Shal­iza Has­sanali

Prin­ci­pal of the St Michael's School for Boys' Kelvin Nan­coo claims that more than four years ago al­le­ga­tions of ram­pant "abuse, in­com­pe­ten­cy and mis­man­age­ment" were re­port­ed to the au­thor­i­ties at the home, but it was swept un­der the car­pet.Nan­coo said when the re­port was made and noth­ing was done, he ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion as a mem­ber of the An­gli­can board af­ter eight years of ser­vice.

At that time, Calvin Bess was head of the An­gli­can Dio­cese of T&T. An­gli­can Bish­op Clyde Berkley is now head of the Dio­cese. The chair­man of the board of man­age­ment of the St Michael's home is Dea­con Er­ic Thomp­son. Al­i­son Sa­landy is man­ag­er of the home.Nan­coo said what pushed him to re­sign from the board was when a mem­ber "told me noth­ing will change and no­body is go­ing to re­move those re­spon­si­ble..."

Every­thing was un­earthed on Tues­day when At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan re­vealed that he had asked the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard to launch a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the op­er­a­tions of the home af­ter he read from a re­port in­to the death of in­mate Bran­don Har­g­reaves, who was found dead at the home in April 2014.Har­g­reaves' re­port showed sex­u­al abuse of in­mates by su­per­vi­sors and vi­o­lents fights among in­mates.

"I told them years ago that it would come back to haunt them. And it has," Nan­coo said."If there is a tri­bunal and they want me to speak, then I will. I have ex­pressed my dis­gust on many oc­ca­sions to those in au­thor­i­ty, but it was pushed un­der the car­pet."Yes­ter­day, af­ter be­ing told of re­ports reach­ing the Sun­day Guardian that files at the home were be­ing de­stroyed as an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Glenn Hack­ett said he would dis­patch a team to deal with the is­sue.

Berkley re­fused to an­swer ques­tions about the re­port, but said he wel­comed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and "a press re­lease on the mat­ter will be is­sued soon."