RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­mer chair­man of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Hanif Ben­jamin says par­ents must im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin teach­ing chil­dren how to spot a sex­u­al preda­tor.

He was speak­ing fol­low­ing last week’s rev­e­la­tion by the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) that per­vert­ed teach­ers were op­er­at­ing with­in lo­cal schools.

Ben­jamin did not want to com­ment on the JSC re­port, not­ing it is not right to pin­point teach­ers alone, as oth­er peo­ple in au­thor­i­ty have tak­en ad­van­tage of in­no­cent chil­dren. 

“Very rarely, a stranger sex­u­al­ly abus­es a child. More like­ly than not, it’s some­one who is known to the child or is trust­ed by the par­ent,” Ben­jamin said.

Ex­plain­ing the long term con­se­quences of sex­u­al ex­po­sure at a young age, Ben­jamin said: “When a child be­comes sex­u­alised, they may see this as how they should be­have. They may be­come a per­pe­tra­tor lat­er on in life.”

“A child may grow up with trust is­sues, healthy sex­u­al is­sues as well. All of those things are life­time tra­jec­to­ries if a child be­comes sex­u­al­ly ex­posed in the ear­ly life,” he added.

He not­ed that par­ents had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to teach their chil­dren about sex­u­al abuse and in­ap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty.

“They should be able to iden­ti­fy good touch and bad touch. They should help chil­dren to un­der­stand no adult should want to play sex­u­al play with them. You need to be straight­for­ward and have age-ap­pro­pri­ate con­ver­sa­tions from pre-school to teenag­er,” he said.

Ben­jamin rec­om­mend­ed parental class­es so that peo­ple could learn how to speak about sex­u­al abuse with chil­dren.

“There are a lot of TV shows that de­pict school sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty in an un­healthy way. We need to be cog­nizant of what they watch and ex­plain when they ask us a ques­tion. We have to help par­ents to un­der­stand how to have a con­ver­sa­tion with chil­dren. A lot of par­ents have de­vel­oped an un­healthy sex­u­al life and they may not be the right per­son to ex­plain to their chil­dren about sex­u­al life,” Ben­jamin said.

But Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha gen­er­al sec­re­tary Vi­jay Ma­haraj said the is­sue of teach­ers ex­pos­ing chil­dren to sex was oc­cur­ring main­ly in gov­ern­ment schools and not SDMS de­nom­i­na­tion­al board schools.

He said the SDMS has been ed­u­cat­ing chil­dren about sex at the parental lev­el and al­so in schools through the cur­ricu­lum. 

The SDMS con­trols 13 ear­ly child­hood care cen­tres, 43 pri­ma­ry schools and five col­leges. Ma­haraj not­ed that the SDMS con­ducts a rigid psy­cho-so­cial as­sess­ment of teach­ers be­fore they are al­lowed in­to their schools and this is why there have been no cas­es of pae­dophiles en­ter­ing SDMS schools.

Mean­while, Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School Board chair­man Vick­ram Ram­lal al­so said sex ed­u­ca­tion was on­go­ing.

 “When the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty was es­tab­lished, the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools Board of Ed­u­ca­tion held work­shops for prin­ci­pals on sex­u­al, phys­i­cal and men­tal abuse of chil­dren and the pro­vi­sions of the Chil­dren’s Act and the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act as it per­tains to the abuse of chil­dren with an em­pha­sis on sex­u­al abuse,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said now that chil­dren are back in school, more should be done.

“Greater em­pha­sis has to be placed on ed­u­cat­ing our chil­dren on the dan­gers of so­cial me­dia and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of sex­u­al groom­ing,” he added.

He not­ed that the sys­tem and reg­u­la­tions for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to deal with such al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct by teach­ers are ex­treme­ly time-con­sum­ing and of­ten de­ter par­ents from fol­low­ing through on re­ports of sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren. “The re­cruit­ment process needs to be re­viewed to in­clude a psy­cho-so­cial pro­file of ap­pli­cants and maybe even a cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter from the Po­lice Ser­vice,” he added.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said sex ed­u­ca­tion is a mat­ter that has to be dis­cussed at length with ed­u­ca­tion­al boards and all stake­hold­ers. 

“There is a cur­rent ini­tia­tive to up­grade the cur­ricu­lum through a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UWI and the Unit­ed Na­tions but there will be no changes made with­out that crit­i­cal con­sul­ta­tion with the wider ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers,” she added.

She not­ed that there are pro­grammes un­der the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion that ad­dress sex­u­al sen­si­ti­sa­tion.

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