Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

A five-year-old boy who at­tends the San­ta Cruz School for the Blind has al­leged­ly been sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed at the school and giv­en a din­ner mint by his at­tack­er to stop cry­ing. That mat­ter, oth­er in­ci­dents and safe­ty is­sues for male and fe­male stu­dents at the in­sti­tu­tion were raised by coun­cil mem­bers at the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain dur­ing two meet­ings-one held on June 30, the oth­er on Ju­ly 7. It is now be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by of­fi­cers of the San­ta Cruz Po­lice Sta­tion. The al­leged in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the boy, Sun­day Guardian learnt, was raised by coun­cil mem­ber Ivan Chu­ra­man at both meet­ings. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the young­ster was play­ing with a group of boys-ages sev­en to 14-when he was made to re­move his pants. One of the boys, po­lice said, sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed the child. The boy, po­lice said, screamed out and was giv­en a din­ner mint to stop cry­ing. Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the in­ci­dent, prin­ci­pal Der­rick Mundy told Sun­day Guardian he in­formed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion about in­ci­dents at the school. Mundy said: "Yes, I made a re­port to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion per­tain­ing to cer­tain in­ci­dents. I am not sup­posed to speak to the me­dia. Any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, please con­tact the min­istry."

Ma­haraj: Au­thor­i­ties fail­ing the dis­abled

But, first vice pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion Kr­ish­nath Ma­haraj has ac­cused the rel­e­vant heads of fail­ing to treat with the mat­ter ur­gent­ly. De­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as "a sad state of af­fairs," Ma­haraj called on the au­thor­i­ties to im­me­di­ate­ly in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent to pre­vent any re­cur­rence. Ma­haraj said on learn­ing of the in­ci­dent, he con­tact­ed the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent to in­form Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards, the pa­tron of the school, to in­form her about what was hap­pen­ing at the in­sti­tu­tion. "I spoke to an of­fi­cial at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent about the as­sault on the five-year-old boy and she ad­vised me to re­port the mat­ter to the po­lice. This was about three weeks ago. "I wrote to the of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. I al­so spoke to min­istry of­fi­cials and was told to write a re­port. I thought it was nec­es­sary to in­form Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards be­cause she is the pa­troness of this school. I called on the coun­cil on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions to ap­point a com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dents and to en­sure that there is no re­peat.

"We have to pro­tect the chil­dren. I am shocked over what has hap­pened. This is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter. We are sup­posed to be look­ing af­ter the wel­fare of these chil­dren and some peo­ple seem to take it as a joke," Ma­haraj stat­ed.

A re­port on the in­ci­dent, Ma­haraj said, is al­so ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Min­istry of the Peo­ple.How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said, be­cause of his dis­abil­i­ty, he is un­able to for­ward the re­port. "I in­formed of­fi­cials in Min­is­ter Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh's of­fice of the in­ci­dent and was told that I need­ed to sub­mit a re­port. The is­sue is, I am to­tal­ly blind and I have no­body to write a re­port for me to send to the min­is­ter," Ma­haraj ex­plained.

Ma­haraj said he had al­so raised the is­sue of lack of su­per­vi­sion for fe­male stu­dents dur­ing the night. "I learnt that on one oc­ca­sion there was no fe­male at­ten­dant at the school at nights. I urged coun­cil to ap­point a com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate why this hap­pened and to en­sure there is no such re­cur­rence. There are girls at the school. This mat­ter is of great con­cern to me be­cause we can­not have girls there alone with males. "The Min­is­ter needs to ur­gent­ly in­ves­ti­gate what is hap­pen­ing at this school be­cause we are re­spon­si­ble for these chil­dren. I have had to make the state­ment on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions if some peo­ple are on­ly in­ter­est­ed in get­ting a free lunch be­cause noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. It is a sad state of af­fairs," an up­set Ma­haraj added.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh: I'm will­ing to as­sist

Con­firm­ing that he was aware of the in­ci­dent, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the is­sue was raised with his per­ma­nent sec­re­tary. How­ev­er, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said be­cause Ma­haraj failed to sub­mit a re­port in writ­ing, it posed a chal­lenge. "At the time I was not in­formed of Ma­haraj's dis­abil­i­ty. He should have got­ten some­one to write the re­port for him." How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the re­cent re­align­ment of port­fo­lios, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said this in­sti­tu­tion no longer falls un­der his purview. "But re­gard­less, the min­istry is will­ing to as­sist in what­ev­er way is need­ed be­cause it in­volves a a dis­abled child. We are re­spon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing the na­tion's chil­dren," he added.