Africa-Press – South-Africa. A Cape Town children’s shelter has been left stunned after the former partner of a donor demanded that a box of toys be returned, or he will sue them.
The co-founder of the Little Brinks NPO, Katherine Brinks, said she had been approached by the donor, who she had known for some time through Facebook, regarding her children’s toys she wanted to donate to the shelter.
“We get donations all the time. We survive on donations. In our safe houses we’ve got kids in care, soup kitchens and we also do community projects. So, when people want to make donations, we usually do drop-offs at one of our designated areas, so that they do not come to the safe house,” Brinks told News24.
Because this donor was known to her and had requested to give the toys to the children, she allowed her to come to the safe house.
On 20 August, the donor and her daughter arrived at the shelter to drop off a box of toys.
“She dished out toys and left. The girls were happy – they had different types of dolls, [a] Barney [dinosaur toy] and a horse teddy,” said Brinks.
A week later, the donor contacted Brinks saying that her ex-partner wanted the toys back. She said her ex-partner was adamant that he wanted to sell them, because he needed the money.
In his demand, the ex-partner added that the toys should be in good condition, otherwise he would be forced to take legal action.
“I then told her that this goes against our policy. These are special kids; they are born with different needs and most of them don’t have the mental capacity to understand [why] if you’ve given them a gift, they should return it.”
Brinks added that a lot of children in the shelter had experienced abuse and had never had toys of their own.
Brinks said:
She added that she was taken aback by the donor’s message.
“I then went to Olivia, a 2-year-old with fetal alcohol syndrome, and said to her: ‘We’ve got to give your horsey back.’ She just burst out crying and wouldn’t let go of the horse. She said that the horse was hers, the lady had given it to her. It was absolutely heartbreaking,” Brinks said.
“That’s when I [posted on] Facebook to ask people what my legal right was. I cannot take these toys away from the kids.”
Brinks said that there was no lawsuit at the moment, and they were waiting to see if the donor’s ex would be taking matters further.
“This was an eye opener for us. I’ve been doing charity work for 20 years now and I’ve never ever dealt with anything like this before. This has taught us a lot and how we can protect the kids moving forward.”
According to attorney Lufuno Musetsho from Musetsho Law, legally, a person cannot donate something and then decide that they want their donation returned.
“It is also quite strange how an ex-partner can say they did not give consent for items belonging to their children to be donated… Yes, they might have bought them, however, the court is not likely to entertain the issue of toys that [had] belong[ed] to the [couple’s] kids and were donated willingly.
“Musetsho added that if the ex-partner wanted to dispute this, he had the legal recourse to go to court, and tell the court that his ex-partner donated something that she did not own.
“On the other hand, the shelter can interdict anyone, including the donor, from attempting to fetch the toys that have already been donated,” Musetsho said.
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