Eighty per cent of crimes of abuse against chil­dren re­port­ed to the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, (TTPS), are sex­u­al.

This is ac­cord­ing to Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice Natasha George, who al­so said more and more chil­dren are now re­port­ing their abuse and the per­pe­tra­tors.

Via a tele­phone in­ter­view, George was re­spond­ing to the ques­tion of whether or not the TTPS had seen an in­crease late­ly, in re­ports of sex­u­al abuse against mi­nors.

She, how­ev­er, could not state if the pan­dem­ic and the fact that chil­dren were at home due to school clo­sure since March, had a keen role to play in this in­crease.

She said that per­cent­age of re­ports had been steady for some time now when one looked at the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­ods passed.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly quite a large per­cent­age of our re­sources have been at­tend­ing to sex­u­al of­fences,” said George.

She said the CPU was cre­at­ed in 2015 and as a new unit, there were lit­tle sta­tis­tics or fig­ures to re­ly on, but as time passed, and peo­ple be­came more fa­mil­iar with the unit, re­ports be­gan fil­ter­ing in.

But it was the TTPS’s so­cial me­dia ac­counts and the TTPS app, which George said had led to break­throughs be­ing made in vic­tims mak­ing re­ports.

“Our com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment has been reach­ing out to per­sons via Face­book and via the TTPS app. I would tell you with­in re­cent times, we have been get­ting re­ports via the app and Face­book es­pe­cial­ly from chil­dren. So chil­dren are find­ing more in­ge­nious ways of mak­ing re­ports.”

High­light­ing an ac­tu­al in­ci­dent as an ex­am­ple, George said a child via the TTPS’s Face­book Mes­sen­ger ac­count, re­port­ed be­ing phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed by a men­tal­ly ill per­son in the house, but was afraid to tell the moth­er.

She said when of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the house; the moth­er was com­plete­ly un­aware of what had hap­pened in her own house un­til of­fi­cers were knock­ing on the door.

She said too of­ten the TTPS have gone to par­ents and told them what has hap­pened and the re­sponse was one of shock.

“I think par­ents are too busy work­ing and they don’t stop long enough to lis­ten to them to hear what is go­ing on,” said George.

Of the in­stances where a par­ent or care­tak­er was aware of an on­go­ing abuse to a child and did noth­ing, George said if this is found to be true, that per­son is charged for fail­ing to act.

She said of­ten when a vic­tim was in­ter­viewed, it was dis­cov­ered the abuse was not a one-off sit­u­a­tion rather the vic­tim had been re­peat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly abused by his or her per­pe­tra­tor over a pe­ri­od lead­ing up to the ac­tu­al re­port.

“That is the prob­lem with a lot of our vic­tims. It takes them a while be­fore they even have the strength to come for­ward and re­port it,” said George.

To pro­nounce on whether there was an in­crease in re­ports dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, George said, it would be dif­fi­cult to say.

“Again, be­cause of the fact, that a lot of the re­ports when we would have elicit­ed in­for­ma­tion from the chil­dren, they would tell you it was not the first time. It has been hap­pen­ing three, four years.”

Re­spond­ing to the ques­tion on what was the de­ter­rent in mak­ing these re­ports, George said there were in­stances where the vic­tims were fear­ful—not al­ways due to di­rect threats by the per­pe­tra­tor.

She al­so stat­ed vic­tims would say they did not say any­thing be­cause they felt no one would be­lieve them or they were even ashamed to say any­thing un­til they’ve reached an un­bear­able point and have to say some­thing.

“A lot of the times, most per­pe­tra­tors are known to the vic­tim and I know peo­ple tend to be up­set that we don’t put the faces of the sus­pects out there but it is to pro­tect our vic­tims. Be­cause we tell you who the sus­pect is, you’re def­i­nite­ly go­ing to know who our vic­tim is. And we want to pro­tect him or her as much as pos­si­ble, even if just a lit­tle bit” George ex­plained.

She added the pro­tec­tion of the vic­tim was para­mount as in some in­stances per­pe­tra­tors might be a broth­er, fa­ther or sis­ter.

The is­sue of sex crimes against chil­dren reared its head once again with re­ports of a 68-year-old church el­der from Curepe be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged for sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing a 13-year-old girl, the ar­rest and charge of a 52-year-old fa­ther for the al­leged sex­u­al abuse of his 14-year-old daugh­ter and the ar­rest of a 34-year-old sus­pect­ed pae­dophile from the Care­nage area who was al­leged to have sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed an 11-year-old boy.

In that in­stance, the man was se­vere­ly beat­en by res­i­dents of the area known as Scor­pi­on Al­ley, be­fore be­ing tied naked to a util­i­ty pole.

The man who had been hos­pi­talised since the in­ci­dent was said to have re­gained con­scious­ness af­ter re­ports of him slip­ping in­to a co­ma.

All three in­ci­dences oc­curred in just one week.