The death of Josi­ah Gov­er­nor set a bench­mark of change in the way cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go look out for the chil­dren of this coun­try, both per­son­al­ly, with­in our com­mu­ni­ties and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, as man­aged by the State. Po­lice first learned of the boy's death on Fri­day af­ter­noon when of­fi­cers held a rel­a­tive al­leged­ly walk­ing with the boy's life­less body in his arms, me­tres away from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion. Gov­er­nor was de­clared dead on ar­rival at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The child's death was char­ac­terised by res­i­dents as be­ing part of a well-known pat­tern of abu­sive be­hav­iour.

Ac­cord­ing to res­i­dents who claim to have seen the in­ci­dent at East Dry Riv­er, the child was thrown through a win­dow of his home to plum­met sev­er­al feet down to rocky slope be­low. Po­lice of­fi­cers who saw the boy's body said that it bore marks of vi­o­lence and that the child ap­peared mal­nour­ished. In an irony of cir­cum­stance, Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, Ver­na St Rose-Greaves was lament­ing the high in­ci­dence of child abuse and the many forms it takes in Trinidad and To­ba­go in Par­lia­ment, while young Gov­er­nor died. Un­aware of the por­tent of her words, Min­is­ter St Rose-Greaves warned Par­lia­ment that: "Some of us un­der­stand that the atroc­i­ties be­ing vis­it­ed up­on us in our crime sit­u­a­tion to­day are linked to the fail­ure to pro­tect our chil­dren." The point is now ro­bust­ly re­in­forced, but it re­mains to be put in­to prac­tice at every lev­el in so­ci­ety.

The Chil­dren's Bill re­mains an out­stand­ing item in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. In Oc­to­ber 2008, Amery Browne, then the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment in­tro­duced the Chil­dren's Bill, 2008 to Par­lia­ment, a leg­isla­tive doc­u­ment in­tend­ed to put teeth in­to a range of child pro­tec­tion acts. In 2000, those acts, The Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty Act, the Chil­dren's Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dence, Fos­ter Homes and Nurs­eries Act, the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Chil­dren) Act, the Adop­tion of Chil­dren Act and the Chil­dren (Amend­ment) Act were passed in Par­lia­ment and the Chil­dren's Bill out­lined ro­bust penal­ties for those found guilty of abus­ing and mis­treat­ing chil­dren. Min­is­ter St Rose-Greaves was in­tro­duc­ing, with suit­able grav­i­tas, the se­ri­ous­ness of the 2011 edi­tion of the Chil­dren's Bill and the need to im­ple­ment it post-haste.

St Rose-Greaves was mer­ci­ful­ly un­aware that her cause and con­cerns were be­ing mor­tal­ly un­der­lined in Bel­mont for her with yet an­oth­er avoid­able trun­ca­tion of a child's fu­ture. Along with ac­cel­er­at­ing de­bate and dis­cus­sion of the Chil­dren's Bill, it's use­ful to con­sid­er the oth­er wor­ry­ing el­e­ments that this sto­ry rais­es. By their own ad­mis­sion, res­i­dents were ful­ly aware that the child was be­ing beat­en in his home but no one could point to a re­port made to the po­lice or So­cial Ser­vices. Trinidad and To­ba­go still labours un­der a wrong­head­ed and too of­ten fa­tal rule of po­lite­ness that holds that bru­tal­i­ty in an­oth­er per­son's house is en­tire­ly and sole­ly their own busi­ness and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The de­tails of too many abuse cas­es re­veal sit­u­a­tions in which abused per­sons are ashamed of their sit­u­a­tion and un­able to bring them­selves to ask neigh­bours or friends for help. Such in­ter­ven­tions, then, must come from com­mu­ni­ties who choose to be un­will­ing to coun­te­nance iden­ti­fi­able and con­tin­u­ing pat­terns of vi­o­lence and abuse.

In far too many po­lice sta­tions, there is no clear or­der of en­gage­ment for such re­ports and po­ten­tial­ly fa­tal and dam­ag­ing sit­u­a­tions get logged as items in the pages of vo­lu­mi­nous re­port books. "As a na­tion, we not on­ly have a moral oblig­a­tion to pro­tect our chil­dren but a le­gal oblig­a­tion as well," Min­is­ter St Rose-Greaves said on Fri­day. The State, and more specif­i­cal­ly the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, must en­gage the prob­lem by col­lab­o­rat­ing to pro­vide clear paths and process­es for the pub­lic to re­port such cas­es of sus­pect­ed do­mes­tic abuse, for the po­lice to briskly in­ves­ti­gate them and for so­cial ser­vices of­fi­cers to mount ef­fec­tive in­ter­ven­tions. The al­ter­na­tive, the po­lite com­mu­ni­ty si­lences and in­dif­fer­ence by of­fi­cers to do­mes­tic dis­putes is ru­in­ing lives and on Fri­day, ap­pears to have end­ed one.