SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

A 68-year-old church el­der from Curepe was ar­rest­ed and charged yes­ter­day for sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing a 13-year-old mem­ber of his church.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, the man was charged with four counts of sex­u­al touch­ing and one count of sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a mi­nor by WPC Brath­waite of the Port-of-Spain Child Pro­tec­tion Unit.

Po­lice said a re­port was made in Ju­ly 2020 by the child that while she was at­tend­ing church in Port-of-Spain, the el­der sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed her. The vic­tim told in­ves­ti­ga­tors the in­ci­dents hap­pened be­tween No­vem­ber 2019 and April 2020. The child said she at­tend­ed Sat­ur­day youth ses­sions at the church and the el­der would wait un­til she was alone in the room to as­sault her.

The man was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day to an­swer the charges.

This sex­u­al as­sault was just one in a se­ries of re­cent cas­es that have gone be­fore the courts.

On Thurs­day, a 52-year-old man was charged with five counts of sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a mi­nor. The vic­tim was the man’s 14-year-old daugh­ter.

Po­lice were in­formed that on No­vem­ber 5, the man took the vic­tim to work with him at a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny. When a su­per­vi­sor saw the vic­tim on the com­pound, she in­formed the man that a child could not be there. The man took the child and left.

How­ev­er, an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion launched by the se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny un­earthed a video show­ing the man sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing the child. Po­lice were called in and the man was sum­moned to the com­pa­ny’s head of­fice where he was ar­rest­ed.

The vic­tim told po­lice she had been abused since No­vem­ber 2019.

On Mon­day, Care­nage res­i­dents al­so beat a pae­dophile al­leged­ly caught as­sault­ing an 11-year-old boy. The 34-year-old man was tied to a util­i­ty pole un­til po­lice ar­rived. He was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he is in a co­ma while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment in the In­ten­sive Care Unit.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Break the Si­lence re­search of­fi­cer Mar­cus Kissoon said state-man­dat­ed COVID-19 lock­downs have left chil­dren more vul­ner­a­ble to abuse in the places where they are sup­posed to be the safest: their homes.

Kissoon said while da­ta on cas­es of child sex­u­al abuse were dif­fi­cult to ob­tain, the cas­es re­port­ed by the TTPS are alarm­ing.

“The least safe place for chil­dren, when it comes to this kind of abuse, is the home or wher­ev­er they are sup­posed to be pro­tect­ed and that be­comes alarm­ing,” Kissoon said.

“We see chil­dren be­ing af­fect­ed at a time when peo­ple are sup­posed to be hy­per-vig­i­lant and hy­per-aware about safe­ty, we see chil­dren be­ing af­fect­ed by their pri­ma­ry care­givers, peo­ple who are in di­rect con­tact, in di­rect care of them—the men of the fam­i­ly, the male friends of the fam­i­ly and in this par­tic­u­lar case, a re­li­gious leader who is sup­posed to be look­ing af­ter the well­be­ing of peo­ple and es­pe­cial­ly that of vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.”

Kissoon said the cas­es of abuse by rel­a­tives show so­ci­ety has failed its chil­dren. He said the val­ue sys­tems that en­able abusers to feel pow­er over their vic­tims must be changed, adding that change must come on the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

“We have to ac­knowl­edge the fact that shame and si­lence go hand in hand, com­mu­ni­ties refuse to hold them­selves ac­count­able and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the chil­dren of the com­mu­ni­ty’s safe­ty … and say ‘Lis­ten, I be­lieve some­thing is go­ing on, I know some­thing is go­ing on let me in­ter­ject’ and that leads us to ac­cept this by­stander ap­proach where some­one knows some­thing about it and re­fus­es to say what is go­ing on,” he said.

Kissoon drew a par­al­lel to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es, where neigh­bours wit­ness abuse but do not in­ter­vene. He said the abuser is wel­comed to lime with his neigh­bours and his abu­sive be­hav­iours are not ad­dressed.

“I think com­mu­ni­ties need to hold them­selves re­spon­si­ble for the safe­ty of their neigh­bours and more so now, the chil­dren. We need to chal­lenge the idea of the by­stander, we can­not af­ford to live in that bub­ble, es­pe­cial­ly now where chil­dren are ba­si­cal­ly trapped in homes and trapped in com­mu­ni­ties.”