DR GABRIELLE JAMELA HOSEIN
HEADLINES today, from violent crime to school violence to lethal violence against women, often result from trauma stemming from abuse of children.
There are other economic and social factors harming family and community resilience, but we can see this in the thousands of reports made to the Children's Authority, police and NGOs each year, and in the recent 'Safeguarding Children in Community Residences and Child Support Centres in Trinidad and Tobago' report, which focuses on institutionalised children and youth.
Child abuse, including sexual abuse, is widespread, tolerated and silenced. In that context, we must ask ourselves what preventative approach will stop this from continuing.
Following the recent report, and with the government under heat to show real action, the 25-year-old Robert Sabga-led report conveniently resurfaced, enabling the Prime Minister to return to the attack mode with which he is most comfortable.
Both reports are damning, not just of office holders and judicial officers, but of the individuals and institutions meant to protect children, and particularly of religious organisations. The same cover-up that happens in families is endemic in both church and state.
I thought the PM's May 16 press release was opportunistic, because he is capable of being silent when the nation calls for answers and apologies. As Prime Minister, he may have established the 'Ministry of Gender and Child Affairs' (which is not a ministry, but was reduced to a division within the OPM), but it is a small unit with less status, autonomy and permanent staffing than it needs (and than it had), given its centrality to issues of rights, gender equity, and gender-based and sexual violence.
We should be sceptical when institutions and initiatives are established, but are perennially under-resourced and understaffed. We should also all be aware that the Children's Authority, to quote its former chairman, put forward the same recommendations to address 'sexual and physical abuse in child-support centres' and that these were 'suggested and rejected'.
In his words, published in the Newsday of May 3, "we were turned down and told there was no funding and all these different kinds of things.' Unless he wanted to also account for his administration's failures to protect children, the PM should have avoided politicising this issue.
Key is what will now create transformation, rehabilitation and justice. We await the task force's implementation plan and deadlines. This is not just about handing matters over to the police. It requires real recognition that children's needs for safety, love, care and trauma healing are not being met (and have not been over decades), and the state system for oversight and response is poorly managed and resourced, and operates without accountability or consequences. What then must be put in place?
In its press release, the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS), UWI, pointed to the need for psycho-support services to be offered to
