STOP RAPE AND INCEST NOW.

                                     INCEST &RAPE

                  IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO UPDATES

"

STOP ABUSING GIRLS NOW!!!!!

http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2012-02-02/vigorous-attack-incest 
It has been a horrific start to 2012 for some children as heinous acts of incest were splashed across the newspapers. On January 19, 2012, Krishan Rampersad, 60, appeared before Senior Magistrate Indra Ramoo-Haynes charged with raping a relative. So severely traumatised was the child that even attending school became a nightmare. That same day, a 47-year-old businessman and a father of nine appeared in the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court before Magistrate Maureen Baboolal-Gafoor charged with having sex with a 13-year-old girl on January 1 and 3,  2012. On January 25, 2012, 80-year-old Cephas Callender, of Maingo Trace, Basse Terre, Moruga, appeared before a Princes Town magistrate charged with 61 counts of incest and one count of grievous sexual assault on an eight-year-old relative. He was denied bail. The incidents were allegedly committed between April 2006 and November 2011 when the victim was eight years old. Two weeks after the matter was first called before the court, the child, now 13, attempted to commit suicide by drinking a poisonous substance at her home and had to be rushed to hospital.


According to statistics, complied by the T&T Police Service, there were 512 reported cases of rapes, incest and sexual offences for 2011. The highest months identified were March, May and November. Amid the despair the Victim and Witness Support Unit has promised hope and relief when it launched a vigorous attack on incest at the start of  the year. The unit’s executive director, Margaret Sampson-Browne, said her officials and police officers from various divisions would be “moving into communities with full force,” to weed out suspected perpetrators and ensure they were brought to justice. Parents and guardians, Sampson-Browne also warned, who continued to deliberately turn a blind eye when children were mercilessly subjected to incest must be held accountable. A prominent and seasoned law enforcement expert, Sampson-Browne, a former assistant police commissioner in charge of community relations, in an interview yesterday said: “We are going in communities to help and we are going to lock up...make no mistake about that.

“Children are being destroyed daily and we cannot continue to turn a blind eye and pretend it does not exist. We are coming with police because adults have absolutely no excuse, children must be protected,” Sampson-Browne added.
She said the unit already had partnered with key stakeholders, including the Family Planning Association, Families in Action and the Servol Life Centre to render assistance to both children and adults, namely mothers who themselves may be subjected to abuse. She added: “Everyone is on board. We are clear in our mandate and the law is also very clear when it comes to the Sexual Offences Act. “We would not be intimidated by anyone in conducting our duties.”
As part of the outreach process Sampson-Browne said her unit also would be visiting schools. Last Tuesday, a team of officials from the unit, led by Sampson-Browne, went to a secondary school in a far-flung area of east Trinidad where it was suspected that one student was an incest victim. Explaining that the unit was not a crime-fighting body, Sampson-Browne maintained information was acted upon by the unit’s officials, via a meticulous scanning process.

She said: “When we go to communities information is given to us which may or may not have merit in it. “We then scan that information by doing our own research and also work hand-in-hand with police officers who will then initiate action if need be, including conducting arrests,” Sampson-Browne explained. While the majority of villagers in areas visited by the unit welcomed the presence of officials, there were some who blatantly denied that incest existed in their communities. That has given Sampson-Browne further impetus to carry out her mandate. She said: “ We are not about destroying families as some may think. We have encountered barriers. “While most people have been welcoming to us, there are still some who are burying their heads in the sand. “If we continue to pretend incest does not exist it will continue to haunt us,” Sampson-Browne added. To tackle this problem, she asserted that education, at all levels, was key.

Medical practitioners, she added, were also needed to be sensitised to certain aspects of the law regarding guidelines when physically examining a suspected incest victim. “There are some doctors who insist that a parent must be present when the child is being examined but if the parent is the perpetrator how could you have the perpetrator in the same room as the victim? “The law clearly states that an adult of the same sex could be present when the child is being examined and many doctors are not aware of this...these are the kinds of barriers we need to break,” Sampson Browne insisted. Plans are on stream to place an officer of the unit in Toco and Matelot and another officer is expected to be placed in Tobago this month. Statistics complied by the Crime and Problem Analysis Branch (CAPA) last year showed that Matelot had the highest concentration of incest in the country.

Heinous acts
Girls as young as 14 are forced into prostitution by their mothers. When penetrations became too difficult, stepfathers have used objects like a knife to slit open the vagina of their stepdaughters and subsequently rape them. These were among the distressing calls for help made to Childline Trinidad and Tobago by abused children, when their cries to relatives had fallen on deaf ears. Programme co-ordinator of the organisation, Mary Moonan, said the physical scars inflicted with a knife may be deep but the mental scars cut even deeper, with the anguish lingering for years. She said in some cases mothers have become more willing to alert the police but sadly in other instances, abused children have been chastised  and ignored by their mothers and therefore were forced to suffer in silence. In one instance, a 13-year-old girl was handed a pack of sanitary napkins when she cried to her mother that her vagina was cut open by her stepfather and who then raped her. The girl made one call to Childline and immediately urgent assistance was rendered, Moonan said. Social workers also played a critical role in intervention but as the reports of incest have become apparently prevalent concerns have arisen whether there were enough workers, especially to canvas rural communities. “I won’t say they are in abundance but there are enough to go around. We, however, have to focus on more outreach programmes, especially in rural areas,” Moonan added.

Intervention at primary schools
Non-Governmental Organisations, such as the Rape Crisis Society, also have recognised that there was an urgent need to intervene at all levels to save children. In September last year, the Save a Child Initiative which focused on pupils seven and eight years old, was sanctioned by the Ministry of Education and was launched as a primary school intervention. Facilitator Natalie O’Brady explained the project, which was being conducted in three phases, was in its second stage of completion.

The first stage, she said, was targeting specific communities and holding discussions and workshops with principals and teachers.
The second phase was sensitising pupils about incest and reaching out to potential victims.
“The third entailed follow-up sessions where, once identified, help and counselling would be immediately given.
“The Save a Child Initiative, therefore, is a holistic approach to dealing with the issue of incest because we wanted to firstly create a safe and comfortable space for children to talk about their feelings and to speak out about what bothers them,” O’Brady explained.
The project, she added, was a spin-off from a previous initiative titled, Step Up, targeting children between the ages nine to 11 and was primarily to educate children about gender-related issues

More convictions needed
Justice Minister Herbert Volney has urged there be greater gathering of evidence in dealing with incest cases which would result in greater convictions. Without casting blame on any particular organisation, Volney, a former senior High Court judge whose purview once included handing rape cases, expressed grave concern about child rape and incest.
Questioned what was the status of the Sexual Offenders Registry, Volney said it was at the level of the Law Reform Commission following which the final draft is expected to be completed by next year.

What is incest
Incest is sexual intercourse or other sexual acts, such as fondling, molestation, exhibitionism and sexual abuse, either physical or emotional, when it occurs between family members. It can affect both males and females and more than one member of the family can be abused.

The law and incest
Under Chapter 11.28 of the Sexual Offences Act of Trinidad and Tobago, states:
9. (1) A person commits the offence of incest who, knowing that another person is by blood relationship, his or her parent, child, brother, sister, grandparent, grandchild, uncle, niece, aunt or nephew, as the case may be, has sexual intercourse with that person.
(2) A person who commits the offence of incest is liable on conviction to imprisonment:
 (a) if committed by an adult with a person under 14 years of age, for life;
( b) if committed by an adult with a person 14 years of age or more, for life;
(c) if committed between minors 14 years of age or more, for two years.
(3) A person is not guilty of an offence under this section if that person committed the offence under restraint, duress or fear.
(4) In this section, any expression importing a relationship between two persons shall be taken to apply notwithstanding that the relationship is not traced through lawful wedlock, and “brother” includes half-brother and “sister” includes half-sister.