Last week, the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk high­light­ed new trends in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es and sex­u­al vi­o­lence cas­es against chil­dren: chil­dren be­ing killed along with their moth­ers, the preva­lence of sex­u­al touch­ing of mi­nors, and in­suf­fi­cient safe hous­es.

Head of the po­lice Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit Supt Michelle Row­ley-Pow­der last week re­vealed that out of 8,807 cas­es of as­sault by beat­ing, on­ly 226 peo­ple were charged. From this fig­ure, on­ly 46 abusers were con­vict­ed, which ac­counts for 0.5 per cent of the over­all fig­ure. While some per­pe­tra­tors have been ar­rest­ed, there is a low pros­e­cu­tion rate even as more women seek pro­tec­tion or­ders from the court.

In Part 3 of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Guardian Me­dia fo­cus­es on pros­e­cu­tion and jus­tice and whether re­form is pos­si­ble.

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI & SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Sex crimes are the sec­ond-high­est rank­ing of­fence in T&T courts, fol­low­ing on­ly mur­der.

Be­tween Feb­ru­ary 2000 and 2019, 1,693 peo­ple were con­vict­ed of sex­u­al of­fences in T&T– av­er­ag­ing 89 con­vic­tions per year–ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs.

Dur­ing those 19 years, none of the per­pe­tra­tors were reg­is­tered in a sex­u­al of­fences reg­istry. That changed last March when a Pub­lic Sex Of­fend­ers web­site was launched af­ter the Gov­ern­ment passed a pub­lic sex of­fend­ers law on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2019. At the launch, the reg­istry iden­ti­fied 16 sex of­fend­ers aimed at de­ter­ring, pun­ish­ing, and sham­ing rapists and pae­dophiles. Fast for­ward 21 months lat­er, the reg­istry list­ing in­creased by 15, tak­ing the num­ber of sex of­fend­ers to 31.

The reg­istry con­tains pho­tographs of the sex­u­al of­fend­ers, their names, dates of birth, ad­dress­es, sex, of­fences, and alias­es. The sex­u­al of­fend­ers’ con­vic­tions and dates of con­vic­tions are al­so plas­tered on the web­site. Some of the of­fences iden­ti­fied are griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault, rape, in­cest, sex with a fe­male un­der 14 years, bug­gery, in­de­cent as­sault, and sex­u­al touch­ing.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic are warned against re­pro­duc­ing and shar­ing in­for­ma­tion about the sex­u­al of­fend­ers on the web­site, as they can be fined $25,000 and im­pris­oned for three years. The reg­is­tered list is in stark con­trast to da­ta that showed that from 2022 to Oc­to­ber 31, 2024, 215 women be­tween the ages of 18 and 41 had made “sex­u­al of­fences” re­ports to the po­lice. Of the 215 mat­ters re­port­ed, the po­lice ar­rest­ed 22 males be­tween 2021 and 2024.

The TTPS stat­ed that be­tween 2018 and 2022, its Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch re­port­ed that 4,667 women and girls were vic­tims of sex­u­al vi­o­lence. A break­down of these fig­ures was not pro­vid­ed.

Da­ta ob­tained from the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) al­so showed that in the nine po­lice di­vi­sions there were 5,026 re­ports of “a sex­u­al­ly vi­o­lent na­ture” against chil­dren. The chil­dren ranged from ages two to 17. An analy­sis of the da­ta showed that the North­ern Di­vi­sion had the high­est num­ber of re­ports with 917. De­spite in­creas­ing re­ports, the da­ta shows there is not a cor­re­spond­ing in­crease in pros­e­cu­tions to have per­pe­tra­tors list­ed.

Low de­tec­tion, con­vic­tion rates

At­tor­ney Jonathan Bha­gan, co-founder of Op­er­a­tion Glob­al Sex Of­fend­ers Reg­istry and chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mit­tee Against Sex Crimes (CCASC) ad­mit­ted that the 31 of­fend­ers on the reg­istry was a low fig­ure, giv­en our coun­try’s grow­ing sex­u­al of­fences.

On­ly peo­ple con­vict­ed of sex crimes and com­ing out of the prison sys­tem can be post­ed on the reg­istry.

Bha­gan said T&T’s low con­vic­tion rate of sex crimes was most con­cern­ing. “The last da­ta I saw … the con­vic­tion rate is old. But it’s about 2.8 per cent.”

In com­par­i­son, he not­ed that some of In­dia’s most un­de­vel­oped ar­eas have a six per cent con­vic­tion rate while Eng­land’s con­vic­tion rate stood be­tween 50 to 60 per cent. “So, the reg­is­ter on­ly starts to work prop­er­ly when the po­lice keep tabs on the of­fend­er in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

In ad­di­tion to the low con­vic­tion rate, the de­tec­tion rate was al­so re­mark­ably low.

Da­ta from the CA­PA branch showed that be­tween 2014 and Oc­to­ber 31 of this year, there were 6,346 re­port­ed cas­es of rape, in­cest, and sex­u­al of­fences in the po­lice’s nine di­vi­sions. Of these re­ports, on­ly 1,991 were de­tect­ed over the 11 years.

Last year, the di­vi­sions record­ed 956 re­ports of rape, in­cest, and sex­u­al of­fences—the high­est over the 11-year pe­ri­od. On­ly 158 re­ports were de­tect­ed in 2023. In 2014, the po­lice re­ceived its sec­ond-high­est num­ber of re­ports—829, of which 494 were de­tect­ed.

Bha­gan said the prob­lem was not with the reg­istry but the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, where “we take 15 years to fin­ish a case, then we on­ly win a frac­tion of cas­es.”

He cit­ed in­ad­e­quate po­lice re­sources, an un­der­fund­ed Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions of­fice, and a lack of prop­er train­ing of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers as some of the is­sues. He felt T&T should be us­ing the po­lice to bait sex preda­tors sim­i­lar to the US, stat­ing that vic­tims of sex crimes tend not to make re­ports out of fear or shame.

“The po­lice should be us­ing those tac­tics for crime gen­er­al­ly. Once the po­lice are record­ing the process from start to fin­ish, the ev­i­dence is bet­ter.”

Asked if there were loop­holes for sex of­fend­ers, Bha­gan said there were dig­i­tal loop­holes.

“We don’t have enough in­fra­struc­ture, legal­ly or oth­er­wise, be­cause so many things don’t work. You have to re­mem­ber how far we are be­hind with every­thing. We don’t have the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act in place, we don’t have leg­is­la­tion for AI (Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence).”

He ex­plained that the Unit­ed States em­ploys var­i­ous meth­ods to track sex of­fend­ers, in­clud­ing on­line tools, Snapchat mon­i­tor­ing, and a mo­bile app called Safe Vir­tu­al Neigh­bor­hood (SVN) by the US-based com­pa­ny Of­fend­er­Watch. The app helps pro­tect chil­dren by send­ing no­ti­fi­ca­tions to par­ents if a sex of­fend­er at­tempts to con­tact or lure their child. Of­fend­er­Watch is Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing sex of­fend­er reg­istry man­age­ment so­lu­tion. Us­ing the SVN app, par­ents can search for reg­is­tered sex of­fend­ers in their area or re­ceive alerts when a new of­fend­er reg­is­ters near­by.

“So, I al­ready of­fered the Gov­ern­ment since 2020 to part­ner with the US to bring that soft­ware here. We are yet to get a yes.” To use the soft­ware, Bha­gan said it would have cost U$10,000 a year, “which might have been an easy bud­get.”

Da­ta from CA­PA branch has re­port­ed that as of De­cem­ber 2, there have been 616 sex­u­al of­fences. Sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a child ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 38 per cent of this fig­ure, while sex­u­al touch­ing of a child ac­count­ed for rough­ly 18 per cent.

Di­vi­sions with the high­est re­ports of sex­u­al of­fences were the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion with 123, the South­ern Di­vi­sion with 110, and the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion with 67. This fig­ure has de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly from 941 re­ports of sex­u­al of­fences for the same pe­ri­od last year.

How­ev­er, while the over­all num­ber of cas­es has de­creased, the num­ber of de­tect­ed cas­es has al­so dropped, with 119 in­ci­dents de­tect­ed as of De­cem­ber 2, com­pared to 169 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year.

Of the 562 mur­ders re­port­ed as of De­cem­ber 2, po­lice be­lieve five per cent were a re­sult of do­mes­tic dis­putes.

Seep­er­sad calls for re­form to ad­dress crim­i­nal case de­lays

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia last Wednes­day, High Court Judge Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad said while the Ju­di­cia­ry has un­der­tak­en dif­fer­ent re­forms to en­hance ef­fi­cien­cies, oth­er as­pects of case man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the part of the pros­e­cu­tion, led to de­lays and short­falls in jus­tice be­ing served.

Seep­er­sad ac­knowl­edged that, al­though he does not sit in crim­i­nal courts, he sees sig­nif­i­cant ad­min­is­tra­tive weak­ness­es with­in the pros­e­cu­tion. He em­pha­sised that judges and mag­is­trates can­not con­duct tri­als in iso­la­tion, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of thor­ough prepa­ra­tion and time­ly par­tic­i­pa­tion from all par­ties to en­sure cas­es progress ef­fi­cient­ly and lead to con­vic­tions when war­rant­ed.

The lack of pre­pared­ness among po­lice com­plainants (of­fi­cers re­spon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny) in court has been a long-stand­ing is­sue, draw­ing crit­i­cism from var­i­ous crim­i­nal jus­tice stake­hold­ers.

In the most re­cent ex­am­ples, in a sin­gle week in late No­vem­ber, four sep­a­rate crim­i­nal mat­ters were dis­charged due to a lack of pre­pared­ness on the part of po­lice of­fi­cers.

In May, Seep­er­sad crit­i­cised po­lice of­fi­cers who failed to ap­pear in court and sug­gest­ed im­pos­ing fines to en­sure com­pli­ance with court di­rec­tives.

How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad told Guardian Me­dia that delin­quent po­lice of­fi­cers were not the on­ly fac­tor slow­ing down case pro­ceed­ings, point­ing to lim­it­ed man­pow­er as an­oth­er chal­lenge. He sug­gest­ed that cre­at­ing a ded­i­cat­ed com­plainant’s de­part­ment could stream­line the pros­e­cu­tion process and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.

“If an of­fi­cer lays a charge, he goes to the com­plainant’s de­part­ment and some­one for­mal­ly files the charge. It’s not vi­able to have a po­lice of­fi­cer who laid the charge come to court 20 times be­fore the case is ac­tu­al­ly heard, he should be out there in­ves­ti­gat­ing crime and fol­low­ing up on oth­er mat­ters.”

Seep­er­sad said a more thor­ough use of tech­nol­o­gy and train­ing in foren­sic skills was nec­es­sary for po­lice to keep pace with the court’s re­quire­ments so that mat­ters were not de­layed, not­ing that a cer­tifi­cate of analy­sis was need­ed from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre be­fore cer­tain crim­i­nal mat­ters could be­gin.

But even with these de­mands on the po­lice, Seep­er­sad stressed that the onus of pros­e­cu­tion could not rest en­tire­ly on po­lice of­fi­cers as he re­ferred to lim­it­ed staffing among pros­e­cut­ing at­tor­neys. He said hav­ing ad­e­quate at­tor­neys on the pros­e­cu­tion side was nec­es­sary, not­ing that hav­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in the mag­is­trate’s court against a de­fence at­tor­ney was an “un­fair play­ing field.”

“I think what is re­al­ly re­quired is suf­fi­cient staff where each mas­ter’s court has a DPP (Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions) lawyer as­signed, each mag­is­trate’s court has a lawyer as­signed, whether it’s a po­lice­man who is a lawyer or, for the less se­ri­ous of­fences, you have po­lice­men as­signed to each court to pros­e­cute, not in the way of a court pros­e­cu­tor.”

Seep­er­sad said the ju­di­cial sys­tem was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort among the mag­is­trate or judge, the pros­e­cu­tion and de­fence at­tor­neys. He stressed that it worked well when all par­ties are pre­pared.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that pre­vent­ing gen­der-based vi­o­lence and sex­u­al of­fences meant so­cial­is­ing chil­dren on the im­por­tance of re­spect­ing women. “We need to tar­get our chil­dren so they do not grow up with the same cul­tur­al norms and ex­pec­ta­tions that their fa­thers and grand­fa­thers may have grown up with. We have to stop ob­jec­ti­fy­ing our women every year when Car­ni­val rolls around. As long as we treat them as ob­jects, then you ex­er­cise con­trol be­cause you own ob­jects; you do not own peo­ple, and you do not have a right to their per­son­al space.”

Sex of­fend­ers face strict re­port­ing rules un­der new law

Af­ter a con­vict­ed sex of­fend­er is dis­charged from prison or psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal, Sec­tion 54 of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act 2019 would kick in, where he must re­port to a po­lice sta­tion near­est to his ad­dress with­in sev­en days and sup­ply a po­lice of­fi­cer with es­sen­tial de­tails about him­self.

Of­fend­ers must al­so give their fin­ger­prints, be pho­tographed, and pro­vide DNA sam­ple. If false in­for­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed, the sex of­fend­er is li­able to a fine of $50,000 and im­pris­on­ment for sev­en years.

Sub­sec­tion 10 states that a sex of­fend­er who, with­out rea­son­able ex­cuse, fails to re­port to a po­lice sta­tion or com­ply with the re­quest made by an of­fi­cer is li­able to a fine of $150,000 and in prison for 15 years.

A week be­fore leav­ing the coun­try, a sex of­fend­er must in­form the po­lice of his de­par­ture, the coun­try of his in­tend­ed stay, and how long his trip would be. If the sex of­fend­er re­fus­es to sup­ply such in­for­ma­tion, he can be fined $25,000 and sen­tenced to three years in jail.

Guardian Me­dia sent a list of ques­tions on sex of­fend­ers to the TTPS’ Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­part­ment on Mon­day, but they failed to re­spond.

Court mat­ters

* In 2020, Ever­ton Joseph, who was con­vict­ed of six counts of hav­ing sex with a fe­male un­der the age of 14, was the first per­son or­dered by the court to reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er.

Joseph had to reg­is­ter at the po­lice sta­tion in his dis­trict sev­en days af­ter he served a nine-year prison term. His name will re­main on the reg­is­ter for ten years, and he must re­port an­nu­al­ly, as or­dered by Jus­tice Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas.

* In May 2023, Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds sen­tenced a Moru­ga man to 19 years and 23 days in prison on two counts of in­cest and in­de­cent as­sault on his daugh­ter, which oc­curred be­tween De­cem­ber 2005 and March 2006. Fol­low­ing his re­lease from prison, the man would have to re­port as a sex of­fend­er four times a year for ten years at a po­lice sta­tion clos­est to his home. The pris­on­er’s name will not be pub­lished to pro­tect his daugh­ter’s iden­ti­ty.

* A La Hor­quet­ta man who was caught sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing an eight-year-old girl when he was a teenag­er in 2010 was or­dered to reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er as he serves his sev­en-year sen­tence for the crime. On June 27, Jus­tice Kathy Ann Wa­ter­man-Latchoo sen­tenced him af­ter a ju­ry found him guilty. The man was or­dered to re­port to the po­lice sev­en days af­ter his re­lease from prison to reg­is­ter as a sex of­fend­er. He was al­so or­dered to re­port as a sex of­fend­er for six years every four months, start­ing on the date he reg­is­tered at the po­lice sta­tion.