DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

MP for St Au­gus­tine Khadi­jah Ameen has ex­pressed alarm over the dis­cov­ery of a teenag­er’s corpse with­in her con­stituen­cy.

Ameen said while she did not know all of the de­tails sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent, the sit­u­a­tion was fright­en­ing.

“What I can tell you is that res­i­dents of Val­sayn South are shocked and con­cerned about the dis­cov­ery. I hope that who­ev­er is re­spon­si­ble is brought to jus­tice and the oth­er vic­tims in the sit­u­a­tion get suit­able coun­selling.”

Al­so re­act­ing to the find was the pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Cen­tre for Hu­man De­vel­op­ment, clin­i­cal trau­ma­tol­o­gist Hanif E A Ben­jamin.

Ben­jamin, who was once chair­man of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, said the in­di­vid­u­als who were at the home could have eas­i­ly been lost to so­ci­ety if they nev­er en­tered the school sys­tem.

He said the chil­dren’s par­ents could have eas­i­ly said they were home-schooled, which means neigh­bours may not have known what heinous ac­tiv­i­ties might have been tak­ing place.

The trau­ma­tol­o­gist al­so ex­pressed con­cern that they may have suf­fered clas­sic con­di­tion­ing. He is there­fore urg­ing au­thor­i­ties to eval­u­ate the sur­vivors.

“You need to now look at the sur­vivors and what is go­ing on there. So, im­me­di­ate­ly, these peo­ple should be pulled aside and clin­i­cal trau­ma as­sess­ments need to be done to fig­ure out their cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing—where they are at, what’s go­ing on.”

Fur­ther­more, Ben­jamin said across T&T, chil­dren are left out of the sys­tem which is a cause for con­cern. “This is not the first sce­nario where we see peo­ple locked away, hid­den away. There are peo­ple liv­ing in Trinidad who have not been part of the for­mal Trinidad in terms of birth pa­per, reg­is­tra­tion, school, and vac­ci­na­tion. Those are the kinds of things that we use to tie peo­ple to a coun­try.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty for a re­sponse but was un­suc­cess­ful.