PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

In the past sev­en days, 11 cas­es of sex­u­al as­sault against mi­nors have been heard in the lo­cal courts.

Yes­ter­day, five men ap­peared be­fore courts in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do re­spec­tive­ly to an­swer to var­i­ous such charges.

In Port-of-Spain, the Mag­is­trates’ Court heard a case where a 43-year-old Diego Mar­tin man faced a se­ries of sex­u­al of­fences against two fe­male mi­nors, aged 11 and 13, who were his friend’s chil­dren.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the girls were spend­ing time at their fa­ther’s house in Diego Mar­tin when the in­ci­dents oc­curred. In­ves­ti­ga­tors learnt that the girls’ fa­ther al­lowed the man, who was un­em­ployed and sep­a­rat­ed from his wife, to stay at his home.

How­ev­er, dur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, WPC Joseph, of the T&t Po­lice Ser­vice’s Child Pro­tec­tion Unit, found out that dur­ing this time in the home, he al­leged­ly built a re­la­tion­ship with the two girls and wait­ed at nights when their fa­ther left to have sex­u­al in­ter­course with them. The girls lat­er told their moth­er who alert­ed the CPU.

The man was charged with 13 counts of sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a mi­nor; four counts of en­gag­ing in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty in the pres­ence of a child; two counts of groom­ing a mi­nor and one count of pos­ses­sion of child pornog­ra­phy by WPC Joseph, who is at­tached to the West­ern Di­vi­sion Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU), on No­vem­ber 27.

In an­oth­er case, a 59-year-old San Juan labour­er ap­peared on a charge of sex­u­al touch­ing of a 13-year-old girl.

The court heard that the man was do­ing a job at the home of the girl’s grand­moth­er when he kissed her on neck and breast when no one was around.

In the fi­nal case of the day, a 25-year-old PH dri­ver from Barataria ap­peared charged with sex­u­al touch­ing of a mi­nor.

The sus­pect was ar­rest­ed and charged on No­vem­ber 28 by PC Cas­tle of the North-East­ern Di­vi­sion Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU).

The charge arose out of an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the girl, who was trav­el­ling in a ve­hi­cle with the sus­pect. The vic­tim re­port­ed to po­lice that the man drove her to a dead-end near Queen Av­enue, Barataria, where he al­leged­ly lift­ed her dress, pulled out his pri­vate part and rubbed it against her leg.

In San Fer­nan­do, in­ves­ti­ga­tors prob­ing al­le­ga­tions of the sex­u­al as­sault of a 15-year-old girl al­so dis­cov­ered that the ac­cused man sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed his five-year-old daugh­ter.

The 25-year-old Gas­par­il­lo man was charged with three counts sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of the 15-year-old, af­ter he al­leged­ly took the teenag­er to the home of a rel­a­tive in April and raped her. He was al­so charged with one count of sex­u­al touch­ing of a mi­nor by PC Ro­han.

Con­tact­ed on the in­crease in sex­u­al as­sault cas­es against mi­nors in the past two weeks yes­ter­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said he has a game-chang­er com­ing soon.

“This is the rea­son why we formed the Gen­der-based Vi­o­lence Unit and we have seen the im­por­tance of this unit that has great­ly helped per­sons who have been af­fect­ed by crime in that re­gard,” Grif­fith said.

“Like­wise, we have re­vamped the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit and very soon we will be launch­ing the Sex­u­al Of­fense Unit, which will be a crit­i­cal el­e­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

“We are ful­ly aware of these con­cerns, very soon there will be some­thing that I will be launch­ing that is go­ing to be a game-chang­er to deal with sex­u­al of­fences to chil­dren.”

He said the re­cent cas­es showed that Trinidad and To­ba­go was be­com­ing a so­ci­ety which was more like­ly to up­hold law­less­ness.

“I think the main rea­son is be­cause this is be­com­ing a very sick so­ci­ety where cer­tain el­e­ments, es­pe­cial­ly peo­ple that you will see on so­cial me­dia, they try to con­done wrong­do­ing. They try to spend more time at­tack­ing and dis­cred­it­ing those who are here to pro­tect vic­tims from per­pe­tra­tors and they try to de­fend those peo­ple who are in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Grif­fith said while chastis­ing those who were aware of sex­u­al as­sault, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and oth­er crime but chose not to re­port it.

“Just as we have seen con­stant­ly as it per­tains to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, on most oc­ca­sions af­ter the crime has been com­mit­ted, af­ter the vic­tim has been bad­ly beat­en, un­for­tu­nate­ly, killed, then you will see the neigh­bours, the em­ploy­ees, the fam­i­ly mem­bers all com­ing up scream­ing and shout­ing that this has been go­ing on for years. Every­body knew about it but not one per­son ever saw it fit to pick up a phone and sub­mit a re­port for the po­lice to let the po­lice be aware,” he said.