams) were there, they would have allowed him to take those," she added. Ottey said that her son's life changed forever when he went to buy some weed.

"It look like dem season it with coke and sell him. Mi always warn him not to smoke, but they don't hear. And from then, him get sick. It's about seven, going eight years now," she said.

Ebanks is now 28 and his mother said that when the medication works, he sometimes sells fruits and juice, but stability has been out of reach. Barely staying afloat, Ottey rents a small house in Spanish Town but has left her son in Central Village, where he lives in a broken-down structure.

"When rain fall, it all fall pon mi in there, and it mek mi foot worse," she said. "That's why mi had to leave, but him stay back. The landlady seh she nuh tek no rent again, him must find somewhere else. But him nuh come wid me because him like to walk out all hours. Him sickness mek him just walk, walk."

Despite her own sickness, Ottey travels daily to make sure Ebanks gets his medication.

"Sometimes mi stay wid neighbour two or three days just to oversee him or when mi can't find him. When the injection give him side effects, him mouth lock, foot twist up. Because a that, him nuh like tek the medication. Mi haffi call police fi help mi carry him go doctor. Sometimes police don't even want to come, because they say the people from the mental health clinic should just come with them same time," she said.

"Mi don't give up because mi haffi keep strong to work a penny, and fi see to it seh him is okay. Mi don't sit down [and] cry, cry, pop down myself. Mi go out deh to search for a living."

But arthritis, poor circulation, and bad knees keep her from working like she used to.

"But if mi could get a proper start with a likkle business, mi could stand pon mi own," she said, while also pleading for help to get a roof over Ebanks' head.

"Mi old now, and despite him condition, him have a life ahead of him. Even if is just a start fi business. Anything at all mi grateful, if a even prayers."

Persons wishing to assist Olive Ottey and her son Lenroy Ebanks may donate to: Victoria Mutual Bank - Spanish Town, savings account #22847941

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