The gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to launch an on­line sex of­fend­er reg­istry as part of an ag­gres­sive plan to pro­tect mi­nors. This will be done un­der the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty with­in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment. Line min­is­ter Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh spoke of the ini­tia­tive yes­ter­day in re­sponse to re­ports that a con­vict­ed sex of­fend­er had gained em­ploy­ment at a pres­ti­gious all-girls sec­ondary school. A re­port in a dai­ly news­pa­per over the week­end said a Form One stu­dent at the school dis­cov­ered her bi­ol­o­gy teacher was a con­vict­ed sex of­fend­er in the Unit­ed States. The stu­dent, the re­port said, made the dis­cov­ery af­ter she searched the teacher's name on the Web site Google. In 2008, the teacher pled guilty to sec­ond-de­gree rape, third-de­gree rape and sex­u­al abuse in­volv­ing pupils at Cathe­dral High School, Man­hat­tan, be­tween 2005 and 2007. The teacher was de­port­ed to Trinidad af­ter serv­ing a four-year sen­tence in a Man­hat­tan jail.

The teacher has since been re­lieved of du­ties.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said: "Re­search shows per­sons in­volved in that kind of sick be­hav­iour tend to be­come re­cur­rent crim­i­nals who seek out chil­dren. We have to be ag­gres­sive in ad­dress­ing this is­sue."

He said the min­istry was cur­rent­ly look­ing at the plan at a leg­isla­tive lev­el. The min­is­ter said the bio­met­ric soft­ware which would be used for the sex of­fend­er reg­istry would be the same soft­ware be­ing con­fig­ured to pre­vent abuse of the min­istry's grants and ser­vices, such as the food card. He said in terms of the food card the soft­ware would al­low the min­istry to track the hold­ers' pur­chas­es and to en­sure there was on­ly one card with­in the house­hold. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the bio­met­ric sys­tem would take ap­prox­i­mate­ly two-and-half-years to come in­to full ef­fect. Re­port­ing by Ali­cia Llanos