AN­NA-LISA PAUL

“Imag­ine while oth­er chil­dren get ex­cit­ed when their fa­thers reach home…these chil­dren cringe and want to hide.”

“When they hear the door of their bed­room open at nights these poor lit­tle girls shake with fear.”

This is ac­cord­ing to psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh who has de­scribed the epi­dem­ic of child sex­u­al abuse in T&T as, “A prob­lem which we have been liv­ing with for far too long.”

As sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T (APTT), the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor lament­ed, “Some­times when adults come to see me with de­pres­sion, anx­i­ety and oth­er men­tal health is­sues…on­ly af­ter a lev­el of trust is built up would they men­tion that they were sex­u­al­ly abused as a child.”

He said of­ten times, these per­sons are, “Filled with dis­gust, shame and help­less­ness.”

While this is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing, Deyals­ingh said he had ob­served a wor­ry­ing trend in that, “Some do not even recog­nise the dire ef­fects child sex­u­al abuse has had on their men­tal health.”

He ex­plained, “In the home where they should feel the safest…get­ting away from the world in which they have no safe space now be­comes the is­sue as it is a prison.”

“When the love and the re­spect for the dad who is sup­posed be pro­tect­ing me but is in­stead hurt­ing me…when that love col­lides with the hate and the fear, these in­tense con­tin­u­ous and con­flict­ing emo­tions are churned around in the mind thus fu­elling men­tal ill­ness.”

Deyals­ingh said in some in­stances, these sit­u­a­tions can con­tin­ue for years.

He added that some per­sons do not even know it is wrong ini­tial­ly be­cause, “Some girls who grow up in a home where it is ac­cept­ed and don’t even know it is wrong un­til they see a show or hear about sex­u­al abuse and in­cest.”

He said, “I have found that they on­ly ex­pe­ri­ence the emo­tion­al trau­ma af­ter know­ing a wrong has been done to them.”

He claimed yet an­oth­er trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence faced by some was, “When they go to their moth­ers to com­plain…they are of­ten scold­ed, beat­en, blamed and ig­nored.”

“The oth­er pro­tec­tor in the home failed them so they learn the hard way that they have no one.”

Deyals­ingh said, “These chil­dren feel all alone in the world and grow up not trust­ing oth­ers. Some cut them­selves, abuse drugs to cope with their feel­ings, turn promis­cu­ous or the op­po­site to be­come frigid adults, suf­fer post trau­ma stress such as pan­ic at­tacks and de­pres­sion, and ul­ti­mate­ly, some kill them­selves.”

Claim­ing that the fig­ures pro­vid­ed by the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty for 2015 to 2018 which in­di­cat­ed there were 14,581 cas­es of child abuse was, “Just a drop in the buck­et and is a gross un­der­es­ti­ma­tion,” Deyals­ingh was crit­i­cal as he said, “Of the cas­es that make it to court, on­ly two per cent re­sult in an ac­tu­al con­vic­tion.”

He warned, “Hu­man be­ings are crea­tures of habit and those who es­cape con­vic­tion, may turn to oth­er chil­dren for their sex­u­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion.”

“A fa­ther who abus­es his daugh­ter would, if not stopped, turn to oth­er sib­lings or even nieces and oth­er in­no­cent chil­dren.”

A vis­i­bly up­set Deyals­ingh said, “There are many more cas­es of this hid­den epi­dem­ic of abuse.”

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“In 2008, a study on school chil­dren ex­hibit­ing vi­o­lent be­hav­iour found that 40 per cent men­tioned sex­u­al abuse in the home and in 2002, a study done in To­ba­go on 676 young adults found that 13 per cent of those be­tween ten and 14 years had sex, and six per cent had sex with a fa­ther, a step­fa­ther, an un­cle, or old­er peo­ple.”

De­clar­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties had to stop abuse in the em­bry­on­ic stage, Deyals­ingh sug­gest­ed a re­newed role for par­ents and guardians as he said these per­sons had to start “singing” at the first in­ap­pro­pri­ate touch - to let chil­dren know it is wrong and al­so for oth­ers to be aware and for the per­pe­tra­tors to know they are be­ing mon­i­tored.

Ap­plaud­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s “Good Touch, Bad Touch” pro­gramme which uti­lizes posters and teach­ing tools to help chil­dren dis­tin­guish what is a good touch and what is a bad touch, Deyals­ingh rec­om­mend­ed us­ing the al­pha­bet and count­ing, “So we teach them that cer­tain ar­eas of the body are pri­vate.”

He said, “This ed­u­ca­tion­al tool can be done in a child friend­ly way and adapt­ed to dif­fer­ent ages. All ear­ly learn­ing cen­ters should be man­dat­ed to teach this.”

Mean­while, Deyals­ingh al­so ex­pressed con­cern over moth­ers who turn a blind eye to cer­tain sit­u­a­tions be­cause of fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments.

He said, “Moth­ers have to look out, not for stranger dan­ger but fa­ther mo­les­ter…the nephew…the un­cle.”

“You have to look out for your new boyfriend. The man could be go­ing through you to get at your daugh­ters.”

In his dai­ly prac­tice, Deyals­ingh ad­mit­ted, “Part of the pain my pa­tients have is not get­ting the sup­port of their moth­ers.”

He in turn urged, “If you want to be a moth­er…you have a du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to your child. If a child un­der your care is al­lowed to be sex­u­al­ly abused and you re­main silent, this should be a crime as you have been neg­li­gent in your du­ty.”

“If per­sons are say­ing moth­ers/par­ents should be blamed for al­low­ing their young sons to join a gang…then so too, if they al­low their daugh­ters to be raped. I have seen too many moth­ers hav­ing chil­dren with dif­fer­ent fa­thers and not pro­tect­ing these in­no­cent be­ings whom God has put in our care. Be­ing a par­ent is a priv­i­lege.”

Deyals­ingh al­so urged par­ents to re­as­sure chil­dren so they know that de­spite speak­ing out, they would be safe as some abusers use threats and even at­tempt to hurt oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers in or­der to make them keep qui­et.

He said in this re­gard, “If any one even touch­es them in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, they would raise an alarm. They could tell their teacher, aunt or some­one…and once in­formed, they can send so­cial work­ers in­to the home so the fa­ther, un­cle, broth­er or neigh­bor would know he is be­ing mon­i­tored and this can be one way to stop this be­hav­ior be­fore it es­ca­lates. We would be em­pow­er­ing our chil­dren.”

Propos­ing to bring leg­is­la­tion to the Par­lia­ment to en­sure these rec­om­men­da­tions be­come law, Deyals­ingh ex­pressed un­cer­tain­ty as to why some moth­ers were not com­ing for­ward to re­port in­ci­dents of abuse.

He cit­ed shame, fear, cul­tur­al ac­cep­tance, and fi­nan­cial de­pen­dence as the four ma­jor fac­tors in­hibit­ing the process of re­port­ing.

Shame he claimed while un­der­stand­able, was un­ac­cept­able.

He ex­plained, “This would de­stroy many fam­i­lies and they want to main­tain their sta­tus quo, but fail­ure to stop this could pro­duce an in­di­vid­ual who is psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly de­stroyed.”

“To force these delin­quent moth­ers to act, I sup­port putting their names in the sex­u­al of­fend­ers reg­is­ter as this would be a big­ger shame that could mo­ti­vate oth­er moth­ers to come for­ward. Put them in as non re­porters just as oth­er pro­posed pro­fes­sions like doc­tors, nurs­es, and teach­ers who fail to re­port sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty in chil­dren.”

In the case of fear, Deyals­ingh said, “Some do not com­plain be­cause they are scared of the man, but just as we en­cour­age the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tim to flee and go to a safe house, the same prin­ci­ple can be ap­plied here.”

Claim­ing it was time to change ac­cept­ed norms and prac­tices, Deyals­ingh said it was time to stop the cul­tur­al ac­cep­tance of sit­u­a­tions where some moth­ers them­selves were abused and see noth­ing wrong with this and down­play it to their daugh­ters.

Last­ly, he called for the im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion of sit­u­a­tions where step-fa­thers/boyfriends are al­lowed to in­ter­fere with young girls be­cause he show­ers the moth­er with gifts and mon­ey.

He said, “This ma­ter­nal pimp­ing must be pun­ished.”

De­clar­ing that 2,500 teenage preg­nan­cies a year was too much, Deyals­ingh spoke of the chal­lenges he faced with pa­tients who present with a men­tal ill­ness brought on by child sex­u­al abuse - in­clud­ing the lack of be­lief by fam­i­ly mem­bers who ac­cuse the pa­tient of imag­in­ing things be­cause of men­tal ill­ness and not be­lieve it is the abuse which caused the ill­ness.

An­oth­er im­ped­i­ment to a vic­tim’s quest for jus­tice he said, was the lack of ac­tion/abil­i­ty to reach in­to the past to pun­ish these of­fend­ers.

He said, “As it stands now, we de­pend on oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers to come for­ward but this is not al­ways re­li­able.”

“We need some­thing like the ‘Me Too’ move­ment to name and shame these shad­ow fig­ures..if on­ly to warn oth­ers to watch out for these men who may have gone on to new vic­tims.”

Deyals­ingh con­clud­ed, “The ex­ist­ing sys­tem is fail­ing our chil­dren.”

“We have to give a col­lec­tive apol­o­gy to all those per­sons wait­ing years for jus­tice as many cas­es take ten years and more to be heard. But even as we wait, we need to reach out to the ma­jor­i­ty those of be­ing raped and rav­aged by their rel­a­tives in their homes and who can do noth­ing. These are the silent vic­tims we need to help.”

BOX

What Is Child Abuse?

Signs of abuse can in­clude but are not lim­it­ed to phys­i­cal, sex­u­al or emo­tion­al mal­treat­ment of a child un­der the age of 18 which can re­sult in harm, the po­ten­tial to cause harm or the threat of harm.

Child abuse can take place in a child’s home or in the or­gan­i­sa­tions, schools or com­mu­ni­ties of which the child is a part.

Types of abuse in­clude sex­u­al, phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal, and ne­glect.

SIDE­BAR

Pres­i­dent of Int’l Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan is out­raged yet sad­dened over the num­ber of re­port­ed in­ci­dents of child abuse in T&T as quot­ed by the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty (CA).

CA of­fi­cials es­ti­mat­ed that close to 18,000 in­ci­dents had been re­port­ed since the CA be­gan op­er­at­ing in 2015.

The IWRN said, “It sim­ply means that every day, 12 chil­dren are abused in our na­tion.”

La­belling the epi­dem­ic of child abuse a “na­tion­al cri­sis,” Isaac-Rat­tan said while CA had to be com­mend­ed for its in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies, “Gaps still ex­ist re­gard­ing the han­dling of these cas­es and ur­gent ques­tions must be an­swered.”

“Yes, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is do­ing some work but we be­lieve in­ter­ven­tions are not holis­tic enough to re­al­ly solve the prob­lem.”

Isaac-Rat­tan chal­lenged the CA to an­swer if af­fect­ed mi­nors were tak­en away from their tox­ic spaces while the mat­ter is be­ing as­sessed; list what checks and bal­ances were in place to en­sure that the vic­tims are pro­tect­ed in their new en­vi­ron­ment; in­di­cate what type of mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion frame­work was in place to en­sure holis­tic heal­ing of vic­tims; con­firm what pun­ish­ment the abusers face; re­veal if there is a coun­sel­ing/heal­ing mech­a­nism in place to treat with vic­tims; pro­vide an up­date on if a sex-crime court will be set up to deal with these mat­ters swift­ly and fair­ly; and what steps were be­ing tak­en to stop the abusers from con­tin­u­ing these acts against oth­er cit­i­zens.

She al­so ques­tioned if chil­dren were be­ing ed­u­cat­ed enough to know and speak out if they were be­ing abused.

A fired-up Isaac-Rat­tan said while T&T did not need to rein­vent the wheel, as a so­ci­ety - T&T had to strength­en its op­er­a­tions by adopt­ing best prac­tices from in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions such as the Cana­di­an Cen­tre for Child Pro­tec­tion and the Pre­ven­tion Child Sex­u­al Abuse net­work in the US.