Send a strong message to child abusers, Mr PM - Blaine

INCENSED BY a spate of child sex assault reports, advocate Betty Ann Blaine has called on Prime Minister Andrew Holness to make a strong statement to Jamaicans that there will be zero tolerance against people who target children.

“And that we are going to investigate these cases swiftly and we are going to bring you to justice, if you are found guilty you are going to be put away for life,” Blaine said the statement should signal.

Known for her strident advocacy for the nation’s children, Blaine said that the statement by Holness should be backed up by two or three action plans to cauterise abuse against children.

Commenting on a reported incident where a 13-year-old girl was buggered by five males in St Ann, Blaine said that this case of abuse should trigger national outrage.

“Child Month is the period when we honour children, we focus on the kids, we try to find help and solutions for these children, and for this to be the report on the first day of Child Month it’s disheartening,” said Blaine, convenor of lobby group Hear the Children’s Cry.

She also bemoaned another case in St Ann where a five-year-old boy was buggered by an adult. Late last week a two-year-old child was among at least seven people who received gunshot wounds after they were attacked by gunmen near Meadowrest Memorial Gardens in St Catherine. Two women died in the incident.

“Then we have seen these other bizarre types of sexual attacks against children and it’s very disheartening for us, you know, because we have been in the trenches for so long fighting and things are getting worse,” she lamented.

Blaine told The Gleaner that in 2017, Hear the Children’s Cry called on Prime Minister Holness to convene a child summit following a wave of killings of children in 2016 and the murder of a student from Calabar in early 2017.

She said Hear the Children’s Cry was asked to write a proposal for the summit. “Now, we did not want it to be a talk shop, because I have no patience, no energy in being in another talk shop about what to do about the children of Jamaica, so I said to him (prime minister) let the summit be very focused. If we could come away with even one single thing that we could do as a nation to protect our children it would be worth it.”

Blaine said despite a second call on the prime minister in 2018 for the summit it did not happen.

“I am very upset about this case with the 13-year-old and the case with the five-year-old and all these other cases of the abuse of our children.

“We are a country of less than three million people and the child population is about a little under a million. Are you telling me we cannot fix this problem?” she questioned.

She called for an amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act to impose tougher penalties on persons who bugger a child.

Section 76 of the Offences Against the Person Act makes buggery punishable across the board, with a penalty of imprisonment for up to 10 years, with hard labour.

However, the Sexual Offences Act, Section 10(4) states that where a person charged with an offence is an adult in authority, then, he or she is liable upon conviction in a Circuit Court to life imprisonment, or such other term as the court considers appropriate, not being less than 15 years.

Indicating that there were about a dozen laws to protect the nation’s children, Blaine said despite this it was a national shame that “people were raping the children at will, murdering them at will, buggering them at will and oftentimes the perpetrators are never brought to justice”.

She reminded the country that the killers of Ananda Dean are yet to be brought to justice 13 years after she was decapitated. “If you live in a society where you can murder a child and just walk scot-free ... how can we fix this problem?”

Meanwhile, an investigator at the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) told The Gleaner that some children who are abused become withdrawn and show signs of antisocial behaviour, while others are able to adjust with strong emotional support from their families.

The investigator, who requested anonymity, said that intra-family child abuse was often covered up.

“You have some that actually instigate it, meaning they are the ones that put the children in these types of situations, and then you have some who would move heaven and earth to ensure that they can undo the damage that was done to that child,” the investigator said.

The CPFSA investigator said that even though children were not having face-to-face learning, some who have suffered abuse were finding ways to report it to their teachers or the child-protection agency.

“They have been calling in, they still report to their class teachers, who can interrogate the report just the same. They will go to a neighbour or somebody from the community or church, so they still find ways to express what is happening to them and they are getting the intervention,” the CPFSA investigator said.

In Box

2020 child abuse breakdown

In 2020 (during-COVID-19)

Sexual abuse accounted for 1,966 cases (20%)

Physical abuse accounted for 2,216 cases (22%)

Negligence remains the leading category of cases for the island as a whole

Miscellaneous cases were 1,345 (14%)

A total of 9,836 cases were received for investigation

2019 child abuse breakdown

Sexual abuse accounted for 2,644 cases (18%)

Physical abuse accounted for 2,857 cases (20%)

Negligence accounted for 3,133 cases (22%)

Behavioural problems accounted for 2,705 cases (19%)

Miscellaneous cases were 2,975 (21%)

In 2019 (pre-COVID) a total of 14,314 cases were received for investigation