Jesse Ramdeo

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, says the re­cent re­ports of wide­spread abuse at chil­dren’s homes and care cen­tres, while not new, are still chill­ing and to break the trou­bling cy­cle will mean con­vict­ing of­fend­ers.

How­ev­er, she is promis­ing that the per­pe­tra­tors of heinous acts against chil­dren at these in­sti­tu­tions will not be al­lowed to get away.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Tues­day, Web­ster-Roy con­demned cul­prits in­volved in the al­leged phys­i­cal and sex­u­al child abuse as un­earthed in a re­cent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, of which the har­row­ing find­ings were laid in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about jus­tice for im­pact­ed chil­dren, the Web­ster-Roy said, “I’m con­fi­dent that the nec­es­sary ac­tions will be tak­en to en­sure there is some sort of re­dress.”

While the wheels of jus­tice may be slow, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has con­firmed it has tak­en note of the 307-page Ju­dith Jones Task Force re­port, which high­light­ed cas­es of phys­i­cal, sex­u­al abuse, gang rape and even pros­ti­tu­tion at in­sti­tu­tions, and is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the lat­est claims.

In fact, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial yes­ter­day in­formed Guardian Me­dia Ltd that pre­vi­ous re­ports of abuse have led to the ar­rests of per­pe­tra­tors and oth­er cas­es are cur­rent­ly un­der their radar.

At­tor­ney and child rights ad­vo­cate Jonathan Bha­gan mean­while stat­ed that these in­ves­ti­ga­tions must seek to de­ter­mine whether there was gross neg­li­gence at chil­dren’s homes and whether there was even a con­spir­a­cy of hu­man traf­fick­ing.

He said, “The facts of the case will have to be analysed to de­ter­mine which laws, if it is the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons’ Act that must be ap­plied or if it is the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act, so sec­tion 31 of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act, which deals with the manda­to­ry re­port­ing of sus­pect­ed abuse of mi­nors. Def­i­nite­ly, we must have sev­er­al per­sons or em­ploy­ees of these chil­dren’s homes and pos­si­bly em­ploy­ees of gov­ern­ment of­fices were aware of the sex­u­al abus­es of mi­nors and may have failed to re­port it.”

Al­so among the dis­turb­ing find­ings of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was how cul­prits were al­lowed to reign ter­ror on mi­nors at un­li­censed in­sti­tu­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Web­ster-Roy, there are cur­rent­ly more chil­dren in need of safe spaces than there are fa­cil­i­ties. She ex­plained that as a re­sult of this, Gov­ern­ment had im­ple­ment­ed a pay­ment per child sys­tem, an arrange­ment that pro­vid­ed funds to every child that en­tered a home through the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T. The min­is­ter said a por­tion of the funds would go to­wards the home’s ex­pens­es.

While the re­port rec­om­mend­ed the clo­sure of some in­sti­tu­tions like the Mar­garet Kistow Chil­dren’s Home, Web­ster-Roy as­sured a close eye will be kept on all in­sti­tu­tions un­til steps are tak­en.

How­ev­er, even as the Min­is­ter an­nounced sweep­ing changes to ar­rest the plagu­ing prob­lem, In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work head Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan said she was wary.

“As far as we are con­cerned, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is one of the most im­por­tant agen­cies in the coun­try to deal with our chil­dren but they need to be prop­er­ly re­sourced and they need to be re­mod­elled and we had cit­ed all of that in the cor­re­spon­dence to the Prime Min­is­ter,” Isaac-Rat­tan not­ed.

The re­port ex­posed what has been de­scribed as gap­ing holes at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the is­sue, for­mer deputy chair­man of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye, told Guardian Me­dia that a se­ri­ous ref­or­ma­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion is need­ed and that gaps need to be bridged quick­ly.

“I will say there are peo­ple ded­i­cat­ed, there are peo­ple who are right­ly mem­bers of the au­thor­i­ty but there are peo­ple who should not be there and we have to be un­der­stand­ing that if this is a place where you don’t want to be, then you just have to leave, peo­ple don’t lis­ten very well.”

Thomp­son-Ahye, who is al­so the founder of the Child Rights and Restora­tive Jus­tice Or­gan­i­sa­tion, said an un­der­stand­ing of chil­dren’s rights and prop­er per­son­nel at des­ig­nat­ed in­sti­tu­tions were crit­i­cal to in­su­lat­ing chil­dren from harm.

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­struc­tured and this should be com­plet­ed by the end of the month.

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