RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Child Pro­tec­tion Unit act­ing Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, says cit­i­zens must take re­ports of child abuse se­ri­ous­ly and should not dis­be­lieve any child who is brave enough to come for­ward with a re­port.

“Far too of­ten when a child comes to an adult per­son, a rel­a­tive, we tend to ask this child who re­ports an abuse ‘You sure? You sure dad­dy did this?’” Guy-Al­leyne said.

“Do not do that! If a child comes for­ward and re­ports an abuse, you should be­lieve that child im­me­di­ate­ly and take that child to the po­lice sta­tion or the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit so that the abused child will be fur­ther in­ter­viewed and med­ical­ly ex­am­ined.”

Guy-Al­leyne, who al­so heads the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit, said per­pe­tra­tors need to be held ac­count­able. She not­ed that it is not on­ly young girls who are abused but young boys as well.

“Yes, we have fe­male per­pe­tra­tors, we have charged fe­male adults for pen­e­trat­ing chil­dren who are males. A child is a child, any­one who is un­der the age of 18,” she said.

She ex­plained that it is not a good thing for a male child to be in­duct­ed in­to sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ties by an ex­pe­ri­enced woman, not­ing that par­ents should pro­tect both their boys and girls from sex­u­al preda­tors. She al­so said there have been re­ports of adult women mo­lest­ing young girls.

“That is why I al­ways say we must teach our boys and girls to­geth­er. Teach them the dif­fer­ence be­tween a good touch and a bad touch. Fo­cus on all chil­dren, make them un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing in so­ci­ety, speak can­did­ly about sex. If they are abused sex­u­al­ly or touched in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and that child re­ports it to you, act and get help for that child. Most times the per­pe­tra­tors are not strangers,” she said.

She al­so ad­vised par­ents to be care­ful with whom they were leav­ing their chil­dren.

“Be aware of their ac­tiv­i­ties at all times,” she not­ed.

Asked whether there are enough safe spaces to house chil­dren, Guy-Al­leyne said there were nev­er enough safe spaces.

“We have chil­dren who are suf­fer­ing and are at risk. We work close­ly with the Chil­dren Au­thor­i­ty. If they ob­tain a re­port first, they will con­tact us. when it comes to abuse in the in­sti­tu­tions, the po­lice will in­ves­ti­gate those mat­ters,” she added.

She not­ed that one child be­ing as­sault­ed is one child too much adding that cit­i­zens must call 996 or 999 to re­port child abuse.

“You are man­dat­ed to do so by law, once you have knowl­edge of a child be­ing sex­u­al­ly abused, you must re­port it. You can­not pro­tect the per­pe­tra­tor. We need to re­port what­ev­er we sus­pect or see. We must pro­tect our chil­dren,” she added.

Her com­ments come even as mi­nors Semi­on Daniel, Stephen An­toine and Ri­car­do Thomp­son, all aged 15, re­main at large af­ter ab­scond­ing from a child sup­port cen­tre on March 20. Any­one with in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing their where­abouts is urged to con­tact the au­thor­i­ty’s hot­lines at 996, 800-2014 or the po­lice at 999.