Humanist: let’s talk sex

The panel featured Gregory Sloane Seale, director of the Youth Outreach Programme, YMCA, Natalie O’Brady, counsellor at the Rape Crisis Centre, Dr Jacklyn Sharpe, child psychologist and Wendell De Leon, family therapist, Dolly and Associates.

The panel focussed on the failure of many parents to educate young children on sexuality and their right to protect their bodies from abuse.

Sloane-Seale said nine out of ten of the youths he encountered at the outreach programme did not receive information about sex from their parents and were not willing to have discussions on the topic.

He said during his involvement with children’s rights he has only been exposed to about three programmes on sex education launched by the Ministry of Education within the last ten years.

These programmes, he said had limited focus on sexuality and never reached further than “pilot stage.” He added that parents ought to feel comfortable talking to their children about sex.

Dr Sharpe elaborated on the area of sexual abuse, stating that there is always a component of secrecy before disclosure of continuous sexual abuse. She said, disclosure sometimes happens by accident, when the “behaviour of the child becomes sexualised,” such as, when seven year olds want to be “sexy” and engage in inappropriate kissing with their peers. Sharpe said, a sex survey done by Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) published in 2001, revealed that over 50 percent of young people in the Caribbean are sexually active and most of them encountered their first sexual experience at age nine or ten.

The discussion alluded to the need for a central social service agency to accept the responsibility of removing children from abusive environments, when cases of sexual abuse are reported to the police.

The changing family structure was a factor blamed for the prevailing existence of incestuous relationships in the Caribbean with step-families or reconstituted families more at risk.