Mind your child!

Tuesday’s marathon debate on two pieces of children’s legislation really did bring out the best in senators. Under debate were the Children's Authority (Amendment) Bill 2008 that sets up an umbrella body of the same name to be responsible for at-risk children, and the Children's Community Residences, Foster Homes and Nurseries (Amendment) Bill 2008 which updates the regulation of children’s homes, foster homes and nurseries.

Independent Senator Gail Merhair clinically dissected the Bills clause by clause. She then spoke from her heart in an almost fiery speech to make an impassioned plea for the protection of children from sex predators.

“It is my recommendation that the Government move with haste to establish a sex offenders registry and it be published in all administrative towns and cities to inform residents of an offender if they are residing close by.”

Not only did Merhair make a forceful call for the compulsory registration of sex-offenders, but she interspersed her speech with other very sensible measures to reduce the chances of children getting molested and to help them escape such a situation.

She raised the very real issue of children being sexually abused while supposedly in care in a children’s home, a tragedy that has been reported in many foreign jurisdictions and which is anecdotally also thought to occur in TT.

She urged senators to rethink clause 28 of the Children’s Community Residences Bill which punishes by 25 years imprisonment and a fine someone who helps a minor run away from a children’s home, as she said the Bill fails to remedy a situation where that child is seeking to escape abuse perpetrated by an adult in that very home.

“We should try to ensure that the monitoring of children in State care is effective and efficient before we make it a criminal offence to assist the child if they do in fact leave that care.”

She quoted an infamous Australian case in January 2004 of a woman being repeatedly abused by foster-family members over 13 years which led to a commission of inquiry which recommended safeguards such as mandatory reporting by doctors and nurses of cases of suspected abuse.

Merhair called for more social workers and guidance officers in TT schools, saying the Bills ignored the issue of child abuse in schools. She also called for the Government to establish independent investigations into what she called many suspicious deaths of children at public hospitals over the years.

Merhair recalled several recent tragic news headlines that had involved under- aged mothers. “Sometimes you read of a woman 18 years old, with a child four years old. Where was this child delivered? At a public institution? Why weren’t the police called?

“From the time a minor goes to give birth at a public institution, I am saying someone from the Children’s Authority should be called because it is quite possible that the minor was abused.”

Merhair said at-risk children should be assessed every six months or every year for signs of sexual abuse. She also urged parents to not simply dismiss errant children as being “harden” but to check if the problem was not caused by something as simple as the child needing corrective lenses to help him/her see properly at school. Merhair ended by quoting the title of a song by the late calypsonian, Merchant, saying, “Think about the children, not later but right now.”

Opposition Senator Jennifer Jones-Kernahan lamented that the crime situation had drawn many youngsters into crime both as victims and perpetrators. “Hundreds of children are victims of the crime wave that is tantamount to war. Children are being shot in this whole issue of gang- warfare that this Government refuses to address,” she said. Jones-Kernahan said children idolised slain gang-leaders who had been seen as benefactors of their communities. “Hundreds come out to mourn the death of their benefactors who had put order in their community, the role of the Government.”

Opposition Senator Dr Carson Charles showed his political nature, but also spoke like a concerned uncle who had learnt something of the harsh realities of life which he wanted to share in order to save the next generation.

Charles, like colleague Jennifer Jones-Kernahan earlier, lamented that many youngsters are idolising gang-leaders and drug-dealers as their role models and father-figures. It was one of Charles’ best ever speeches.

“If youths are seeing as their role model, a particular drug-dealer who is benevolent and powerful, they will want to be like him. Youths want to follow the drug-dealer because they also want to have the cars, guns, money and women.”

This role model is also portrayed in popular music and on television, he said. Noting the frequency of fathers abandoning their children, Charles warned that such youngsters would gravitate to whoever was the powerful, father figure they were seeing in their daily life, even if that person was a bandit or drug-dealer.

Charles made a heartfelt plea for the society not to forget the small children of persons gunned down in the recent spate of violent murders.

“There are too many cases of young people whose fathers have been shot down, and every time we see two or three murders in the newspapers, I don’t know if we take the time to think that there are in many cases some little children who get left behind.”

He said it was a terrible experience for a child to lose their father in this way.

“It is a terrible thing to lose your parents as a little child because somebody gunned him down. So what we do as adults to improve our country and improve life in our communities will go a long way to improving the environment in which our young people grow up.”

Charles said the country’s vulnerable children are at risk of falling into the clutches of “cynical men” waiting to recruit them into a criminal life.

Looking around the parliamentary chamber, he said the insurgents in the July 27, 1990 attempted coup had included children.

Some minors, as young as 14 and 15 years old, he said are today terrorising their communities.

Lamenting that the community-leaders who sponsored sports days were often bandits and drug-dealers, he said there needs to be a way of elevating the stature of other role models in these communities other than the criminal leaders. Charles said that in contrast, there was a shortage of male principals as role models.

He warned the listeners not to think they were doing well in taking care of the country’s children, instead asserting: “Emergency action is required.”

Charles recalled a case that showed that putting children in custody was not necessarily the solution to youth delinquency.”I know of people who have asked the Family Court to take their children — a young lady was placed in St Jude’s Home — and they went right back to the Family Court to ask them to take their children back.”

Likewise, he said, a youth who us picked up by the police for a minor offence and put in the Remand Section of prison for a few days would later come out as a bitter youth.

Independent Senator Subhas Ramkhelawan had an interesting insight into child development and their place in society. Ramkhelawan warned that a child gets “lost” at a younger age than most people think. “We lose most of our children at age eight or nine, not at 13 or 15 years old,” he said. Children are lost, he said, often because they cannot read or because they have no guidance in their lives from their parents. “Nature abhors a vacuum, and it is often to be filled by evil forces, not forces for good.”

Saying it takes a village to raise a child, he said this society has lost the presence of many traditional leaders such as teachers and gurus who used to direct a child’s life. “We have lost our communities — we don’t know who lives six doors down,” he said.

Ramkhelawan said he hoped that State institutions could be introduced to fill the gaps left by the absence of such traditional leaders in the community. He also said that because children are the most vulnerable members of this society, he would support legislation brought to Parliament to put an electronic bracelet tag onto any child offender. He said child molesters take advantage of children over and over again, describing the behaviour of such criminals as “endemic and repetitive”.

Acting Independent Senator Dr Rolf Balgobin cited a study that found that a child spends an average of four minutes a day with his/her father, and seven minutes with the mother, while spending hours daily watching television. “An intervention is required to address the vacancy left in families,” he said.

He lamented that by age 18 years old, a youngster has witnessed on television some 18,000 murders, alluding to the question of how this affects a child’s psyche.

Balgobin said that the recession of families has left a gap that the State should bridge, although he later worried that an increased role of Government in family life might diminish the responsibilities of families.

Apparently many of his concerns were not met by the Bill. “We are taking the approach that we have to protect these children, but we also have to heal them. A child does not just need protection but they also need nurturing and love — nurturing and healing of children who are wounded and hurt,” he said.