Gail Alexan­der

One name that will jus­ti­fy the ex­is­tence of a pub­lic sex of­fend­er web­site is the late Ak­ile Cham­bers, for whom jus­tice has not yet been found - be­cause the per­pe­tra­tor's name should be made avail­able to the pub­lic.

So said In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on the Sex­u­al Of­fences (Amend­ment) bill. It pro­vides for a pub­lic sex of­fend­ers reg­istry web­site and a pri­vate reg­istry for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice with deep­er in­for­ma­tion on of­fend­ers.

Richards said there were sev­er­al names he could call to jus­ti­fy both types of reg­is­ters, "But I'll just call one and this one name will jus­ti­fy, par­tic­u­lar­ly to me, the ex­is­tence and main­te­nance of a pub­lic web­site: Ak­ile Cham­bers. Ak­ile Cham­bers."

"And that name should scare us all be­cause of what hap­pened to that child and the fact that to date, jus­tice has not been found for that child!

"And that child is gone and his par­ents, friends and this coun­try have not seen the per­pe­tra­tors brought to light. And who­ev­er that per­pe­tra­tor is or those are - as there are sug­ges­tions it may have been more than one per­son - their names should be avail­able to the pub­lic, so oth­er chil­dren and fam­i­lies can be pro­tect­ed and be aware of who they are and where they are so that more vig­i­lance can oc­cur where peo­ple pro­tect­ing chil­dren are con­cerned," Richards said.

He said he un­der­stood con­ver­sa­tions about rights and pri­va­cy of those con­vict­ed.

How­ev­er, he said, "To me, the pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren, much far out­weigh the rights of peo­ple who went through the ju­di­cial sys­tem, got a fair tri­al, right of ap­peal and were found guilty of that type of crime. And I make no apol­o­gy for that."

Richards said there is a long list of names of chil­dren who've been abused and for whom jus­tice hadn't been found. He said the bill seemed short and there were some se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions to parts.

He said UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al was right that the job of gath­er­ing ev­i­dence and bring­ing peo­ple to jus­tice isn't where it should be and sen­a­tors should en­sure pro­tec­tion if and when per­pe­tra­tors are brought to jus­tice.

Richards ad­vo­cat­ed for TTPS vig­i­lance on any vig­i­lante over­reach and the dan­ger of a lo­ca­tion be­ing known as a sex of­fend­er area if more than one of­fend­er lived there; or dan­gers of taunt­ing/threats to their fam­i­ly.

Cit­ing hack­ing of con­glom­er­ates and bank breach­es, he called for sys­tems to pre­vent cy­ber­crime and hack­ing. Richards ex­pressed con­cern about what could hap­pen if a mis­chief-mak­er put a pub­lic of­fi­cial's name on the pub­lic sex of­fend­ers' web­site. He ques­tioned penal­ties for non-com­pli­ance and au­thor­i­ties who breached con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

"We know we have run­away hors­es in TTPS," he said.

He al­so rec­om­mend­ed pub­lic aware­ness pro­grammes on the nov­el law.