In Ju­ly 2023, 13-year-old Mark (not his re­al name) was ex­cit­ed to be part of his school’s crick­et team’s trip to Bar­ba­dos for a tour­na­ment and train­ing. It was his first time out of the coun­try with the team and he was ready for the new ex­pe­ri­ences, bond­ing with his team­mates on and off the field.

Dur­ing one of their pe­ri­ods of free time, he and an­oth­er boy were sit­ting in their apart­ment’s liv­ing room play­ing video games when sud­den­ly they were ap­proached by a group of old­er boys from the team. The boys al­leged­ly start­ed hit­ting Mark’s team­mate, then forcibly moved him to an­oth­er room, al­leged­ly at­tack­ing him fur­ther.

The coach­es, who were out buy­ing gro­ceries re­turned short­ly af­ter. Mark told them what hap­pened but lat­er that group of old­er boys threat­ened Mark, call­ing him a snitch and threat­en­ing fur­ther vi­o­lence.

Guardian Me­dia was pro­vid­ed with sev­er­al let­ters writ­ten by the boy’s fa­ther to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion which de­tailed what hap­pened next.

“The boys said that (Mark) likes to talk so they would deal with him like they did his friend. It was at that point that he was first threat­ened to have the han­dle of a crick­et bat rammed up his anus, as they al­leged­ly did to the oth­er Form One stu­dent that they re­moved from the couch ear­li­er that day,” the let­ter read.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, the team’s chef in­ter­vened, pre­vent­ing Mark from re­ceiv­ing a beat­ing. Mark called his par­ents in dis­tress. His grand­fa­ther con­tact­ed the coach, who lat­er as­sured him the is­sue was re­solved. (We reached out to the coach for com­ment).

To the coach’s cred­it, he ad­dressed the is­sue with the young men on the trip, scold­ing them for their be­hav­iour. “This tra­di­tion ends to­day,” he re­port­ed­ly told the boys.

But Mark’s fa­ther, a so­cial work­er trained in the Unit­ed States, felt the in­ter­ven­tion was not enough. It has led to a fight for an­swers for over a year, across mul­ti­ple agen­cies, to get some­one in au­thor­i­ty to hear his cries about the se­ri­ous­ness of the is­sue of his son’s haz­ing in­ci­dent, which, if not for a lucky in­ter­ven­tion, he feared could have been worse.

Haz­ing by de­f­i­n­i­tion is an ini­ti­a­tion process in­to a club, team or gang, usu­al­ly in­volv­ing ha­rass­ment. It’s a term more of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with chil­dren in the Unit­ed States than in T&T. In fact, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has on­ly one re­port­ed case of haz­ing in its archives, Mark’s. Ac­cord­ing to the Au­thor­i­ty, haz­ing is not “a care and pro­tec­tion clas­si­fi­ca­tion” that is out­lined in Sec­tion 22 of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Act, Chap 46:10.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty for an up­date on the sta­tus of the case.

“While the re­port was made to the Au­thor­i­ty, the or­gan­i­sa­tion would have de­ter­mined that this mat­ter re­quired po­lice in­ter­ven­tion, giv­en the se­ri­ous na­ture of the al­le­ga­tions and the grave con­cerns ex­pressed. Fur­ther, as this re­port in­volves sev­er­al mi­nors, the Au­thor­i­ty and all agen­cies con­cerned owe a du­ty of care to all par­ties to en­sure the ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse is ini­ti­at­ed. All rel­e­vant agen­cies, in­clud­ing the TTPS, the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion are aware of this re­port,” it said.

We reached out to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion for a re­sponse, ask­ing about how preva­lent haz­ing was in the school sys­tem where hun­dreds of mi­nors are in­volved in team sports every year, but mes­sages went unan­swered. Guardian Me­dia did, how­ev­er, see a let­ter which spoke specif­i­cal­ly to in­ter­ven­tions by the res­i­dent guid­ance coun­sel­lor from the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion at Mark’s school. Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, all of the boys in­volved were giv­en coun­selling (al­though Mark’s fa­ther has raised is­sues with its ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness).

Ear­li­er this year, the school gave a spe­cif­ic pre­sen­ta­tion on haz­ing for stu­dents in Forms Five and Six to ad­dress and ed­u­cate them about this is­sue.

Go­ing for­ward, the school hopes to com­plete haz­ing pre­sen­ta­tions for Forms Three and Four and to start ses­sions on re­silience for low­er school stu­dents. The min­istry al­so planned re­in­force­ment ses­sions for prin­ci­pals with five years or less ser­vice on com­pul­so­ry re­port­ing on mat­ters in­volv­ing stu­dents.

TTPS: Any un­want­ed act is an as­sault

Head of the TTPS Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment Michelle Row­ley-Pow­der ad­mit­ted re­ports of haz­ing don’t come across her desk of­ten.

“The re­port of it­self is not preva­lent in our do­main,” she said. “How­ev­er, we de­fine any act that is un­want­ed, where there is dis­com­fort, we de­fine it as an of­fence.”

She said adults have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­port.

“They need to pay at­ten­tion to what is go­ing on with these mi­nors,” Row­ley-Pow­der said. “And as be­ing in a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty, you have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to take charge and to re­port these sorts of acts. If any­one is aware of any act tak­ing place and re­fus­es to make a re­port which you are bound by law to do, then you are al­so guilty of an of­fence of fail­ing to re­port.”

Mark’s con­tin­ued fight

Mark even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred out of the school. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to his fa­ther, he has still been la­belled a “snitch” and is still cy­ber­bul­lied at times by his for­mer class­mates.

His fa­ther said Mark has now be­come shy, and awk­ward at his new school. There have been some be­hav­iour­al changes. The fa­ther said the in­ci­dent has led to strain be­tween Mark and his par­ents. His fa­ther fears that if he con­tin­ues to push the is­sue with the au­thor­i­ties for an­swers, his son may stop con­fid­ing in him al­to­geth­er.

Par­ents and guardians are en­cour­aged to re­port any con­cerns re­gard­ing a child’s safe­ty and well-be­ing to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty via its hot­line at 996 or the po­lice at 999.