Akash Sama­roo

An­oth­er re­port from 1997 on abuse at chil­dren’s homes is now in the pub­lic do­main but this time its con­tents al­lege an “un­der­ground net­work” in­volv­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials that sought to cov­er up and pro­tect abusers.

The five-page doc­u­ment, writ­ten by Robert Sab­ga, is ti­tled “Chair­man’s Re­port” and has a warn­ing that said, “This doc­u­ment con­tains sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion and is in­tend­ed for Cab­i­net Eyes On­ly.”

This re­port was not at­tached to the 1997 Robert Sab­ga re­port and sent at the time to then-Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment Manohar Ram­saran.

How­ev­er, 25 years lat­er, Sab­ga re­leased its con­tents dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Wednes­day with host Ja­son Williams

“I’m go­ing to give you some­thing that no­body has ever seen,” Sab­ga told Williams while hold­ing the doc­u­ment up to the cam­era.

“The on­ly peo­ple who ever saw this was the Cab­i­net, not even the oth­er mem­bers of the task force,” he said

Sab­ga said he fi­nal­ly re­leased the re­port to not on­ly show the “tremen­dous duress” his in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee faced dur­ing that time but to al­so alert Child and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy that she faces an up­hill bat­tle as they at­tempt to make homes safer for chil­dren.

“Recog­nise that there are forces with­in the sys­tem that are work­ing against her, the Chair­man’s Re­port iden­ti­fies those,” Sab­ga said as a mes­sage to Web­ster-Roy dur­ing the in­ter­view with Williams.

The re­port makes sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions. In its con­clu­sion, it tells then-min­is­ter Ram­saran that “...all of the Task Force mem­bers, my­self in­clud­ed, are unan­i­mous in the be­lief that some­thing is not right in­side the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment. I don’t know pre­cise­ly what that “some­thing” is, but I be­lieve it ought to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.”

Sab­ga said he had hoped that the doc­u­ment would pro­vide some start­ing points to fig­ure out where the cor­rup­tion stems from.

Sab­ga’s first is­sue was with some of the com­mit­tee mem­bers on his in­ves­tiga­tive team who were at the time at­tached to the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry.

He said the task force mem­bers were be­ing rou­tine­ly bad­gered and in­tim­i­dat­ed by a se­nior min­istry of­fi­cial, who kept de­mand­ing in­for­ma­tion on the move­ments and de­lib­er­a­tions of the task force.

Sab­ga said of­ten­times, homes they vis­it­ed seemed to have known of their ar­rival be­fore­hand.

“Giv­en the amount of in­trigue and ‘comess’ that we un­cov­ered in many of these homes, it is not in­con­ceiv­able that this ‘net­work’ was in part re­spon­si­ble for the ef­fec­tive track­ing of the move­ments and pro­ceed­ings of the task force,” he said.

The re­port al­so stat­ed that there were dis­crep­an­cies in the re­cruit­ment and em­ploy­ment sys­tem in the larg­er homes, where­in peo­ple em­ployed in one in­sti­tu­tion were some­how able to po­si­tion them­selves favourably in oth­ers.

Un­der a sec­tion ti­tled “The per­ma­nent sec­re­tary–Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment,” Sab­ga said that the se­nior min­istry of­fi­cial “ob­ject­ed strong­ly to the task force ac­cess­ing in­for­ma­tion from the min­istry files on the sub­ven­tions giv­en by the min­istry to the var­i­ous homes.”

Sab­ga said that the of­fi­cial did not want “out­side peo­ple” know­ing what was in the min­istry’s files. He said many files in the min­istry “sim­ply went miss­ing dur­ing this pe­ri­od.”

Child and Gender Affairs Minister Ayanna Webster-Roy.↔

SHASTRI BOODAN

Sab­ga said this lim­it­ed their abil­i­ty to fol­low the pa­per trail with re­spect to sub­ven­tions, which was of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est, as they had un­cov­ered that one home was re­ceiv­ing a $75,000 an­nu­al sub­ven­tion while hav­ing no res­i­dents en­rolled.

The re­port al­so claimed that an­oth­er home was get­ting its full sub­ven­tion of $100,000 while in­flat­ing the num­ber of chil­dren in its care by 100 per cent.

It was part of what the doc­u­ment called “The Mon­ey Ma­chine.”

“The scam is sim­ple,” the re­port said, “Set up (or pro­pose to set up) some fa­cil­i­ty for which fund­ing is avail­able, ap­ply through the ‘right’ per­son (who will even as­sist in the prepa­ra­tion of doc­u­ments and the quan­tum of sub­ven­tion de­sired), and the ap­pli­ca­tion will be grant­ed for a per­cent­age of that quan­tum.”

The Chair­man’s Re­port went on to say, “The long and short of all of this is that the Min­istry– and by ex­ten­sion the Gov­ern­ment– is be­ing swin­dled from with­in with­out the knowl­edge of its Min­is­ter, and in plain sight at that.”

Dur­ing his in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sab­ga men­tioned for­mer Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo cu­ra­tor Hans Boos, who died in 2020.

Boos rose to in­famy for his 1993 ar­rest and charge for pos­ses­sion of porno­graph­ic video­tapes, pic­tures and mag­a­zines.

In 1996, he was ar­rest­ed by Mi­a­mi au­thor­i­ties and charged with dis­trib­ut­ing and act­ing in child pornog­ra­phy.

Sab­ga said the same “un­der­ground net­work” that pro­tect­ed Boos from fur­ther charges here in T&T, al­so pro­tect­ed abusers dur­ing his 1997 in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Mean­while, Sab­ga said in ret­ro­spect, he would not have han­dled the re­port any dif­fer­ent­ly de­spite crit­i­cism from some that more could have been done to en­sure jus­tice was served.

He said, “The po­lice knew, Manohar Ram­saran was asked by Hilton Guy (then Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice) for a copy and he phys­i­cal­ly gave it to him, the po­lice had this, what hap­pened?”

Sab­ga al­so con­firmed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has not ap­proached him to as­sist in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, de­spite the 1997 re­port be­ing key ev­i­dence in their cur­rent in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

He said he is al­so fed up of be­ing ac­cused of not do­ing enough with the re­port.

He al­so crit­i­cised Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who he said ac­cused him of sup­press­ing the 1997 re­port in or­der to se­cure a job in Cana­da as this coun­try’s High Com­mis­sion­er.

“Rub­bish! Camille, I’m telling you to your face that you are a liar,” Sab­ga said di­rect­ly to the cam­era.

But Sab­ga said he is dis­pleased that the con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing chil­dren’s safe­ty are now a “po­lit­i­cal foot­ball.”

And he urged the Gov­ern­ment to get se­ri­ous and deal with the is­sue at hand.

“Do bet­ter! You want to do some­thing! Do bet­ter! Stop the rub­bish.”

Sab­ga ac­cused Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy of be­ing ill-equipped for the task at hand and crit­i­cised her han­dling of the rev­e­la­tions made in the 2021 Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones re­port.

He said, “From every­thing I’ve read, she is out of her depth, she does not have a clue how to ad­dress this, her oth­er col­league from To­ba­go stood up in Par­lia­ment some years ago and said they’re in charge now, okay, you’re in charge now, deal with it. Stop the talk, deal with it. The so­lu­tions are straight­for­ward, any­one who’s named, sus­pend them im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Sab­ga said it is in­ex­cus­able to keep chil­dren in the same en­vi­ron­ment as the peo­ple who abused them.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy and shared the doc­u­ment that Sab­ga re­leased yes­ter­day.

She said, “This is the first time that I am see­ing the doc­u­ment you just shared with me,” Web­ster-Roy replied via What’s App.

“Notwith­stand­ing, I wish to re­as­sure the pub­lic that work con­tin­ues. My team and I have been fo­cus­ing our en­er­gies on the con­tent of the re­port and the rec­om­men­da­tions out­lined in the re­port pro­duced by the team com­mis­sioned by this ad­min­is­tra­tion to in­ves­ti­gate child abuse (the Ju­dith Jones re­port.) The task force has been meet­ing and as min­is­ter, I have reached out to var­i­ous en­ti­ties for sup­port.”

On April 29, a Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed Task Force was giv­en a six-week pe­ri­od to pro­duce an ac­tion plan based on the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Ju­dith Jones in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee in the 2021 re­port.

Guardian Me­dia was told by a task force mem­ber yes­ter­day that the plan should be sub­mit­ted on time. The six weeks come to an end on June 10.

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