Yvonne Webb

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh said yes­ter­day that no mat­ter how many laws are passed, if we are not our broth­ers' keep­ers and re­port abus­es against chil­dren, we will con­tin­ue to have cas­es like Aaliyah John­son.

Speak­ing in the con­text of the Chil­dren's Bill which has been laid in the Par­lia­ment with the aim to pro­tect the so­ci­ety's most vul­ner­a­ble in­clud­ing women and chil­dren, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said even though leg­is­la­tion been passed, it may not have pro­tect­ed Aaliyah from her trag­ic end.

The body of the two-year-old child who died on East­er Mon­day bore ev­i­dence of sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse. Two of her rel­a­tives, a man and a woman, are as­sist­ing po­lice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. An au­top­sy sched­uled for yes­ter­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre in St James was post­poned to to­day, as there were too many mur­ders en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the pathol­o­gists over the East­er week­end.

"The sit­u­a­tion would have been no dif­fer­ent. No mat­ter how many laws we have, we need to be our broth­ers' keep­ers to keep watch on those at risk and vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies. Look at sit­u­a­tions where chil­dren are be­ing abused and re­port it," Dr Ra­mad­hars­ingh ad­vised.

He said too many times neigh­bours and fam­i­ly mem­bers re­port­ed ir­reg­u­lar oc­cur­rences when it was al­ready too late. As in the case of Amy An­na­muntho­do, whose death af­ter years of sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse was the sub­ject of Jus­tice Mon­i­ca Barnes Re­port, which is ad­vanc­ing the Chil­dren's Bill, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said there were sim­i­lar red flags be­ing raised in Aaliyah's case.

Rel­a­tives of the dead child ad­mit­ted she was abused but they did noth­ing to help. "Many times be­fore the lethal strike, there would have been many more strikes. We go back to some of the cas­es where we hear sto­ries about peo­ple be­ing sus­pi­cious, say­ing the child was look­ing a cer­tain way, but they nev­er made a re­port to help that child.

"While we await the leg­is­la­tion and a Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, one sure way of elim­i­nat­ing these in­stances of hor­rif­ic crimes against chil­dren is to have ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el where we talk about these is­sues, put them on the com­mu­ni­ty agen­da and en­cour­age per­sons to make re­ports," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.

The min­is­ter said every day at his min­istry he sees peo­ple from across the coun­try who come to ap­ply for food cards. He said in in­ves­ti­gat­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of the ap­pli­cants' needs, they rou­tine­ly come across cas­es of abuse rang­ing from phys­i­cal, sex­u­al, drug abuse. He said the min­istry part­ners with oth­er au­thor­i­ties to make an in­ter­ven­tion and pre­vent or stop the abuse.

He al­so en­cour­aged chil­dren to use the 800-4321 Child­line num­ber to re­port if they are be­ing bul­lied, threat­ened or abused.