Rhon­dor Dowlat

Now in­to its three-and-a-half years in op­er­a­tion, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (CATT) cur­rent­ly has over 16,000 cas­es be­fore them, how­ev­er, that fig­ure just rep­re­sents near­ly 25 per cent of the ac­tu­al calls re­ceived by the au­thor­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the au­thor­i­ty’s di­rec­tor, Safiya Noel, the da­ta, which pro­vides a pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis of the cas­es of chil­dren in need of care and pro­tec­tion brought to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ty, gives an av­er­age num­ber of re­port­ed cas­es per month as 398.

Noel was speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence host­ed by the au­thor­i­ty. It took place at The Hy­att, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. The event al­so high­light­ed win­ners in the Video and Art Com­pe­ti­tion put on by the au­thor­i­ty in com­mem­o­ra­tion of Uni­ver­sal Chil­dren’s Day.

The CATT be­came op­er­a­tional on May 18, 2015, with the land­mark procla­ma­tion of sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion from the Pack­age of Chil­dren’s Leg­is­la­tion in­clud­ing, The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Act, Chap 46:10 (the Act).

Noel said since the au­thor­i­ty be­came op­er­a­tional, to date, it has re­ceived 69,319 call and cur­rent­ly has be­fore them, 16,661 cas­es.

“The num­ber of re­ports of child sex­u­al abuse and sex­u­al of­fences against chil­dren over the pe­ri­od amounts to 5,737 of to­tal cas­es,” she added.

Sta­tis­tics al­so re­vealed that the ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es em­anate from the San Juan/Laven­tille re­gion (2,158); sec­ond­ly, the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co re­gion (2,124) and the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro re­gion (1,604).

Noel, in ex­plain­ing to the T&T Guardian fur­ther in an af­ter-in­ter­view, said 40 per cent of the re­port­ed cas­es al­leges that the bi­o­log­i­cal par­ents are found to be the main per­pe­tra­tors.

“The main forms of abuse are first­ly, ne­glect; phys­i­cal abuse and some sex­u­al abuse,” she said.

“Work­ing with the fam­i­ly is a crit­i­cal thing and we have found that a lot of sin­gle par­ents there is where a lot of the ne­glect cas­es comes in,” Noel said.

She ex­plained that these par­ents them­selves are ei­ther vic­tims or were vic­tims of abuse.

She urged par­ents to get help and seek the nec­es­sary ther­a­py to deal with their is­sues and help re­fo­cus their at­ten­tion to their chil­dren.

“Noth­ing is wrong with go­ing for ther­a­py…you don’t have to be crazy…some­times if you think about it think, about your own lives, you would recog­nise that there are sit­u­a­tions that you strug­gle to deal with and some­times you need some­body there to help you through the process,” Noel said.

Chair­man of the au­thor­i­ty Hanif Ben­jamin, in his re­marks, gave the as­sur­ance that a Na­tion­al Pro­to­col will be sent to the Cab­i­net for re­view and ap­proval by mid-year 2019.

He ex­plained that this doc­u­ment will be rolled out as a na­tion­al sys­tem where it will out­line re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for all agen­cies on a spe­cif­ic ba­sis and how the com­mu­ni­ca­tion “ac­tu­al­ly take place from where a child goes to the hos­pi­tal as a vic­tim; to the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the po­lice and schools, etc.”

Side bar

Achieve­ments Since Procla­ma­tion

• Over 6000 cas­es in­ves­ti­gat­ed and closed

• Over 1500 in­ves­ti­ga­tions on-go­ing

• Over 3300 ther­a­peu­tic in­ter­ven­tions con­duct­ed

• Over 2300 walk-ins to make a re­port or up­date in­fo

• 100% up­time of 24-hour Hot­line

• Over 730 su­per­vised ac­cess