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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Cops alarmed at sex crime spike against children

by

Rhondor Dowlat
2365 days ago
20181114
Sgt Michelle Lewis

Sgt Michelle Lewis

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Po­lice yes­ter­day ex­pressed alarm at the spike in sex crimes against chil­dren in Trinidad and To­ba­go. They made the com­ment af­ter point­ing out that so far for the year there have been 926 re­ports over­all of se­ri­ous crimes against chil­dren – which sug­gests an av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly three re­ports every day.

So far for 2018 there have been 564 re­ports of sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion against young vic­tims, al­most dou­ble what it was for the same pe­ri­od last year.

The “fright­en­ing” sta­tis­tics were dis­closed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Child Pro­tec­tion Unit’s Sgt Michelle Lewis at yes­ter­day’s TTPS’ week­ly me­dia brief­ing.

Lewis said for the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to Oc­to­ber 31, 2017, there were 360 re­ports of sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion while for the same pe­ri­od in 2018 there were 564 re­ports.

“For the same pe­ri­od there were 121 re­ports of sex­u­al touch­ing in 2017 and 217 re­ports in 2018, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 79 per cent,” Lewis said.

“Over­all, there have been 584 re­ports of se­ri­ous crimes against chil­dren in 2017 and 926 re­ports of se­ri­ous crimes against chil­dren in 2018. The fig­ures re­flect an in­crease of 59 per cent in the cur­rent year. Of these re­ports, there are 353 mat­ters cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts.”

Lewis al­so warned par­ents in es­tranged re­la­tion­ships that they should not use chil­dren as tools to in­flict harm on each oth­er by mak­ing false re­ports aimed at gain­ing an ad­van­tage in cus­tody and main­te­nance mat­ters. She said in cas­es where such re­ports are proven to be false, “such per­sons will be pros­e­cut­ed.”

“Per­sons who are in re­la­tion­ships where do­mes­tic vi­o­lence ex­ists must be mind­ful of the like­li­hood that chil­dren are de­fence­less and vul­ner­a­ble to the ef­fects of such abuse, and it should be re­port­ed,” Lewis said.

“In re­cent times, there have been sev­er­al re­ports of heinous crimes com­mit­ted in the pres­ence of chil­dren. These acts ex­pose chil­dren in a man­ner like­ly to cause psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al harm.”

Lewis made it clear that such acts are tan­ta­mount to the of­fence of Cru­el­ty to a Child, ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 4 of the Chil­dren’s Act No. 12 of 2012.

Near­ing the clos­ing of schools next month for the Christ­mas sea­son, Lewis urged par­ents to be vig­i­lant about who their chil­dren are around and what ac­tiv­i­ties they are en­gaged in.

“Aim to be your child’s con­fi­dante and if not you, at least one oth­er rel­a­tive whom your child re­spects and can trust. Look out for our young ones and re­port all cas­es of abuse against chil­dren,” Lewis said.

On No­vem­ber 20, Uni­ver­sal Chil­dren’s Day will be cel­e­brat­ed glob­al­ly and the unit will be part­ner­ing with sev­er­al schools through­out the coun­try to pro­mote the wel­fare and the rights of a child, she said.

This day is com­mem­o­rat­ed to bring aware­ness about chil­dren who have ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lence in the form of abuse, ex­ploita­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion around the world.


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