Geisha Kow­lessar

Since the in­cep­tion of the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) in May last year there has been 2,595 re­ports for the pe­ri­od May 2015 to Ju­ly 17, 2016 for a range of crimes com­mit­ted against chil­dren.Out of all the re­ports sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion has been the most preva­lent re­port­ed se­ri­ous crime for that pe­ri­od, with a to­tal of 603 cas­es amount­ing 30 per cent of the cas­es.

These sta­tis­tics were re­vealed by Su­per­in­ten­dent Odette Lewis of the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit who was speak­ing at the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing at Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.But the unit has been faced with dif­fi­cul­ty nab­bing per­pe­tra­tors.

Lewis said there were chal­lenges re­gard­ing the com­pi­la­tion of ev­i­dence as of­ten­times the per­pe­tra­tors were known to the vic­tim which in­clud­ed a rel­a­tive or fam­i­ly friend.Hence, ob­tain­ing wit­ness state­ments from vic­tims or even the fam­i­lies could be dif­fi­cult, she said.

The unit al­so found that males ac­count­ed for 22 per cent of the vic­tims while fe­males rep­re­sent­ed 78 per cent.Lewis said there were 242 re­port­ed cas­es of sex­u­al touch­ing with amount­ed to 10.5 per cent.

Sta­tis­tics showed there were 27 cas­es of in­cest and 35 cas­es of sex­u­al as­sault which were re­port­ed to the unit.Child abuse tal­lied 202 cas­es, aban­don­ment and ne­glect 60 and miss­ing chil­dren 48.

How­ev­er, Lewis said of all those chil­dren re­port­ed miss­ing since the unit was es­tab­lished all have been re­turned.Re­gard­ing teenaged preg­nan­cy there were 68 re­port­ed cas­es thus far, rep­re­sent­ing six per cent of the cas­es.

Of­fences

The re­main­ing of­fences that com­plete the over­all re­ports made to the unit for the pe­ri­od May 2015 to present in­clude:

�2 Waste­ful em­ploy­ment;

�2 At­tempt­ed sui­cide;

�2 Kid­nap­ping;

�2 False Im­pris­on­ment;

�2 Child found wan­der­ing;

�2 Un­con­trol­lable be­hav­iour;

�2 Psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse;

�2 Ex­posed to nar­cotics;

�2 In­cit­ing and fa­cil­i­tat­ing child pornog­ra­phy.

Re­port crimes

Lewis al­so ap­pealed to par­ents to be ex­tra vig­i­lant when leav­ing chil­dren in the com­pa­ny or care of adults.She said: "Dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust school va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, many of our chil­dren are left un­su­per­vised or with min­i­mum su­per­vi­sion due to the need for both par­ents to be bread­win­ners.

"Notwith­stand­ing chal­lenges, par­ents and guardians are re­quired to make de­ci­sions that put wel­fare of their chil­dren first."She said it was al­so im­por­tant not to leave chil­dren in the care of peo­ple or or­gan­i­sa­tions whose back­grounds were un­known.

"En­sure at all times chil­dren are left in the care of re­spon­si­ble adults and that emer­gency num­bers are eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

"Al­so we ad­vise that you make use of the fol­low­ing num­bers to re­port crimes against a child," Lewis said.She said an abused child of­ten showed signs, rang­ing from loss of ap­petite to be­ing afraid of a par­tic­u­lar rel­a­tive.

Al­so present at the brief­ing were ASP Suzette Woods-James of the unit and ASP Michael Pierre, pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer of the Po­lice Ser­vice.