CARISA LEE

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

At the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, be­tween the years 2020 to 2021, there was a 62 per cent in­crease in sex­u­al vi­o­lence against girls un­der the age of 15.

This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox on Wednes­day evening dur­ing the Women’s Round Ta­ble Plat­form of Trinidad and To­ba­go (WRAP TT) on the elim­i­na­tion of vi­o­lence.

In fact, the in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence were so bad, that of­fi­cials in this coun­try and around the world termed it the “shad­ow pan­dem­ic”.

The theme of WRAP TT dis­cus­sion was Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Against Women and Girls, A Shad­ow Pan­dem­ic.

Cox al­so dis­closed that there were sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in sex­u­al vi­o­lence for girls and women in oth­er age groups above 15.

“These in­creas­es range from as low as nine per cent in the 15-19 age group to as high as 106 per cent in the 30 to 34 age brack­et,” she said.

Cox said vi­o­lence against women and girls in­ten­si­fied dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and con­tin­ues even to­day.

“Up un­til Sep­tem­ber 2023, fe­males ac­count­ed for 75 per cent of the re­ports of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports made to the TTPS and the re­main­ing 25 per cent are men,” Cox ex­plained.

The min­is­ter said for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber this year, there were 972 calls made to the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence hot­line with women be­ing 95 per cent of the callers.

Pro­vid­ing fur­ther sta­tis­tics to paint the pic­ture of vi­o­lence in this coun­try, Cox said 66 per cent of the re­ports cen­tred around emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and ver­bal abuse.

“As glar­ing and heart wrench­ing as these fig­ures are they do not tell the true sto­ry of the pain and suf­fer­ing en­dured by the hun­dreds of women who were strong enough to call the hot­line,” she added.

Cox said for the year so far, 1,500 women have been af­fect­ed by some form of vi­o­lence. Be­tween 2018 and 2022, 7,500 women made do­mes­tic abuse re­ports.

“Our ex­pe­ri­ence over the years tells us that there may be hun­dreds of thou­sands more of these cas­es which for vary­ing rea­sons have not been doc­u­ment­ed ... be­cause they were not re­port­ed,” she said.

Cox said these num­bers had not gone un­no­ticed and her min­istry has tak­en part in many mul­ti-pronged ini­tia­tives and ac­tiv­i­ties to cor­rect this. She added that ef­forts are be­ing tak­en to curb do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

TTPS: Ar­rests

have been made

Gen­der and Child Jus­tice Ad­vo­cate Mar­cus Kissoon said dis­clo­sure or com­ing for­ward to make re­ports was an in­di­ca­tor that girls and chil­dren are cry­ing out for sup­port, jus­tice and an end to the sex­u­al abuse they ex­pe­ri­enced so they could heal.

He said da­ta must show the na­tion how many child sex­u­al as­sault re­ports have been as­sessed, and the dif­fer­ent key play­ers in­vest­ed and man­dat­ed to in­ter­vene in ar­eas of health, wel­fare, safe­guard­ing, polic­ing, and le­gal.

“Fur­ther­more, we need to know ‘who is do­ing what to our chil­dren’ and whether abusers are be­ing pros­e­cut­ed and the num­ber of per­pe­tra­tors held ac­count­able. These are the num­bers we need to see now,” he said.

Kissoon said there should al­so be lessons from the Heath and Fam­i­ly Life Ed­u­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum that talk about pow­er re­la­tions and ex­pose chil­dren to em­pow­er­ing lan­guage.

Head of the Gen­der-based Vi­o­lence Unit of the TTPS Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne said ar­rests fol­low­ing re­ports of sex­u­al vi­o­lence against chil­dren have been made.

She said since 2020 there have been nu­mer­ous ar­rests and the young sur­vivors were of­fered psy­choso­cial sup­port.

Guy-Al­leyne said while the sta­tis­tics are alarm­ing she was more con­cerned about the per­cent­age of vic­tims who have not come for­ward.

“We will con­tin­ue to sen­si­tise per­sons in com­mu­ni­ties, neigh­bour­hoods and schools,” she said.

Guy-Al­leyne plead­ed with par­ents to be­lieve their chil­dren and pay at­ten­tion to who they are un­com­fort­able around.