Last week's news reports had Mrs Ayanna Webster-Roy, Member of Parliament for Tobago East, speaking passionately about the pervasiveness of child sexual abuse in Tobago, at the Break the Silence Against Child Sexual Abuse Conference held at the Scarborough General Hospital.
Webster-Roy, a Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, said too many cases of child sexual abuse are occurring in Tobago and called on Tobagonians "to break the silence and save a child." She was addressing a reportedly small group of concerned individual committed/committing to breaking the silence against child sexual abuse, out of disquiet for the increasing reported cases in Tobago.
Looking at global research, and given the history of secrecy and shame of sexual abuse, each time I see a prevalence figure I assume that it's representative only of what we know. I believe what we do not know and what we suspect would spiral the percentages to a quite worse experience in the world today than what the researchers are "finding".
The World Health Organisation (2013) says, "Studies indicate that 25 to 50 per cent of children around the world suffer from physical abuse, and that around 20 per cent of girls and five to ten per cent of boys experience sexual abuse.
To put the latter figures for boys in perspective, Harvard University's Journalist Resource site says, "The generally much-lower rate for males may be partially inaccurate; under-reporting may be particularly prevalent because of the 'possibility of greater shame and the fear that they will be labelled as homosexual (if the aggressor was another man) or weak (if the aggressor was a woman), which may combine with the fact that they are more often accused of having provoked the abuse."
This supports, in part, my suspicion about under-reporting of the figures.
While reference was made to the statistics in Tobago, there isn't much to draw on by way of research into the specific subject of child sexual abuse. Most of what we read are combined figures mostly gleaned from crime data. That could never be the whole story.
"In Tobago, we tend to keep quiet too much," said Webster-Roy. "Sometimes we need to step out of the mould, break the norm and break the silence because by breaking the silence we are going to give one young girl or one young boy the strength to speak up and speak out and say this is wrong and we have to change it."
And I was very pleased that she was politically correct in including our boys. Each time I wonder how prevalent sexual abuse is among males, I remember, disconcertingly, the tens of thousands of boys globally, most who never were able to speak until they were matured adults who, when courage attended, reported acts of sexual abuse involving fondling or unspecified abuse and numerous allegations of forced oral sex and intercourse.I'm referring of course, to the Roman Catholic church child sexual abuse scandal.
"We have to change it because the statistics in Tobago � we are a small community � it is too much. Every single incident of child abuse is wrong," Webster-Roy was reported to have said.
But changing the reporting of child or any type of sexual abuse requires an enabling community/system/country and so much more that we have already talked about in numerous internationally-funded papers which we store away awaiting a "champion" or "event".
We are well aware that entire communities would be disrupted if we were to seriously tackle the crime of sexual abuse, especially incest. Tobago may well be one of those places where crime has turned into culture and just how do you break the culture of a community of sexual relations in every permutation � legal and illegal - of the sexual enigma?
Breaking the silence is not a village issue, it is not a Tobago issue � though Tobago seems a very good place to start. Instead, it is a state concern, a national imperative for T&T to forge its own action within the framework of established international scholarship and proactivity on the matter.
It requires a government sensitised and fortified about the perils of the entire community of which the WHO (2013) said, "There are substantial consequences not only for the affected persons, but also for society as a whole, and these can no longer be ignored. This urgent situation has now been recognised in many countries, many of which are responding with a diverse range of prevention and intervention programmes. (WHO, 2013)
It requires heart and a serious commitment like we've never experienced here, with leadership in government and collaboration with governance, corporate citizenry, public sector, families, streets, towns, and villages, in every nook and cranny.
Webster-Roy is in a good place to affect the issue but it's not one that brings with it immediate rewards and gratification. It's a tough road to take; a hard battle to fight, starting with the fact that even victims and survivors would shun you and the idea of exposure; they'd rather live in anguish than seek intervention, carrying the shame that is not theirs to bear.