Akash Sama­roo

Staff at the St Jude’s Home for Girls are plead­ing for pro­tec­tion af­ter a care­giv­er was as­sault­ed dur­ing a failed at­tempt by two res­i­dents to es­cape the Bel­mont com­pound over the week­end.

The in­ci­dent at the home has been con­firmed by Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in charge of Gen­der Af­fairs Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (CATT), which said a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion is now in progress.

Guardian Me­dia was told the vic­tim was su­per­vis­ing 13 girls at the “In­take House” on the St Jude’s com­pound on Sat­ur­day when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

This house is re­served for res­i­dents who are now en­ter­ing the sys­tem and are in need of as­sess­ment. A source, who did not want to be named, said two of the girls asked to use the wash­room and then launched their es­cape bid.

“When they ex­it­ed the toi­let, they would have been fac­ing the back of the care­giv­er. They snuck up be­hind her with a pot and a toi­let tank cov­er, then they would have hit her twice on her head, which start­ed to bleed,” the source said.

Based on pic­tures sent to Guardian Me­dia, both ob­jects broke on im­pact with the woman’s head.

Guardian Me­dia was told the in­tent was to ren­der the care­giv­er un­con­scious so that the girls could ac­quire the keys for the com­pound’s back gate. How­ev­er, their plan failed.

“They tried to lock the doors on her (the care­giv­er) but she man­aged to get to the door­way and called the se­cu­ri­ty for help,” the source added.

Guardian Me­dia was told res­i­dents at the In­take House act out in a vi­o­lent man­ner at times due to the ad­just­ment of mov­ing from an en­vi­ron­ment where they had their free­dom to one where they must sur­ren­der their cel­lu­lar phones and go to bed at a spec­i­fied time.

One of the at­tack­ers was re­cent­ly sent to the home af­ter post­ing a video to so­cial me­dia hold­ing a knife and threat­en­ing to harm a rel­a­tive.

This is al­so not the first time the cov­er for a toi­let tank was used to at­tack a work­er. A spokesman said one of the hous­es at St Jude’s has no cov­ers on any of the toi­let tanks due to it be­ing weaponised in the past.

The spokesman al­so con­firmed the vic­tim has been strug­gling with her in­juries and suf­fer­ing from se­vere headaches.

“They couldn’t even do the stitch­es on the day of the in­jury be­cause of the bleed­ing, they had to drain the wound first,” the source said.

The spokesman said un­for­tu­nate­ly, the threat of vi­o­lence is some­thing all work­ers deal with at the in­sti­tu­tion.

“Some peo­ple come to work here and in two weeks they leave say­ing they can’t han­dle it,” the source said.

The spokesman said staff mem­bers are not trained to deal with chil­dren in need of su­per­vi­sion or “vi­o­lent” chil­dren.

The home was high­light­ed in the 2021 Ju­dith Jones-led in­ves­tiga­tive re­port in­to chil­dren’s homes, where abuse of res­i­dents was not­ed as an is­sue.

How­ev­er, page 44 of that re­port stat­ed that staff at St Jude’s were “not trained to han­dle re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion in girls in pol­i­cy or re­sponse meth­ods in their man­u­als and the staff are not trained to deal with the ex­treme be­hav­iours.”

But a spokesman said man­age­ment tries to paint a dif­fer­ent pic­ture of the sit­u­a­tion.

“When they (man­age­ment) talk to the Min­is­ter, they will make it look like all is well, and that is wrong. The in­sti­tu­tion needs to be more ac­count­able and se­ri­ous ad­just­ments must be made,” the spokesman said.

The source said what is even more fright­en­ing is that noth­ing sparked the vi­o­lence last Sat­ur­day and the at­tack was an am­bush.

“It wasn’t like there was an ar­gu­ment with the res­i­dents, they just asked to use the toi­let, so it’s not like she was try­ing to de-es­ca­late, this was pre­med­i­tat­ed and it was her against 13 chil­dren,” the source said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy replied via text mes­sage, say­ing: “I re­ceived the re­port on the in­ci­dent. I em­pathise with the team mem­ber who was in­jured, as well as those staff and chil­dren who wit­nessed the in­ci­dent and were trau­ma­tised. The nec­es­sary ther­a­peu­tic in­ter­ven­tion will be made avail­able. I am aware that some chil­dren can be­come vi­o­lent; I have wit­nessed it first-hand dur­ing a vis­it to the fa­cil­i­ty. We will con­tin­ue to work with the team at St Jude’s to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of staff and res­i­dents.”

The Min­is­ter was al­so asked for spe­cif­ic in­ter­ven­tions with re­gard to safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty but did not re­spond.

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty mean­while said it is cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ing sup­port to the home and had re­port­ed the in­ci­dent im­me­di­ate­ly to the po­lice.

“The au­thor­i­ty con­demns all acts of vi­o­lence against staff and is pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tion to the home,” it said.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2021 Ju­dith Jones re­port, St Jude’s is an un­li­censed fa­cil­i­ty with 56 girls in its care and ful­ly fund­ed by the State.