Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

The Caribbean has one of the high­est in­ci­dences per capi­ta of rape and vi­o­lence against women glob­al­ly. These were among the find­ings in a re­port by Cana­di­an hu­man traf­fick­ing and mi­grant con­sul­tant Dr Cleophas Jus­tine Pierre who pre­sent­ed this da­ta to mem­bers of a diplo­mat­ic corp dur­ing a lec­ture on hu­man traf­fick­ing ear­li­er this year.

The re­port shows that T&T is par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble be­cause of its porous bor­ders which re­sult­ed in an in­flux of crim­i­nal gangs.

Pierre gave sta­tis­tics for the five years 2015-2020 for most of the coun­tries in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca show­ing the types of crime com­mit­ted and the oc­cu­pa­tions of the ten groups of peo­ple most like­ly to com­mit sex­u­al of­fences. The da­ta is based on the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard clas­si­fi­ca­tion of oc­cu­pa­tions (ILO) (ISIC codes) of per­sons who were ei­ther ar­rest­ed or in­ves­ti­gat­ed for a crime.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance were the alarm­ing crimes against women and the fail­ure of sev­er­al gov­ern­ments to have “poli­cies to pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble, es­pe­cial­ly mi­grants, LGBT pop­u­la­tion, rur­al women, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, per­sons liv­ing with HIV and the in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.”

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Pierre, the da­ta of more than “27 mil­lion in­ci­dences of ar­rest and in­ves­ti­ga­tions over the last five years re­vealed that 70.09 per cent of sex­u­al preda­tors in the Caribbean are from ten board oc­cu­pa­tions, with the high­est in­ci­dents among farm­ers and fish­er­men—ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7.5 mil­lion peo­ple.

Work­ers in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor such as bus con­duc­tors, taxi dri­vers, or taxi op­er­a­tors ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.4 mil­lion per­pe­tra­tors, fol­lowed by close to 1.9 mil­lion club own­ers.

Al­though of­fi­cial po­lice sta­tis­tics show that cas­es of sex­u­al of­fences have de­creased over the last three years, of­fi­cials of the Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety of T&T (RC­STT) ques­tion the ac­cu­ra­cy of that da­ta as many cas­es of rape are un­der­re­port­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by Pierre, T&T ranked 26th glob­al­ly for rape with 18.48 per 100,000 in­hab­i­tants. T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) da­ta for rape, in­cest, and oth­er sex­u­al of­fences shows that there were 531 cas­es in 2017, 726 in 2018, 352 in 2019, 372 in 2020 and 366 in 2021. This year there were 166 cas­es be­tween Jan­u­ary and June.

RSCTT project man­ag­er Kimiko Scott said many women are sim­ply afraid to re­port acts of sex­u­al vi­o­lence and aren’t com­plete­ly con­vinced of the po­lice fig­ures.

“Over 75 per cent of the adults cur­rent­ly en­gaged in coun­selling ses­sions with RC­STT for in­stances of sex­u­al vi­o­lence have not filed a re­port. We don’t see changes in trends in our work, what we pro­vide is coun­selling, out­reach sup­port, and cours­es. Our sta­tis­tics tell us more peo­ple are seek­ing coun­selling sup­port for sex­u­al vi­o­lence. As they tran­si­tion in­to coun­selling treat­ment, we try to get away from us­ing the word vic­tim and get in­to sur­vivor mode.

“The sta­tis­tics from the po­lice are re­port­ed cas­es. Many peo­ple who ac­cess coun­selling have nev­er gone to court or filed a re­port. They don’t want to go through the process and they feel ashamed. Our sys­tem is still very much like a po­lice of­fi­cer ask­ing what they wore, and where they car­ried the man. The sys­tem is built to ques­tion a sur­vivor first rather than be­liev­ing their sto­ry or in­ves­ti­gat­ing their sto­ry,” she said.

Scott said the six coun­sel­lors on staff at RSCTT con­duct­ed 2,298 coun­selling ses­sions for 440 clients last year. There is cur­rent­ly a wait­ing list of 389 per­sons who called and re­quest­ed coun­selling.

“There was a de­crease in the po­lice sta­tis­tics dur­ing COVID but I think that was a de­crease in the abil­i­ty to re­port or will­ing­ness to re­port and not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­stances. The num­bers we have in terms of peo­ple seek­ing sup­port has not de­creased and in fact, has been in­creas­ing last three years.”

She said the RSCTT of­fers coun­selling with psy­chol­o­gists and so­cial work­ers free of charge, op­er­ates two hot­lines—627-7273 and since 2021 a bilin­gual hot­line 866-7428—avail­able from 6 pm to 6 am dai­ly.

Scott fur­ther re­vealed: “For the mi­grants ha­rass­ment on the streets has been some­thing very, very big. Trinidad and To­ba­go has been get­ting a bad rap, es­pe­cial­ly with mi­grant women. The men take the ap­proach that mi­grant women are here to take care of their needs and not to work in a gro­cery.

“Our cul­ture con­dones cer­tain men­tal­i­ties against women. There is a feel­ing of en­ti­tle­ment and own­er­ship, so our idea that we can own peo­ple or stake a claim to a per­son’s body gets us in trou­ble. There are hid­den cul­tur­al al­lowances or pat­terns that we have not bro­ken that con­done abuse.”

Ac­cord­ing to Scott, sex of­fend­ers can be from any back­ground, walk of life, or ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground.

Pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan be­lieves rape cas­es could be con­sid­er­ably high­er than re­port­ed be­cause women are afraid to come for­ward for fear of re­tal­i­a­tion.

“Since Au­gust 2019 the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work has seen an in­crease in rape in­ci­dents with­in the age group 21 - 35 years. What should be not­ed is that for a num­ber of per­son­al rea­sons vic­tims do not re­port the in­ci­dents to the po­lice and just pre­fer to seek coun­selling. Some vic­tims have al­so opt­ed to not re­port the in­ci­dents as based on feed­back from oth­er vic­tims, they be­lieve that their mat­ters would not be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by the po­lice,” Isaac-Rat­tan said

“Based on sci­en­tif­ic re­search, 90 per cent of per­pe­tra­tors were them­selves vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse in their ear­li­er years and be­cause they were not healed they re­peat the cy­cle of sex­u­al abuse. An­oth­er rea­son is heavy en­gage­ment in porno­graph­ic ten­den­cies which fur­ther man­i­fests in sex­u­al mis­con­duct such as rape.”

Isaac-Rat­tan said that per­pe­tra­tors come from across the broad­est stra­ta of Trinidad and To­ba­go and there have been per­pe­tra­tors as old as 75 years.

She al­so list­ed dif­fer­ent types of rapes:

• Di­min­ished Ca­pac­i­ty Rape—When one per­son forces sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion on an­oth­er per­son who can­not con­sent to the sex act.

• Age-Re­lat­ed Rape—Al­so known as statu­to­ry rape. In this case, sex­u­al ac­tions with a per­son be­low the ap­proved age are con­sid­ered il­le­gal.

• In­cest—This is a type of rape dic­tat­ed by a re­la­tion­ship be­tween par­ents and chil­dren, un­cles and nieces/nephews, or aunts and nieces/nephews.

• Part­ner Rape—Spousal or mar­i­tal rape and in­volves a per­son’s part­ner or pre­vi­ous part­ner.

• Ac­quain­tance Rape—This oc­curs be­tween two in­di­vid­u­als known to each oth­er.

• Ag­gra­vat­ed Rape—Forced sex acts by the threat of death or se­ri­ous bod­i­ly harm, forced sex acts in­volv­ing un­con­scious or drugged vic­tims, and sex acts with chil­dren un­der 12.