Af­ter six days in po­lice cus­tody, the man ac­cused of mo­lest­ing more than 30 boys at the St Do­minic’s Chil­dren’s Home in Bel­mont has been charged.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were yes­ter­day giv­en the green light by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to charge the 51-year-old in re­la­tion to the forced bug­gery, se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy and sex­u­al as­sault of three of his al­leged vic­tims.

On Fri­day, the man was ar­rest­ed at the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal by Sgt Bap­tiste and Woman Cor­po­ral De­onar­ine of the TTPS Child Pro­tec­tion Unit.

On that day, three wit­ness­es pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied the man as their al­leged abuser.

The man, who was a staff mem­ber at the St Do­minic’s Home when the al­leged abuse oc­curred, was in­ter­viewed by po­lice over the week­end in the pres­ence of his sis­ter. He told of­fi­cers he too was a vic­tim of abuse at the home.

Six for­mer wards of the St Do­minic’s Chil­dren’s Home have so far giv­en state­ments to the po­lice about abuse at the hands of the sus­pect.

The po­lice reached out to oth­ers but they have de­clined to be in­ter­viewed, in­di­cat­ing that they have moved on with their lives and have fam­i­lies whom they do not want to find out what they went through at the home.

The sus­pect’s al­leged preda­to­ry be­hav­iour was out­lined in the 1997 re­port of the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed Robert Sab­ga Task Force that re­viewed the op­er­a­tions of chil­dren’s homes and in­sti­tu­tions in T&T.

“A male mem­ber of staff (who was once a res­i­dent there) is al­leged to have per­pe­trat­ed mul­ti­ple sex­u­al acts with a num­ber of chil­dren up to the lat­ter part of 1995. These in­clud­ed forced bug­gery; en­cour­ag­ing boys to have sex with each oth­er while he watched; strip­ping and beat­ing the old­er boys while the younger ones looked on; en­cour­ag­ing the chil­dren to ‘play’ with him, etc,” the re­port stat­ed.

“He re­port­ed­ly hit a child who once told about the ‘rough play’ at night. One young boy fi­nal­ly dis­closed all and the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor was con­front­ed. He ad­mit­ted his ac­tions and ex­plained that he too had been abused at St Do­minic’s,” the re­port added.

The home’s man­ag­er asked the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor to vol­un­teer his res­ig­na­tion that day, and all his leave and en­ti­tle­ments were paid to him in full.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia two weeks ago, the man de­nied the al­le­ga­tions and said a lot can change in 20 years.

This, how­ev­er, did not sit well with one of his ac­cusers, who told the T&T Guardian he was “ap­palled, an­gry, up­set, and hurt” by the man’s com­ments.