TT’s forgotten children

Hundreds of orphans — whose parents were victims or perpetrators of crime — have fallen through the cracks at all levels of the State’s protection systems, a Parliament committee yesterday heard. Officials warned that another generation of criminals was, in the process, being bred.

In its first-ever public hearing, the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, Equality and Diversity heard of hundreds of cases of children being left behind in harrowing circumstances.

Yet, the State, and its many arms, have no coherent plan to tackle this issue.

Chairman of the committee, Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, said the new committee decided to make the issue — which engages the rights of the child, among others — the first issue on its agenda.

“Are we — by not paying attention to these children, who are described as the forgotten victims of crime; orphans of justice — fuelling the next generation of crime?” she said in a committee room at the International Waterfront Centre, Portof- Spain.

In an opening statement to the committee, Jacinta Bailey- Sobers, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Social Development, said more mechanisms were needed for collaboration between state agencies.

“Unless we have a robust system in place and all the agencies are collaborating to ensure that children don’t fall through the cracks, we will have a situation where we will have children not only in school but also children who have dropped out of school ending up in St Michael’s and all these other institutions,” the permanent secretary warned.

She cited the case of Osmond Baboolal, whose family was murdered by Dole Chadee and eight members of his gang in 1994.

Baboolal, in 2010, was charged with attempted murder and at one stage was sent to St Ann’s Hospital for psychological observation. He was later deemed fit to plead.

YOUTH AT RISK “I remember some years ago we had that young man whose parents were killed by the Dole Chadee gang,” said Bailey-Sobers.

“That young man was very young at the time. His sister and himself survived that attack. But because of the systems, he, in particular, was left alone. And we know the end of that story.” Harrilal Seecharan, the Chief Education Officer, told the committee there were 283 students in the education system whose parents were either victims of or perpetrators of crime.

But there may be more.

“All the possible cases may not be coming to us,” he cautioned.

Sharifa Ali-Abdullah, the Director of the Children’s Authority, said 180 children on the agency’s database were victims of crime.

Of these, 105 had parents who were both victims and perpetrators; 41 had parents who were perpetrators and 34 had parents who were victims. Gadsby- Dolly, the Minister of Social Development, estimated the total number of those affected to be 118. None of the committee members could reconcile these figures or say if there was overlap.

The committee heard that there were no studies on the problem. There were no special programmes, in schools, in ministries, at the Authority or under the Police Service.

Research funding for the issue was deemed woefully inadequate.

In one case, $200,000 was allocated when the cost of a study with a robust sample would be $1 million.

At the same time, the MPs heard startling evidence of the trauma suffered by these children, based on “live research” recorded at the Authority. Vandana Siewsankar-Ali, Assessment Manager (Ag) at the Authority, gave a detailed account of these reports. “We have found that for the most part the findings are very similar across all these children,” Siewsankar- Ali said.

“It tends to include a range of internalising disorders including clinical diagnoses such as depression; anxiety. We tend to see a lot of children having difficulties coping in the school environment because they are withdrawn.” DYSFUNCTION IN TT The official continued, “You tend to see a lot of acting out and externalising behaviours – which is very instructive given the type of issues that we are seeing in our schools. We see aggression and beyond control behaviours, children who have a lot of difficulty managing their anger, a lot of difficulty with destruction of property, minor crimes that these children also engage in.” Siewsankar-Ali further said, “We see a lot of difficulties in terms of attachment because the offending or non-offending parents are not available or unresponsive to address the needs of the children.” The manager said instances where children get caught up in rows between parents are also doing harm.

“We are seeing an increase in the types of issues associated with cases where children become triangulated in the violence in the parents’ home,” Siewsankar-Ali said.

“We are seeing children taking on more responsibilities within the home. We are seeing where children become pitted — emotionally — against one parent. That is a very difficult situation when you have the fences up.” The committee also heard that from May 2015 to April 2016 the Child Protection Unit of the Police Service examined 2,123 cases, seven percent of which related to incest.

The Children’s Authority handled 5,300 cases — more than fivefold its projected workload — in its first few months of operation.

The committee heard of some children currently in custody being pregnant, suicidal, and silenced by trauma.