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Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Over 552 sex assault cases against women in 2019

by

Rishard Khan
2026 days ago
20191130
Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, Ayanna Webster-Roy stands next to a member of DMad Company during their presentation at City Gate, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, Ayanna Webster-Roy stands next to a member of DMad Company during their presentation at City Gate, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Anisto alves

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

There have been over 552 re­port­ed cas­es of sex­u­al of­fences for the year with women mak­ing up the ma­jor­i­ty of the cas­es. Of these re­port­ed cas­es, 92 have been rape.

Speak­ing at a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion fair at City Gate, Port-of-Spain, which com­mem­o­rat­ed the 16 Days of Ac­tivism against gen­der-based vi­o­lence, Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy re­vealed the fig­ures cit­ing of­fi­cial po­lice sta­tis­tics.

But the is­sue of gen­der-based vi­o­lence against women is not iso­lat­ed to T&T on­ly as she al­so cit­ed World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion sta­tis­tics which show that one in three women around the world will ex­pe­ri­ence some form of gen­der-based vi­o­lence in her life­time.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, vi­o­lence against women and girls, is one of the most wide­spread, per­sis­tent and dev­as­tat­ing hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in our world to­day. Re­gret­tably, it re­mains large­ly un­re­port­ed due to the im­puni­ty, si­lence, stig­ma and shame sur­round­ing it,” she said.

To solve this, she added, a cul­ture of jus­tice and a mul­ti-pronged sys­tem for vic­tims of rape and vi­o­lence must be de­vel­oped.

She al­so not­ed that a Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy on Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment was cre­at­ed to fight gen­der dis­par­i­ties in the coun­try. Ac­cord­ing to Web­ster-Roy, it has a the­mat­ic fo­cus on hu­man se­cu­ri­ty and gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“While the pol­i­cy has been laid in the Par­lia­ment as a Green Pa­per it is the foun­da­tion on which our work in the Gen­der Af­fairs stands,” she said.

She be­lieves that “em­pow­er­ing our men to be­come al­lies in the cam­paign to com­bat vi­o­lence against women and girls is crit­i­cal for pro­mot­ing the trans­for­ma­tion and shift in so­cio-cul­tur­al per­cep­tion or women and girls.”

Web­ster-Roy stressed: “We must re­spect and pro­mote the fact that no means no.”


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