Derek Achong

With less than a month to the 15th an­niver­sary of the death of Akiel Cham­bers, Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Mar­lene Coudray said yes­ter­day that sev­er­al peo­ple had con­tact­ed her min­istry with new in­for­ma­tion that may fi­nal­ly help solve his mur­der.Coudray made the an­nounce­ment af­ter the Jeri­cho Project's an­nu­al Akiel Cham­bers Jus­tice for Chil­dren March at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Coudray, the fea­ture speak­er at the event, did not dis­close de­tails of the in­for­ma­tion she had re­ceived. She al­so could not con­firm whether the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Cham­bers' death had been re­opened by homi­cide de­tec­tives in light of the new in­for­ma­tion.On May 23, 1998, Cham­bers' body was found at the bot­tom of a swim­ming pool in Hale­land Park, Mar­aval, af­ter a birth­day par­ty for a class­mate. A post-mortem re­vealed he had been bug­gered and stran­gled. No one has been charged for the crime and his mur­der re­mains un­solved.

While speak­ing dur­ing a Par­lia­men­tary de­bate in Oc­to­ber last year, Coudray is­sued a call for the re­open­ing of the case.Speak­ing about the pub­lic re­sponse to that call yes­ter­day, Coudray said: "When I made the call, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised about the num­ber of peo­ple that came foward to help with in­for­ma­tion which may have been over­looked in the past."

Coudray said she was al­so ap­proached last week by a group who wished to make a film on Cham­bers' life. She said the film­mak­ers will be seek­ing per­mis­sion from his fam­i­ly be­fore pro­duc­tion be­gins.She as­sured the mod­est crowd at the event that her min­istry was work­ing on es­tab­lish­ing the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, as well as sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion, which would ad­dress chil­dren and child abuse.

"Vi­o­lence and abuse against chil­dren is not on­ly about leg­is­la­tion. We are to be our chil­dren's keep­ers. The abuse that is go­ing on, no amount of leg­is­la­tion is go­ing to pre­vent it," Coudray said. She al­so ad­dressed the is­sue of bul­ly­ing in schools, say­ing ac­tion must be tak­en to erad­i­cate it en­tire­ly."I want to ap­peal to all par­ents to­day to pay close at­ten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing with your chil­dren at school par­tic­u­lar­ly. We need to stop the bul­ly­ing and these acts against each oth­er," Coudray said.

Yes­ter­day's march at­tract­ed sev­er­al hun­dred sup­port­ers who made one lap around the sa­van­nah be­fore end­ing the event with a lec­ture ses­sion, which fea­tured Coudray, for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att and sev­er­al abuse vic­tims.As part of the march, par­tic­i­pants were giv­en plac­ards bear­ing the names and ages of de­ceased vic­tims of child abuse.Jeri­cho Project pres­i­dent Phillip Alexan­der hailed the event as a suc­cess and promised that it would be con­tin­ued next year.