An­na-Lisa Paul

The Ju­dith Jones Task Force un­cov­ered hor­rif­ic tales of phys­i­cal abuse at chil­dren’s homes around the coun­try – some of which were de­scribed as non-ac­ci­den­tal in­ci­dents which ac­tu­al­ly led to death in some sit­u­a­tions.

The 307-page re­port, which was re­leased by Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy last Fri­day, ex­plic­it­ly de­tailed the sex­u­al, phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse many wards face at in­sti­tu­tions across the coun­try.

In the area of phys­i­cal abuse, the com­mit­tee re­port­ed: “Phys­i­cal abuse in­cludes the punch­ing, beat­ing, kick­ing, bit­ing, shak­ing, throw­ing, stab­bing, chok­ing, hit­ting (with a hand, stick, strap, or oth­er ob­jects), burn­ing, or oth­er forms of harm to a child; that is in­flict­ed by a per­son, whether an adult or old­er child, caus­ing non-ac­ci­den­tal phys­i­cal in­jury rang­ing from mi­nor bruis­es to se­vere frac­tures or death.”

At St Jude’s, it was found that staff pro­mote a cul­ture that en­cour­aged abuse among res­i­dents.

One of­fi­cial, along with a past res­i­dent in­di­cat­ed that, “It was com­mon for staff to in­sti­gate themed beat­ings such as House or Com­pound cut-a**.”

The com­mit­tee said man­age­ment was aware of these beat­ings and that the staff were the in­sti­ga­tors. While the task force ac­knowl­edged that chil­dren’s homes/res­i­den­tial cen­tres should pro­vide chil­dren with an out-of-fa­mil­ial-home set­ting; a se­cure and safe en­vi­ron­ment; ther­a­peu­tic ser­vices, and a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence – they ac­cept­ed there may be in­her­ent lim­i­ta­tions to pub­lic care for chil­dren in gen­er­al.

But they wrote: “There is an ex­pec­ta­tion that a res­i­den­tial home pro­vides out-of-home care that will pro­tect chil­dren from mal­treat­ment.”

In the re­port ti­tled Safe­guard­ing Chil­dren in Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences and Child Sup­port Cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion team ap­point­ed by the Cab­i­net in mid 2021 to in­ves­ti­gate re­ports of child abuse at chil­dren’s homes found the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (CATT) re­ceived a num­ber of com­plaints from res­i­dents over the last three years.

The team said, “The in­ves­ti­ga­tion found sev­er­al in­stances of phys­i­cal abuse in the var­i­ous Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences and Child Sup­port Cen­tres.”

In­ci­dent re­ports de­scribed in­stances of res­i­dents heads be­ing bashed against walls; of them be­ing hit with ob­jects such as a lock and or ruler and bit­ing.

Child Sup­port Cen­tres and Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences have un­der­gone a num­ber of changes with­in the last three years in­clud­ing the clo­sure of the St Michael’s Home for Boys in 2018, which housed chil­dren with high risk pro­files.

The CA said this re­sult­ed in the com­min­gling of res­i­dents with dif­fer­ent needs which the Au­thor­i­ty’s staff was not suf­fi­cient­ly trained to deal with; and com­pound­ed staff short­ages.

The com­mit­tee said the re­sul­tant en­vi­ron­ment led to staff be­ing ap­pre­hen­sive to car­ry out their du­ties in the face of con­flict – and led to them be­ing, “au­tho­rised to re­quest as­sis­tance from se­cu­ri­ty guards to quell sit­u­a­tions which they per­ceive as un­con­trol­lable.”

Mean­while, the se­cu­ri­ty guards were found to have dealt with the sit­u­a­tion based on vary­ing lev­els of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence, in­stead of stan­dard­ised pro­ce­dures and train­ing.

“This ap­proach re­sult­ed in in­stances of phys­i­cal abuse of res­i­dents by staff. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion recog­nised this type of abuse in the CRs, which used tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of dis­ci­plin­ing chil­dren.”

“Fur­ther­more, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­cov­ered res­i­dent to res­i­dent vi­o­lence with­in in­sti­tu­tion­al care. This type of vi­o­lence oc­curred due to sev­er­al fac­tors, such as ter­ri­to­r­i­al pow­er re­la­tions, vi­o­lent ag­gres­sion to­wards mi­grants, rou­tine fight­ing due to poor con­flict man­age­ment and bul­ly­ing that con­tributed to vi­o­lent ex­pres­sions.”

The in­ves­ti­gat­ing team al­so found that staff fa­cil­i­tat­ed res­i­dent-to-res­i­dent vi­o­lence as a way to pun­ish oth­er res­i­dents.

“In some cas­es staff in­sti­gat­ed vi­o­lence to re­tal­i­ate against a child’s ac­tions that could not utilise puni­tive mea­sures in ac­cor­dance with the reg­u­la­tions.”

“The in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that this dis­tinc­tion con­tributed to an in­creased the risk of phys­i­cal abuse. Staff to res­i­dent phys­i­cal abuse in res­i­den­tial care is com­plex due to the un­equal pow­er re­la­tions be­tween staff and res­i­dents. Chil­dren with ad­verse ex­pe­ri­en­tial back­grounds and se­ri­ous so­cial and be­hav­iour­al dif­fi­cul­ties place many res­i­dents at high risk of be­com­ing vic­tims of abuse as staff utilis­es pun­ish­ment sub­jec­tive­ly to man­age chil­dren. The staff’s ap­proach is a re­tal­i­a­tion mech­a­nism rather than de­vel­op­men­tal.”

Of­fi­cials said the pow­er re­la­tions be­tween staff and res­i­dents con­tin­ued to be an un­der­es­ti­mat­ed fac­tor that con­tributed to how pow­er is used to­wards chil­dren.