The report of the Judith Jones Task Force made public earlier this year exposed widespread sexual, physical and psychological abuse of children at institutions across the country.
Repercussions from those horrific revelations are still being felt in a nation that awaits news about perpetrators being brought to justice for the egregious crimes they committed against vulnerable wards of the state.
There were positive responses to a Privy Council decision earlier this week to reinstate an award of almost $2 million in damages to a young man who was tortured and sexually and physically abused at the St Michael’s Boys' Industrial School and St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital. However, the report on the latest developments in that case also served as a jolting reminder of what has been taking place for decades at many children’s homes and child support centres.
If there had been any doubt about the harrowing ordeals endured by countless youngsters at these facilities, the case of this young man, whose identity was withheld to protect his privacy, erased them all.
The cruel treatment he repeatedly endured was particularly traumatic because he suffers from Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), a rare genetic disorder that inhibits physical and cognitive development, produces feelings of insatiable hunger leading to obesity, and is associated with behavioural problems.
Instead of the therapy and professional interventions he should have received from a very young age, this boy suffered extreme torture and abuse.
The monetary award does not even begin to relieve the violations this young man experienced. The physical scars on his chest, abdomen, arms and face are just the physical signs of the trauma this young man will carry for the rest of his life. However, it provides an opportunity for him and his mother to begin rebuilding their lives.
What is particularly disturbing is that he is just one of countless wards of the state, past and present, who are still awaiting justice and remain at high risk of falling through the cracks of T&T’s fractured child protection system.
For these and many other reasons, there is more skepticism than relief at news that the Ministry of Gender and Child Affairs has opened a home for migrant girls.
Questions should certainly be asked about why the keys to this new facility were handed over to management of the St Jude’s Children’s Home, an institution that figures prominently in the Judith Jones report and the equally scandalous Robert Sabga Report of a few decades earlier.
Unless, in a matter of months, there has been a miraculous transformation in the way St Jude’s is run, this new home for migrant girls has started off under a cloud. Minister in the Ministry of Gender and Child Affairs Ayanna Webster-Roy needs to provide some clarity in this matter.
Whether this new facility will supply the support and professional care migrant children need to protect them from abuse, exploitation, human trafficking and neglect remains to be seen.
However, there must be full accountability and transparency at all children’s homes and child support centres, as well as tangible proof that the nightmares many of T&T’s most vulnerable children and teenagers have lived through are finally coming to an end.
