Hope­ful­ly, the heart­break felt by Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, trans­lates in­to strong ac­tion on be­half of the thou­sands of young­sters who have been bru­talised and trau­ma­tised in this coun­try’s dys­func­tion­al chil­dren’s homes. Oth­er­wise, she will earn the un­flat­ter­ing dis­tinc­tion of pre­sid­ing over a mas­sive ex­er­cise in fu­til­i­ty—or worse.

It will be a trav­es­ty if ac­count­abil­i­ty is not de­mand­ed from the pro­fes­sion­als who presided over the decades of abuse and ne­glect high­light­ed in the re­port by the Ju­dith Jones Task Force. Even worse if no crim­i­nal charges are laid against the per­pe­tra­tors of phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse against mi­nors who had the mis­for­tune of be­ing as­signed to these in­sti­tu­tions.

There must be con­se­quences, very se­vere con­se­quences, for the rapists, pae­dophiles and oth­er types of crim­i­nals who were al­lowed free rein in the chil­dren’s homes and child sup­port cen­tres high­light­ed in the re­port.

Al­though not a full Cab­i­net min­is­ter, Mrs Web­ster-Roy is in her sec­ond term han­dling an all-im­por­tant port­fo­lio, with the wel­fare of some of the coun­try’s most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens un­der her re­mit. That gives her over­sight of the fa­cil­i­ties where wards of the state suf­fered alarm­ing lev­els of mis­treat­ment.

It is al­so un­der her watch that 18 un­li­censed homes, where some of the worst cas­es of abuse oc­curred, con­tin­ued to op­er­ate at the ex­pense of tax­pay­ers as ben­e­fi­cia­ries of gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

As heart­bro­ken as she might be at the dis­turb­ing de­tails con­tained in the re­port, Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy should not have been tak­en com­plete­ly by sur­prise at what was ex­posed. It is not the first time that a ma­jor in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been done in­to chil­dren’s homes. Many of the find­ings in the lat­est re­port, ti­tled Safe­guard­ing Chil­dren in Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences and Child Sup­port Cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go, were al­so re­vealed in a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise 25 years ago.

As re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia last Feb­ru­ary, there was a ground-break­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion by a six-mem­ber team head­ed by Robert Sab­ga and in­clud­ing Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att, Hal­cy­on Yorke-Young, Bas­dai Gayadeen-Catch­pole, Va­lerie Al­leyne Rawl­ins and Si­ta Be­har­ry.

That team’s probe un­earthed lay­ers of cor­rup­tion and in­trigue. Young vic­tims shared ac­counts of be­ing groomed for the sex­u­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion of politi­cians, busi­ness peo­ple and staff mem­bers and there was ev­i­dence of phys­i­cal abuse, fraud and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of gov­ern­ment funds.

Al­though the re­port was hand­ed in to for­mer so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Manohar Ram­saran in 1997 and got ap­proval from the then Bas­deo Pan­day Cab­i­net for fur­ther ac­tion, to this day there have been no ar­rests and no one has been held ac­count­able.

Lit­tle has changed. If any­thing, con­di­tions are worse. The death, in March 2021, of a teenag­er who was mur­dered af­ter he and four oth­er boys ab­scond­ed from a child sup­port cen­tre op­er­at­ed by the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, was a re­cent trag­ic ex­am­ple.

Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in this mat­ter go well be­yond the com­mis­sion­ing of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and re­lease of find­ings. That was just the be­gin­ning. She must now en­sure that steps are tak­en to bring heal­ing and jus­tice for all these abused wards of the state and that sys­tems are put in place to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of this night­mare.

Her heart­break should, there­fore, in­spire her to trans­form T&T’s bro­ken child pro­tec­tion regime.