Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) To­ba­go of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts is con­cerned about the im­pact of a re­cent in­ci­dent in which a 14-year-old girl was al­leged­ly mo­lest­ed by a PH taxi dri­ver.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the stu­dent was on her way to school on Mon­day when she stopped a car dri­ven by the sus­pect. The man al­leged­ly took her to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion, where she was beat­en and mo­lest­ed. She was lat­er dropped off on the road near her school.

Her rel­a­tives were con­tact­ed and she was tak­en to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she was med­ical­ly treat­ed.

Al­though the sus­pect is now in po­lice cus­tody, Roberts is wor­ried about the ef­fect the in­ci­dent could have on the school pop­u­la­tion.

He said it was trau­ma­tis­ing for the vic­tim and oth­er stu­dents who use pub­lic trans­port.

“It would be quite trau­ma­tis­ing for that child. These kinds of things would not be one-off events. The child would be af­fect­ed by this for some time and not just the child, the par­ents, her col­leagues and fel­low stu­dents trav­el­ling to school. There will be some lev­el of dis­com­fort,” Roberts said.

He said coun­selling ses­sions will not be enough.

“I don’t know any coun­selling that could bring back the in­no­cence of the child. Coun­selling may help with deal­ing with the trau­ma and re­gain­ing the con­fi­dence, but that is a steep hill to climb and too of­ten we sen­sa­tion­alise these things. It hap­pens to­day and we have a lot of cov­er­age on it and we leave our pol­i­cy­mak­ers to do noth­ing about it and then when it hap­pens again, we have an­oth­er me­dia rouse,” he said.

“Where this top­ic is con­cerned, it is some­thing to be an­noyed about and an­gry about. It’s not about the nice talk. It’s about mak­ing per­sons who say they will do some­thing and make a dif­fer­ence keep their word.”

Roberts said this mat­ter will al­so be dif­fi­cult for To­ba­go to cope with. He fur­ther lament­ed that it will on­ly be a short-term fo­cus un­til an­oth­er sim­i­lar case aris­es.

He said, “The child and those close to her will face long-term chal­lenges in deal­ing with this mat­ter.”

Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Zor­isha Hack­et could not be reached for com­ment and ques­tions sent to her went unan­swered yes­ter­day.