Just one day to mark 24 years since he went miss­ing on May 23, 1998, hor­ri­ble mem­o­ries of the bru­tal mur­der of Akiel Cham­bers have resur­faced. When the chair­man of the 1997 task force in­to the abuse of wards at chil­dren's homes, Robert Sab­ga, linked Akiel's death to a pae­dophile ring last week, it cre­at­ed more heartache, an­guish and pain for his fam­i­ly who have been wait­ing in vain for jus­tice.

Sab­ga, speak­ing in an on­line in­ter­view from his home in Cana­da, said that an in­di­vid­ual who was in­volved in a pae­dophile ring 25 years ago and holds a very high of­fice in T&T to­day was linked to Akiel's case. He did not call the per­son's name.

But in Bel­mont, last Wednes­day, Akiel's aunt Rose­marie Seaton–his fa­ther, Rawle Cham­bers's sis­ter–broke down in tears as she stood be­hind her bur­glar-proof win­dow. She said the rev­e­la­tion and resur­fac­ing of her nephew's mur­der in the me­dia and on so­cial plat­forms has on­ly cre­at­ed ag­i­ta­tion and re­opened wounds that nev­er healed.

Akiel, 11, went miss­ing at the home of busi­ness­man Charles James at Bal­a­ta Ter­race, in up­scale Hale­land Park, Mar­aval, where his then-wife, An­nelore James, had host­ed a pool par­ty to cel­e­brate the 11th birth­day of their daugh­ter Carie. Akiel's body was found a day lat­er, on May 24, in their pool.

A bro­ken and emo­tion­al Seaton re­spond­ing to Sab­ga's rev­e­la­tion said, "I can't take it. It is too much. The stress is killing me...it hurt­ing me in­side. Every­thing is be­ing re­hashed. Noth­ing will come out of this.

"I don't even want to call Akiel's fa­ther in Eng­land to tell him what go­ing on in Trinidad. This will on­ly up­set him and bring him fur­ther pain and grief." Seaton said.

"When will it end? Gosh, when will it end? When will this mat­ter be put to rest?" she asked weari­ly.

An el­der­ly male came to the win­dow and coaxed her to be calm.

Wip­ing away tears, Seaton walked away say­ing she could not speak fur­ther.

Akiel's un­cle Lin­don Cham­bers, who lives else­where, said the fam­i­ly has been try­ing to for­get the ug­ly past even though they still live in agony every day.

"The mem­o­ries are hard to erase even though my sis­ters and them have al­ready giv­en up on Akiel's mur­der af­ter that lengthy pe­ri­od of time...24 years. They just tell them­selves he's gone...he died and that is it. Noth­ing will come out of this," said Cham­bers.

Cham­bers said when they speak to Akiel's dad on the phone they try to avoid any dis­cus­sion about his son be­cause most times he is "de­spon­dent".

But the fam­i­ly nev­er ex­pect­ed to see scream­ing head­lines in the news­pa­pers and re­ports on so­cial me­dia about a pae­dophile ring in­volv­ing Akiel. This sunk their hearts fur­ther.

"To this day there has nev­er been clo­sure. We have to live with this." Cham­bers said they may go to their graves not know­ing who sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed and mur­dered Akiel.

"That is the hard­est part of deal­ing with this."

Akiel's un­cle was scep­ti­cal and felt this new rev­e­la­tion will go nowhere as the names of the peo­ple in­volved are not be­ing called.

Last week, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is called on Sab­ga to go to the po­lice with in­for­ma­tion on Akiel's death since he claimed to know the iden­ti­ty of the two peo­ple in­volved.

 Sab­ga said he would co­op­er­ate with the po­lice in its in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Director of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) David West.

Hope for jus­tice fad­ed

But for Seaton, Cham­bers and the rest of the fam­i­ly, their hope of jus­tice has fad­ed. And for good rea­sons. Af­ter Akiel's mat­ter was sent back to the po­lice for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions dur­ing the in­quest by coro­ner Sher­man Mc­Ni­cholls 18 years ago, it has been lan­guish­ing and re­mains a cold case.

But four years ago, 20 years af­ter the child's mur­der, there was a probe in­to Akiel's death by the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA). In May 2018, the PCA in a press re­lease promised to con­duct a probe in­to the con­duct of po­lice of­fi­cers tasked with in­ves­ti­gat­ing the death of Akiel pur­suant to Sec­tion 21(1) (c) of the PCA Act, Chap­ter 15:05. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volved a mon­i­tor­ing and au­dit­ing ex­er­cise.

The PCA probe found that ev­i­dence col­lect­ed dur­ing the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Akiel's mur­der is "no longer avail­able."

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion point­ed to poor polic­ing by ju­nior of­fi­cers and ne­glect and poor man­age­ment of the case by se­nior of­fi­cers who "failed to do their work."

The probe con­clud­ed that of­fi­cers in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions "can­not now be held to ac­count as they are ei­ther de­ceased or have re­tired from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice." Hence, "no dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion, if war­rant­ed, may be tak­en at this junc­ture." The of­fi­cers are now out of the PCA's re­mit, PCA Di­rec­tor David West said.

In ad­di­tion, "there is no avail­able ev­i­dence of the com­mis­sion of a crim­i­nal of­fence by a po­lice of­fi­cer," the probe re­vealed.

 West said for the Au­thor­i­ty, Akiel's mat­ter has been closed.

He be­lieves that if se­nior of­fi­cers had tak­en charge of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and not left it in the hands of their ju­niors, the per­pe­tra­tors might have been brought to jus­tice.

From what West has seen, "there is not much that can be done now to find the per­pe­tra­tors of this mat­ter un­less some­one comes for­ward and con­fess­es we are not go­ing to get the ev­i­dence."

The in­for­ma­tion on the PCA probe was con­tained in a one-page doc­u­ment head­lined "PCA state­ment on Akiel Cham­bers Au­dit."

It stat­ed that "fol­low­ing a re­view of the avail­able doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to the post mortem re­port, state­ments of per­sons who were present dur­ing the pool­side birth­day par­ty at which Cham­bers was last seen, re­ports of po­lice of­fi­cers who were in­volved in the ini­tial and cold case in­ves­ti­ga­tions as well as the ev­i­dence elicit­ed dur­ing the coro­nial pro­ceed­ings, the PCA con­clud­ed its ex­er­cise in De­cem­ber 2019."

The PCA said it was in­formed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this mat­ter are con­tin­u­ing by the TTPS's Cold Case Op­er­a­tional Team.

The PCA ad­vised any­one with per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion to fur­nish the TTPS "in the in­ter­est of bring­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tion to a stage of fi­nal­i­ty and, more im­por­tant­ly, al­low­ing the rel­a­tives and friends of Cham­bers (Akiel) to come to a full state of clo­sure."

West: it could have been a bet­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tion

Asked to com­ment fur­ther on the in­for­ma­tion that came be­fore them dur­ing the probe, West said "it could have been a bet­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I think the se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers left it too much for the ju­nior of­fi­cers to in­ves­ti­gate who did not have the ex­pe­ri­ence in in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

"The po­lice could have done their work. They could have brought peo­ple in for ques­tion­ing and in­ter­ro­gat­ed them if they were sus­pects or if they had any leads. It is not re­al­ly up to Mr Sab­ga, it is up to the TTPS at the time to have done a prop­er and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion."

Asked if he felt the po­lice had fall­en down on the job, West said "I would say the ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion was where it went wrong. Af­ter the in­quest by Sher­man Mc­Ni­cholls, the po­lice did try to then play catch up but at that point in time it was too late."

 West said his heart goes out to Akiel's fam­i­ly.

"I feel very sor­ry for the fam­i­ly, in that, up to now, they have not had any clo­sure in the mat­ter. We are not in a good place. I should say it is un­for­tu­nate that this mat­ter is still opened and has not been closed as yet by the po­lice. It is un­for­tu­nate."

Ques­tioned if any type of ac­tion can be tak­en against the po­lice of­fi­cers who were in­volved in the ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion, West said "..maybe from the TTPS if they have new ev­i­dence or if they re­open the mat­ter and rein­ter­view them again, they can do that. Again, they are civil­ians, it would be vol­un­tary, so they don't have to say any­thing. That is why I am say­ing it is un­for­tu­nate this has tak­en so long."

West said Akiel's per­pe­tra­tor/s could be liv­ing amongst us.

Former acting police commissioner Stephen Williams

Williams: The mat­ter nev­er came be­fore me

From 1998 (at the time of Akiel's mur­der) to 2003 Hilton Guy, now de­ceased, served as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams said dur­ing his tenure–2012 to 2018– Akiel's mat­ter nev­er came be­fore him.

Williams al­so said he was un­aware of the of­fi­cers who did the ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tions 24 years ago.

"Who­ev­er did that mat­ter I don't even know. That is a mat­ter since 1998."

Williams opt­ed not to speak about the ev­i­dence be­ing de­stroyed.

He ques­tioned, "What ev­i­dence was de­stroyed? When it was de­stroyed?"

He added, "All these things be­come con­tex­tu­al and for me to loose­ly speak about it...it is kind of un­fair."

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith last week de­nied he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion on Akiel's case which he did not act on. He said the most re­cent de­vel­op­ment in the case was the PCA's au­dit in­to the boy's death.

Former commissioner of police Gary Griffith.

When Akiel went miss­ing

Akiel's body was dis­cov­ered in a crouched po­si­tion, sub­merged, wear­ing red and white shorts when he was fished out of the pool at the James' home on May 24, 1998.

Akiel had gone miss­ing while at­tend­ing the pool par­ty. De­spite search­es be­ing con­duct­ed for him on the day of the par­ty (May 23), he was not found. His body was dis­cov­ered in the pool the fol­low­ing day.

Carie was Akiel's class­mate as they both at­tend­ed Black­man's Pri­vate School in Mar­aval.

Had he been alive, Akiel would have cel­e­brat­ed his 35th birth­day on Jan­u­ary 4.

Cham­bers lived with his aunt Va­lerie Pas­cal at Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, as his moth­er, Deb­o­rah, lived in Eng­land while his fa­ther resided in La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma.

Akiel's mur­der has left me scarred for life, tor­ment­ed–child wit­ness

One of the chil­dren who tes­ti­fied in the in­quest ad­mit­ted that Akiel's mur­der has left her scarred for life and tor­ment­ed.

Now, 35, the woman said she was still lost for words.

"I am still wait­ing to find out what the hell hap­pened be­cause that was my friend," she said, re­fer­ring to Akiel.

"I did not on­ly lose him but my whole child­hood was gone too. I am be­ing ac­cused and threat­ened on­line."

The threats she said stemmed from a re­cent post on Face­book ex­plain­ing how Akiel was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed by a group of men at the birth­day par­ty, then mur­dered and his body thrown in the pool by one of the par­ents the next morn­ing.

"The jour­nal­ist tagged me in the post. Half the stuff she is say­ing is wrong. They are lies. I am be­ing ha­rassed on­line and my phone is be­ing called non-stop. And I am be­ing threat­ened on­line."

Sherman McNicholls

The au­top­sies and in­quests

Two au­top­sies were con­duct­ed sep­a­rate­ly on Akiel's body by pathol­o­gists Dr Neville Jankey and Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes.

Ac­cord­ing to Jankey's state­ment, the au­top­sy was per­formed on May 25, 1998, at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Mor­tu­ary.

"The body was iden­ti­fied by Cham­bers' fa­ther, Rawle Cham­bers. Present were po­lice con­sta­bles Al­varez and Hus­bands of the Mar­aval Po­lice Sta­tion. The anus was pat­u­lous and the anal canal was very lax. I con­clud­ed from the find­ings that the child had been sub­ject­ed over a long pe­ri­od to re­peat­ed sex­u­al in­ter­course through the anus. I can­not say when was the last time there was sex­u­al in­ter­course.

"I didn't take any swabs from the anal canal to look for any sper­ma­to­zoa. I did not feel the in­ter­course was re­lat­ed di­rect­ly to the cause of death. The body had bathing trucks but no un­der­wear...as PC Hus­bands took away an ar­ti­cle of un­der­wear."

The sec­ond au­top­sy was per­formed on May 28, 1998, by Hughvon des Vi­gnes who not­ed that "sam­ples were tak­en from mi­cro­scop­ic ex­am­i­na­tions and swabs were tak­en of oral and anal cav­i­ties for mi­cro­scop­ic ex­am­i­na­tion as well." These sam­ples were de­stroyed af­ter two years.

Two in­quests in­to Akiel's death were al­so con­duct­ed. The first was dis­missed. In the sec­ond in­quest, then chief mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­colls, of­fi­ci­at­ing as coro­ner, heard the tes­ti­monies of stu­dents, par­ents and guests.

On Feb­ru­ary 18, 2004, Mc­Ni­cholls ruled that he was sat­is­fied Akiel did not drown ac­ci­den­tal­ly.

Peo­ple mi­grat­ed

In the years that fol­lowed Akiel's death, his fa­ther mi­grat­ed to Eng­land.

On Feb­ru­ary 5, 2006, An­nelore James, 59, lost her right leg when she stopped to help an ac­ci­dent vic­tim on the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

James was dri­ving when she saw a car slam in­to one of the con­crete pil­lars on the high­way and stopped to as­sist the dri­ver who was trapped in­side the car bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly. In try­ing to pull the dri­ver out of the ve­hi­cle, an­oth­er car crashed in­to James in­jur­ing her leg which doc­tors had to am­pu­tate.

She even­tu­al­ly di­vorced Charles James and moved to Cana­da.

Charles and an­oth­er wit­ness Trevor Craig­well al­so left the coun­try.

Rajiv Persad

At­tor­ney Per­sad: Wit­ness­es were not forth­com­ing enough in their re­spons­es to the court

 Ra­jiv Per­sad, one of the at­tor­neys who rep­re­sent­ed the Cham­bers fam­i­ly in the in­quest said he still lives with the hope that some­one will come for­ward with "use­ful, cred­i­ble and sub­stan­tial in­for­ma­tion" that will al­low the po­lice to con­duct their in­ves­ti­ga­tions ef­fec­tive­ly and bring clo­sure to this is­sue.

"The tools avail­able to the po­lice to­day are very dif­fer­ent from 24 years ago and while I ap­pre­ci­ate that the pub­lic may have very good rea­sons for look­ing the oth­er way or not get­ting in­volved, we have to re­alise that once we choose to adopt that at­ti­tude of in­dif­fer­ence, the abil­i­ty of the po­lice and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly will al­ways be hand­i­capped," he said.

Per­sad, on whether he had heard of a pae­dophile ring be­fore, said "this is the first time I am hear­ing about it."

He added that dur­ing the cor­ner's in­quest when the avail­able ev­i­dence was tak­en in the court, "there was a sus­pi­cion that some per­son or per­sons would have been re­spon­si­ble for the sex­u­al acts...from the post mortem...ap­peared to have been per­pe­trat­ed on the child."

He said no ma­te­r­i­al had es­tab­lished when the as­sault would have tak­en place in re­la­tion to Akiel.

"But the cir­cum­stance of the post mortem re­port cou­pled with the child be­ing found at the bot­tom of the pool in cir­cum­stances where the rea­son­able in­fer­ence to be drawn was that his body was placed in the pool by some­one un­known af­ter both the po­lice had thor­ough­ly searched the pool on the night of Akiel go­ing miss­ing, fol­lowed by the fact that the chil­dren liv­ing in the house had swum in the pool the fol­low­ing morn­ing, yet nev­er saw his body in the pool raised huge red flags that this child met his death in cir­cum­stances that to this day we still do not know."

Asked if names be­ing whis­pered as be­ing in an al­leged pae­dophile ring which Sab­ga spoke about can stand up as facts/ev­i­dence for the po­lice to restart their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Per­sad said it de­pends.

"It does not mat­ter whether it was whis­pered or shout­ed but what is im­por­tant is the sub­stance of the in­for­ma­tion. What we must not do is spec­u­late as to what the in­for­ma­tion is and who the in­for­ma­tion re­lates to."

Asked if he felt the Gov­ern­ment should re­tain a for­eign spe­cialised team to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Akiel's mur­der, Per­sad said he does not think this would make sense.

"First­ly, every day peo­ple lose loved ones to homi­cides that re­al­ly are be­yond trag­ic. I ap­pre­ci­ate that Akiel's death as Mar­tin Daly SC point­ed out years ago was a stain on our con­science.

"If I felt that it could help the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause there was good cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion avail­able that could move the in­ves­ti­ga­tion for­ward, then I might have sup­port­ed such a call to re­tain a for­eign spe­cialised team."

Asked if it was ever re­vealed in the in­quest who gave per­mis­sion for the ev­i­dence to be de­stroyed two years af­ter Akiel's death, Per­sad said he was un­sure what spe­cif­ic ev­i­dence was be­ing re­ferred to. "But dur­ing the course of the in­quest, I do not think it ever came out as to who gave per­mis­sion for any ev­i­dence to be de­stroyed two years af­ter Akiel's death or whether the in­quest was aware that it had been de­stroyed."

Did the po­lice do enough with their in­ves­ti­ga­tion to bring the per­pe­tra­tor/s to jus­tice?

Per­sad said he was not in a po­si­tion to an­swer that ques­tion.

Dur­ing the in­quest, Per­sad said, the coro­ner had the task of ques­tion­ing peo­ple to de­ter­mine whether the death was un­nat­ur­al which he found, but based on the ma­te­r­i­al be­fore him, "it was very dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy any one per­son or per­sons re­spon­si­ble for the child's death."

In those cir­cum­stances, Per­sad said, "the law of T&T al­lows the coro­ner to re­fer to the in­quest af­ter it is closed to the Com­mis­sion­er of the Po­lice for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"The ob­vi­ous gaps were that the coro­ner at the time of do­ing his in­quest was lim­it­ed to the in­for­ma­tion that was pro­vid­ed to him when he did the in­quest. If it is that there was knowl­edge by per­sons that there was a pae­dophile ring in ex­is­tence and that there was some link be­tween the ex­is­tence of that ring and the trag­ic death of this child, then it is a tragedy that the per­sons with that in­for­ma­tion are on­ly rais­ing it 24 years af­ter the child's death."

Pressed if some peo­ple who tes­ti­fied in the in­quest with­held in­for­ma­tion for fear of reper­cus­sions, Per­sad said while he had no ba­sis to sug­gest that "I felt that some of the wit­ness­es could have been more forth­com­ing in their re­spons­es to the court."

How does he feel know­ing that Akiel's death con­tin­ues to re­main un­solved and the per­pe­tra­tor/s re­mains un­touched?

"The same way that I feel when you re­alised that the great ma­jor­i­ty of mur­ders and crimes of vi­o­lence com­mit­ted on a dai­ly ba­sis go un­de­tect­ed with­out our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem be­ing able to deal ef­fec­tive­ly with the sit­u­a­tion."

Per­sad said he hopes that Akiel's fam­i­ly will one day get jus­tice.

Ques­tions sent via What­sApp to act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ja­cob and As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Joanne Archie on Thurs­day were not an­swered.