Twen­ty-five years af­ter the task force that he head­ed rec­om­mend­ed the for­ma­tion of a Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty to over­see and reg­u­late the op­er­a­tion of State-fund­ed Chil­dren’s homes across the coun­try, Robert Sab­ga says that Au­thor­i­ty is a “to­tal fail­ure.”

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian from his Cana­da home, Sab­ga said when he chaired a task force ap­point­ed by then-prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day in 1997, one of the strongest rec­om­men­da­tions was the cre­ation of a Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

That rec­om­men­da­tion and oth­ers were a part of the now-in­fa­mous Sab­ga re­port, which un­cov­ered phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse, malfea­sance, ne­glect and wide­spread mis­treat­ment of wards of the State at chil­dren’s homes.

Sab­ga’s team was put to­geth­er to in­ves­ti­gate what was tak­ing place in chil­dren’s homes across T&T af­ter sev­er­al ar­ti­cles about abuse and mis­treat­ment at those homes were pub­lished in the lo­cal me­dia. The task force com­prised Sab­ga, Hal­cy­on Yorke-Young, Vas­ant Ramkissoon, Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att, Toy Bas­dai Gayadeen-Catch­pole, Valar­ie Al­leyne-Rawl­ins and Si­ta Be­har­ry as mem­bers.  

“The Au­thor­i­ty was in­tend­ed to be an ob­jec­tive over­sight to make sure that what went on at the homes was prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed, to en­sure that the peo­ple who were hired at the homes were prop­er­ly qual­i­fied and the qual­i­ty of care was what was re­quired, that these kids were not ex­posed to ad­di­tion­al abuse or any of the oth­er things we ran across, and you would ex­pect that a prop­er­ly run au­thor­i­ty would not be per­mit­ting (that),” Sab­ga said.

But a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry lat­er, a com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley found wards of the State were still be­ing abused and mis­treat­ed at the var­i­ous homes across the coun­try.

The Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones-led com­mit­tee was tasked with con­duct­ing an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to child abuse at res­i­den­tial care in­sti­tu­tions for chil­dren, as well as in­ci­dents of ab­scond­ing from such in­sti­tu­tions in June 2021.

The team found the laws which were sup­posed to reg­u­late these homes and en­sure the safe­ty of chil­dren were “con­fus­ing” and made it dif­fi­cult for prac­ti­tion­ers in the field to fig­ure out the ap­plic­a­ble laws.

Sab­ga said in hind­sight, that he recog­nised that the Au­thor­i­ty as it came to be, did not ful­fil its man­date.

“In ret­ro­spect, the an­swer has to be no. Oth­er­wise, we wouldn’t be in this po­si­tion 25 years lat­er,” Sab­ga said.

Robert Sabga

'Fail­ure to safe­guard chil­dren'

But just how bad is the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion?

Ac­cord­ing to the Jus­tice Jones re­port, “There is a fail­ure to safe­guard chil­dren in res­i­den­tial care in­sti­tu­tions.”

The re­port al­so stat­ed, “It is clear from an ex­am­i­na­tion of the Crit­i­cal In­ci­dent Re­ports, site vis­its, and in­ter­views that the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is fail­ing to meet its statu­to­ry man­date as re­quired by Sec­tion 5 of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Act…”

The re­port not­ed the ar­eas of the Au­thor­i­ty’s fail­ure, in­clud­ing pro­vid­ing care, pro­tec­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of chil­dren and of in­ves­ti­gat­ing com­plaints of a fail­ure to com­ply with the stan­dards pre­scribed un­der the Chil­dren’s Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences, Fos­ter Care and Nurs­eries Act, 2000 and any in­ci­dent of mis­treat­ment of chil­dren in such places.

It found the Au­thor­i­ty failed to in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints or re­ports of mis­treat­ment of chil­dren, mon­i­tor com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, fos­ter homes and nurs­eries and con­duct pe­ri­od­ic re­views to de­ter­mine their com­pli­ance with such re­quire­ments as may be pre­scribed and to is­sue, sus­pend and re­voke li­cences of Chil­dren’s Homes and nurs­eries as pro­vid­ed un­der the Chil­dren’s Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences, Fos­ter Care and Nurs­eries Act, 2000.

 The re­port al­so stat­ed a lack of mon­i­tor­ing, reg­u­la­tion and struc­ture “pro­motes an en­vi­ron­ment for abuse and ab­scond­ing.”

The re­port al­so not­ed there was “no ef­fec­tive mech­a­nism for chil­dren to com­plain of abuse” with­in the sys­tem.

The Jus­tice Jones task force was com­mis­sioned af­ter five teenage boys ran away from one of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty care fa­cil­i­ties on March 20, 2021. Two of them, Semi­on Daniel, 15 and An­to­nio Fran­cois, 16, were am­bushed and killed days af­ter their es­cape. At the time, the two were with a group of oth­er teens at an aban­doned house in Des­per­lie Cres­cent in Laven­tille.

Sab­ga said he was alarmed when he found out the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty was run­ning its own homes.

“That was nev­er the in­ten­tion, you don’t need to be in the busi­ness of run­ning homes, the State has failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly in that re­gard. It is bet­ter served in hav­ing NGOs run the homes, but for God’s sake, pro­vide the nec­es­sary over­sight to make sure that those homes are prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed, li­cenced and that the peo­ple who are em­ployed there are qual­i­fied to be em­ployed there,” he said.

He said by run­ning its own homes, the Au­thor­i­ty was at­tempt­ing to be “chief, cook and bot­tle wash­er.”

“The av­enues for an abu­sive sys­tem, an abuse of process be­come ex­po­nen­tial when you are pro­vid­ing over­sight and you are in­volved in it,” Sab­ga said.

The find­ings of the Jus­tice Jones re­port seem to align with Sab­ga’s state­ments, as the task force found there was an in­ad­e­quate lev­el of su­per­vi­sion by the Au­thor­i­ty at the coun­try’s chil­dren’s homes.

As it re­lat­ed to sex­u­al abuse, the Jus­tice Jones task force al­so found there were cas­es of in­ac­tion when re­ports were made.

“The in­ves­ti­ga­tion team al­so found some cas­es that failed to iden­ti­fy the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the per­pe­tra­tor and the vic­tims, these sit­u­a­tions in­ferred in­ad­e­quate su­per­vi­sion, poor record-keep­ing and lack of au­dit­ing. This fail­ure re­sult­ed in the on­go­ing per­pe­tra­tion of these heinous acts,” the re­port not­ed.

At the Mar­garet Kistow Home, which has been in op­er­a­tion since Sab­ga’s task force was do­ing its work, the Jus­tice Jones com­mit­tee found that prop­er back­ground checks were not done on one mem­ber of staff who had pri­or al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse brought against him. The com­mit­tee al­so found that a man­ag­er at the fa­cil­i­ty in­vit­ed boys who had passed the age of 18 and were no longer al­lowed to live at the fa­cil­i­ty to live with him. In its rec­om­men­da­tions, the com­mit­tee called for the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of the fa­cil­i­ty and a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

  “The home al­lows chil­dren to spend week­ends in Ma­yaro with in­di­vid­u­als who are not the chil­dren’s le­gal guardians/par­ents and the in­for­ma­tion is logged in a spe­cial book. This prac­tice con­tra­venes the Au­thor­i­ty’s pol­i­cy,” the com­mit­tee found.

That find­ing was sim­i­lar to the find­ings of Sab­ga’s task force, which not­ed chil­dren were be­ing tak­en away from chil­dren’s homes by cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als.

“The task force prefers to as­sume that this refers to many mem­bers of NGOs and oth­er pri­vate com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed in­di­vid­u­als that go to the home reg­u­lar­ly in a care-giv­ing and oth­er­wise sup­port­ive role, rather than about some­thing more sin­is­ter which has been ru­moured from time to time in dis­cus­sions on child pros­ti­tu­tion in T&T,” Sab­ga’s task force wrote then.

The ru­mours of a child pros­ti­tu­tion ring be­ing run by of­fi­cials in high po­si­tions have been cir­cu­lat­ing since Dr Row­ley asked act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob to “find” and in­ves­ti­gate the find­ings of the Sab­ga re­port last week.

But Sab­ga said those al­le­ga­tions were not con­tained in the re­port.

“Noth­ing we got was any­thing more than anec­do­tal and this is where the nar­ra­tive falls off the ta­ble, you can­not act on any­thing that is on­ly anec­do­tal, we were not wit­ness­es to those acts, this was just based on things peo­ple were telling us. There is a very big dif­fer­ence be­tween some­thing some­body tells you and ac­tu­al ev­i­den­tiary proof of some­thing,” Sab­ga said. He said the child pros­ti­tu­tion ring was T&T’s “worst kept se­cret.” He dis­count­ed re­ports that the task force’s re­port had been “sani­tised” to avoid cer­tain in­for­ma­tion from be­ing made pub­lic.

“It was nev­er sani­tised, it was an edit­ed ver­sion…but what mat­tered the most was the rec­om­men­da­tions that were be­ing made,” Sab­ga said.

Justice Judith Jones.

NICOLE DRAYTON

 'Don’t treat the Au­thor­i­ty as a state en­ter­prise'

He said now we need to en­sure that the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty must be re­struc­tured to en­sure wards of the State are kept safe.

“The whole thing needs to be re­struc­tured, one the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty needs to be an in­de­pen­dent en­ti­ty, they should not be sub­ject to po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, which means you shouldn’t be run­ning it like a state board where you put your own peo­ple. Go out and hire qual­i­fied peo­ple, there are plen­ty. Ad­ver­tise a job, put a list of qual­i­fi­ca­tions and hire ac­cord­ing­ly, don’t treat it like a state en­ter­prise,” he said.

Sab­ga said a board of di­rec­tors could pro­vide a lev­el of Gov­ern­ment over­sight but said the Au­thor­i­ty can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate as it is.

“In its cur­rent struc­ture, it’s a recipe for fail­ure and a recipe for dis­as­ter and re­cent events have proven just that,” he said.

Sab­ga said the find­ings of the task force he head­ed have been re­duced to a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, with dif­fer­ent par­ties vol­ley­ing it around to score points. He be­lieves if the fo­cus is not shift­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to im­prov­ing the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, more chil­dren will suf­fer the con­se­quence.

“Be­cause the qual­i­ty of care that is be­ing pro­vid­ed is in­ad­e­quate and the qual­i­ty of care is in­ad­e­quate in part be­cause a num­ber of these places are un­der­fund­ed, in terms of the amount of mon­ey that trick­les down to the chil­dren, this has be­come a feed­ing trough for those high­er up, which we es­tab­lished 25 years ago,” he said.

Sec­tion 5 of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Act states the Au­thor­i­ty must:

 (a) pro­vide care, pro­tec­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of chil­dren in ac­cor­dance with Part III of this Act

(b) in­ves­ti­gate and make rec­om­men­da­tions with re­spect to the adop­tion of chil­dren in ac­cor­dance with the Adop­tion of Chil­dren Act

(c) in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints made by any per­son with re­spect to any child who is in the care of a com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dence, fos­ter home or nurs­ery, that the said res­i­dence, home or nurs­ery failed to com­ply with the req­ui­site stan­dards pre­scribed un­der the Chil­dren’s Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences, Fos­ter Care and Nurs­eries Act, and any in­ci­dent of mis­treat­ment of chil­dren in such places;

(d) in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints or re­ports of mis­treat­ment of chil­dren

(e) up­on in­ves­ti­ga­tion, re­move a child from his home where it is shown that the child is in im­mi­nent dan­ger

(f) mon­i­tor com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, fos­ter homes and nurs­eries and con­duct pe­ri­od­ic re­views to de­ter­mine their com­pli­ance with such re­quire­ments as may be pre­scribed

(g) is­sue, sus­pend and re­voke li­cences of com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences and nurs­eries as pro­vid­ed un­der the Chil­dren’s Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences, Fos­ter Care and Nurs­eries Act

 (h) ad­vise the Min­is­ter on mat­ters re­lat­ing to the op­er­a­tion of this Act; and

(i) do all such things as may be nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent for the prop­er per­for­mance of its du­ties. (2) In the course of ex­er­cis­ing its pow­ers un­der sub­sec­tion.

In re­la­tion to the pow­ers of the Au­thor­i­ty in the adop­tion of chil­dren, the Act states the Au­thor­i­ty may pro­vide the fol­low­ing ser­vices to chil­dren who live with their fam­i­lies, based on the child/chil­dren’s needs:

 (a) ad­vice, guid­ance and coun­selling

(b) oc­cu­pa­tion­al, so­cial, cul­tur­al or recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties

(c) home help

(d) fa­cil­i­ties for or as­sis­tance with trav­el­ling to and from home for the pur­pose of ac­cess­ing any oth­er ser­vice pro­vid­ed by the Au­thor­i­ty or any sim­i­lar ser­vice.

Sec­tion 5A states the Au­thor­i­ty shall

(a) re­ceive ap­pli­ca­tions from par­ents, guardians and prospec­tive adopters in re­spect of the adop­tion of chil­dren

 (b) make such in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­cern­ing the adop­tion of chil­dren for the con­sid­er­a­tion of the Court as may be pre­scribed

(c) make rec­om­men­da­tions to the Court as to whether in its view the adop­tion is in the best in­ter­est of the child whose adop­tion is sought; (d) ad­vise the Min­is­ter re­gard­ing adop­tion mat­ters gen­er­al­ly; and (e) lis­ten to the views of the child.

What the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty web­site states:

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is re­spon­si­ble for the pro­mo­tion and re­spect of chil­dren’s rights.

The Au­thor­i­ty’s “About Us” page ac­knowl­edges its birth un­der the then-Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2000.

It states the pack­age of leg­is­la­tion which led to its cre­ation pro­vides “a ro­bust sys­tem” which puts the coun­try in align­ment with the pro­vi­sions of the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child.

The au­thor­i­ty is re­spon­si­ble for the fol­low­ing:

*Re­ceiv­ing and in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports of mis­treat­ment of chil­dren

*Mak­ing ap­pli­ca­tions to the Court for the pro­tec­tion and place­ment of chil­dren re­ceived in­to the care of the Au­thor­i­ty

*Es­tab­lish­ing and main­tain­ing places of safe­ty, as­sess­ment and sup­port cen­tres, and re­cep­tion cen­tres

*Es­tab­lish­ing and op­er­at­ing a fos­ter care sys­tem

*As­sum­ing con­duct of the adop­tion process

*Es­tab­lish­ing stan­dards for com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, fos­ter care and nurs­eries

*Mon­i­tor­ing chil­dren’s com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences, fos­ter care providers, and nurs­eries

*Is­su­ing and re­vok­ing li­cences for com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dences and nurs­eries

*Sup­port­ing the youth jus­tice sys­tem

*Pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance to the Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit in re­spect of child vic­tims

*Main­tain­ing com­plete records

The Sun­day Guardian sent sev­er­al ques­tions to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty through its cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Cheryl Moses-Williams on May 18. Moses-Williams ac­knowl­edged the ques­tions and promised to pro­vide a re­sponse by May 20. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse.  

Ayanna Webster-Roy, minister in the Office of the Prime Minister with the responsibility of Gender and Child affairs.

VINDRA GOPAUL=BOODAN

Web­ster-Roy: Gov’t wait­ing on task force re­sponse

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy about the next step for the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

In a brief con­ver­sa­tion, Web­ster-Roy said she was wait­ing for the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed task force to com­plete its im­ple­men­ta­tion plans from the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Jus­tice Jones re­port.

She said while that task force, which be­gan its work on May 5, has six weeks to com­plete its job, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty was al­so work­ing be­hind the scenes.

“Notwith­stand­ing that the task force has six weeks to do its work, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty be­cause they al­so re­ceived a copy of the re­port, would have al­ready start­ed de­vel­op­ing an ac­tion plan to cov­er any gaps in the sys­tem that we need to ad­dress so both things are hap­pen­ing in par­al­lel,” Web­ster-Roy said.

Speak­ing dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on May 12, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the task force had al­ready start­ed work­ing with four teams to en­sure the im­ple­men­ta­tion plan was sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net with­in the six weeks.

“The task force, ful­ly seized of the ur­gency to com­mence the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pri­or­i­ty ac­tions rec­om­mend­ed in the re­port, has com­mit­ted to work­ing be­yond its re­mit to ad­vance some of the work al­ready in train with­in min­istries and agen­cies, in keep­ing with the rec­om­men­da­tions,” he said.

The 13-mem­ber task force is be­ing chaired by the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Jac­in­ta Bai­ley-Sobers.