SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Fif­teen months af­ter five boys ab­scond­ed from a Val­sayn Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty (CA) cen­tre—two of whom were shot dead in an aban­doned house in Laven­tille—Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy says there will be no par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tion by her min­istry in­to the teenagers’ deaths.

Web­ster-Roy was mak­ing ref­er­ence to the killings of An­to­nio Fran­cois, 16, and Semi­on Daniel, 15, who es­caped from the CA’s Child Sup­port Cen­tre (CSC) last March and were am­bushed and mur­dered at Mc Shine Lands.

Last week the min­is­ter re­spond­ed to What­sApp ques­tions sent by Guardian Me­dia query­ing if her min­istry had launched a par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mur­ders of Daniel and Fran­cois who es­caped with three oth­er boys while un­der the care and pro­tec­tion of the CA at one of its cen­tres.

“There is no par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing con­duct­ed by the Di­vi­sion of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs on this mat­ter.

“The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty pro­vid­ed a com­pre­hen­sive re­port on this is­sue which was sub­mit­ted to the Di­vi­sion and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. The TTPS is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter,” Web­ster-Roy in­di­cat­ed in her re­sponse.

Ques­tioned if it was too ear­ly to ask who will be held re­spon­si­ble for the boys’ deaths, or if is it like­ly that for­mer CA of­fi­cials can be held ac­count­able or would it be the in­sti­tu­tion where the boys were placed, Web­ster-Roy fur­ther dis­closed “the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter is on­go­ing and as such any pro­nounce­ments on a per­son/s who may be cul­pa­ble is not pos­si­ble at this time.”

Minister Ayanna Webster-Roy

To date since the in­ci­dent oc­curred over a year ago no one has been held ac­count­able for the es­cape and sub­se­quent death of the young boys.

How­ev­er, for­mer Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Hanif Ben­jamin holds the view that some­one should be held to ac­count for the ab­scond­ing of the boys.

“In my view, peo­ple need to be held ac­count­able for that. The deaths of those chil­dren, in my view, have not...have not been dealt with in a way that has been sat­is­fac­to­ry for me, that is. No­body was. Who was held ac­count­able for that? That is the is­sue in Trinidad. We paint a nice sto­ry and we shift the move­ment.”

Ben­jamin said that 15 months af­ter the ab­scond­ing the mat­ter has re­mained silent.

Ben­jamin: It should have nev­er hap­pened

Un­der his tenure, Ben­jamin said, the es­cape would have nev­er hap­pened.

“That was not hap­pen­ing un­der my watch, I could guar­an­tee you that. And if it did hap­pen, peo­ple would have been held ac­count­able, in­clud­ing my­self. My po­si­tion is that peo­ple should be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions or in­ac­tion. I think no­body has been held ac­count­able for those things. In my view, that should have nev­er been al­lowed to hap­pen.”

The ab­scond­ing of the boys was chron­i­cled in the 307-page Ju­dith Jones re­port en­ti­tled “Safe­guard­ing Chil­dren in Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences and Child Sup­port Cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go” which was laid in Par­lia­ment in March.

In 2021, the Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed a com­mit­tee chaired by Jones to in­ves­ti­gate abuse at chil­dren’s homes and to doc­u­ment its find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port which was sub­mit­ted last De­cem­ber to Web­ster-Roy.

Last month, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced a task force had been ap­point­ed to re­view the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of Jones’ re­port.

The task force was giv­en six weeks to sub­mit a work plan.

Pressed for an up­date on the task force’s work, Web­ster-Roy said they have a spe­cif­ic re­mit.

“That re­mit does not in­clude an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an ab­scond­ing in­ci­dent.”

One con­cern raised in the de­tailed re­port was that the CA had not been ef­fec­tive­ly and ad­e­quate­ly ful­fill­ing its statu­to­ry man­date.

The shock­ing re­port pro­vid­ed a his­to­ry of the boys who were placed in the au­thor­i­ty’s care by the Chil­dren’s Court.

It stat­ed that four of the boys were brought to the court by their par­ents who al­leged they were un­able to con­trol them and were in need of su­per­vi­sion.

Antonio Francois

CHILDREN'S AUTHORITY

The fifth boy need­ed care and at­ten­tion.

Fran­cois en­tered the Val­sayn CSC in Jan­u­ary 2021 as a re­sult of an al­ter­ca­tion (main­ly ver­bal) with his moth­er over his risky be­hav­iour of hang­ing out with the wrong type of peo­ple and the use of mar­i­jua­na.

Daniel was ad­mit­ted to the fa­cil­i­ty around the same time due to his mar­i­jua­na habit, steal­ing and sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship. The re­port found that staff and se­cu­ri­ty guards phys­i­cal­ly abused the chil­dren by bang­ing their heads against a wall, some guards ver­bal­ly de­grad­ed the boys based on their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and their com­plaints of ver­bal and phys­i­cal abuse were not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by staff mem­bers.

Boys left un­su­per­vised

“The short­age of the care­givers on the day it­self re­sult­ed in the five boys be­ing left un­su­per­vised as the guard who was asked to keep an eye on them was on his first day and was not trained in the in­tense su­per­vi­sion re­quired for res­i­dents with a high-risk pro­file,” the re­port stat­ed.

It was al­so dis­cov­ered the cen­tre had nu­mer­ous ab­scond­ing events and se­cu­ri­ty fail­ures that al­lowed these in­ci­dents to not on­ly take place but be re­peat­ed.

Pro­vid­ing a chronol­o­gy of events which led up to the March 20, 2021 es­cape of Fran­cois and Daniel, the re­port stat­ed the teenagers were ob­served days be­fore “us­ing so­cial me­dia to look at guns.”

They breached the in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty by pass­ing through the bur­glar-proof in a room they were stay­ing in on the ground floor.

Even though there were two care­givers, four guards and one nurse on du­ty, Fran­cois and Daniel es­caped by climb­ing on top of a dog ken­nel to gain ac­cess to a wall which they jumped over and fled.

At the time of the es­cape, no one was mon­i­tor­ing the fa­cil­i­ty’s sur­veil­lance sys­tem.

An alarm was raised when the boys were missed and the St Joseph Po­lice were no­ti­fied.

The re­port point­ed out the se­cu­ri­ty plan for re­cov­ery of a child who ab­sconds “is pas­sive” by the au­thor­i­ty which re­lies on the TTPS and oth­er en­ti­ties for in­for­ma­tion on the ab­sent child.

Semion Daniel

CHILDREN'S AUTHORITY

Har­boured il­le­gal­ly

The boys pro­ceed­ed to an aban­doned house in Pic­ton Laven­tille and were “har­boured il­le­gal­ly by a woman in the area con­trary to the Chil­dren’s Act” the re­port re­vealed.

“The com­plic­i­ty of the ex­ter­nal per­sons in the as­sis­tance of the boys to re­main out­side the care of the State, name­ly the la­dy who sup­plied them with food and a place to stay as well as the oth­er adults who in­ter­act­ed with the boys at that lo­ca­tion (Laven­tille) must al­so be not­ed,” the re­port dis­closed.

The re­port fur­ther point­ed out the se­cu­ri­ty plan for re­cov­ery of a child who ab­sconds “is pas­sive” by the au­thor­i­ty which re­lies on the TTPS and oth­er en­ti­ties for in­for­ma­tion on the ab­sent child.

Con­tained in the re­port was even more shock­ing in­for­ma­tion that:

“The Di­rec­tor in­formed a ‘com­mu­ni­ty leader’ from Laven­tille Shabazz Mo­hammed. Shabazz in­di­cat­ed that he called around ask­ing about the res­i­dents. One of the per­sons he called was ‘com­mu­ni­ty leader,’ Bom­bay. It was Bom­bay’s area (turf) in which the boys were hid­ing.”

The di­rec­tor re­ferred to was Nichola Har­vey-Mitchell who re­signed from the CA last De­cem­ber.

Har­vey-Mitchell was a PNM nom­i­nee for can­di­da­cy to con­test the Port-of-Spain South con­sis­ten­cy in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Days lat­er, it was re­port­ed in the me­dia that the two teenagers were killed be­cause they were not known to gang mem­bers who were pa­trolling Mc Shine Lands.

Me­dia re­ports stat­ed the teenagers were lim­ing with oth­er boys at an aban­doned house when they were con­front­ed by two armed men dressed in uni­forms which re­sem­bled po­lice at­tire.

Sev­er­al 5.56 mm cal­i­bre shells were al­so found at the scene of the shoot­ing, lead­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors to con­clude au­to­mat­ic ri­fles were used.

Po­lice be­lieved Fran­cois and Daniel were sim­ply in the wrong place at the time.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence hours af­ter the killings, Har­vey-Mitchell said the boys were com­mu­ni­cat­ing and plan­ning with per­sons out­side the au­thor­i­ty to es­cape.

The au­thor­i­ty, she said, even foiled one at­tempt which hap­pened days be­fore and the boys were al­so pro­vid­ed con­tin­ued coun­selling about their be­hav­iours and ab­scond­ing.

Daniel al­so gave the as­sur­ance that he would not es­cape.

Har­vey-Mitchell cit­ed that one of the prob­a­ble rea­sons for the ac­tion tak­en by the boys may have been the re­moval of their ac­cess to elec­tron­ic de­vices for dis­ci­pli­nary rea­sons, which may have led to them be­com­ing ag­i­tat­ed.

How­ev­er, Jones’ re­port not­ed there are two ob­vi­ous ques­tions to be an­swered “did the in­sti­tu­tions set up by the State to pro­tect these boys and to act in their best in­ter­ests fail to do so? And, if so, did this re­sult in the death of the two boys?”

Last April, a 21-year-old sus­pect want­ed for the mur­ders was ar­rest­ed by the po­lice in Laven­tille.

Jamal Shabazz

Shabazz: I called gang leader Bom­bay

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed for­mer 1990 in­sur­rec­tion­ist Ja­mal Shabazz ques­tion­ing if he was the per­son iden­ti­fied as “Shabazz Mo­hammed” in Jones’ re­port.

Shabazz con­firmed it was him, stat­ing he was in­cor­rect­ly named in the re­port which left him per­plexed.

He ad­mit­ted that Har­vey-Mitchell had reached out to him for as­sis­tance in find­ing the boys.

“At the time of re­ceiv­ing Har­vey-Mitchell’s call, she told me she had al­ready con­tact­ed the po­lice. She told me she was do­ing every­thing in her pow­er to lo­cate the boys since she was fear­ful they would find them­selves in trou­ble. I told her I would call around,” said Shabazz who was ap­point­ed the coach of the Guyana na­tion­al foot­ball team in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

In their brief dis­cus­sion, Shabazz said Har­vey-Mitchell did not sug­gest, ask, re­quest, or de­mand him to call Bom­bay or any­one in the un­der­world.

“All she did was con­tact me in ad­di­tion to con­tact­ing the po­lice to see if I could help in lo­cat­ing the boys. There is an as­sump­tion that she told me to call Bom­bay. I told her that I would call the heads in the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in Laven­tille to reach out.”

Shabazz said he called An­ton “Bom­bay” Boney on his own ac­cord.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Bom­bay was shot and killed while dri­ving his car near the Ca­roni fly­over along the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

Shabazz said he saw noth­ing wrong in ren­der­ing as­sis­tance to Har­vey-Mitchell since he con­sid­ered him­self one of the lead­ers in the Mor­vant/Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty “whose ears are al­ways on the ground.”

How­ev­er, hours lat­er, he got the news that the boys had been killed in Laven­tille.

Sub­se­quent­ly, Shabazz said, UNC Sen­a­tor and his friend of 43 years David Nakhid called him about the boys “sug­gest­ing that they were killed be­cause they were be­ing used in some pros­ti­tu­tion ring and he had rea­son to be­lieve that it was not gang-re­lat­ed and that they were elim­i­nat­ed by the or­ders of peo­ple high up in so­ci­ety.”

Shabazz said he found out the boys had aligned them­selves to a par­tic­u­lar group in Laven­tille when they es­caped.

“I nev­er got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to the boys or ques­tion them be­cause in a day or two we heard they were killed. Some peo­ple are spec­u­lat­ing is the po­lice…some peo­ple say­ing is a ri­val gang. I had my sus­pi­cions which I would not want to share.”

Shabazz said he lat­er arranged a face-to-face meet­ing be­tween Nakhid and Bom­bay which he at­tend­ed.

In that meet­ing, Shabazz said, he lis­tened while Nakhid ques­tioned Bom­bay.

“I did not in­ter­vene. Nakhid could share the con­tents of that meet­ing.”

Shabazz said he feels per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for Har­vey-Mitchell’s name be­ing dragged through the mud “as if she did some­thing wrong or was a vil­lain. There is an ef­fort to tar­nish her good name and I will not be used to tar­nish the rep­u­ta­tion of some­one who has worked tire­less­ly for the up­lift­ment of our peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly in Laven­tille, re­gard­less of her po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.”

He said oth­er peo­ple had sought his as­sis­tance in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions and he gave a help­ing hand.

“I do not ap­pre­ci­ate Har­vey-Mitchell’s name be­ing mis­rep­re­sent­ed like if she told me to call a gang leader. If any­body is guilty of con­tact­ing a gang leader is me. I am guilty be­cause I un­der­stood re­gard­less of how peo­ple want­ed to hide that Bom­bay was a leader in the Laven­tille area...and who wants to dis­pute that…not liv­ing in the re­al world.”

Shabazz said re­gard­less of what peo­ple thought of Bom­bay he would have been able to help be­cause he al­ways had his feel­ers out and knew what was go­ing on.

David Nakhid

Nakhid: The boys were beat­en by se­cu­ri­ty guards

Nakhid said his in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­earthed that Fran­cois, Daniel and oth­er abused boys “were be­ing pimped out by se­cu­ri­ty guards who were tak­ing them to this big house...wher­ev­er that house is.”

The boys of­ten re­sist­ed the of­fi­cers who re­strained and beat them.

He be­lieved the teenagers were killed be­cause they want­ed to re­veal what was hap­pen­ing.

“No two 15-year-old boys es­cap­ing just so... fight­ing with se­cu­ri­ty. You have to ask who was try­ing to pro­tect who? Who was try­ing to make sure that these boys didn’t get their sto­ry out? A cou­ple of the boys did. They did men­tion they were be­ing abused.”

Nakhid said if we find out who mur­dered the boys “then we would have an idea why they were killed for a cov­er-up.”

Nakhid said he pro­vid­ed a state­ment to Jones’ team which was nev­er pub­lished in the re­port.

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, Har­vey-Mitchell said “I have no com­ment to make and my lawyer will treat with it ac­cord­ing­ly.”

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