Richard Lord

It is sad, un­for­tu­nate and re­gret­table. That's how Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Ver­na St Rose-Greaves de­scribed the killing of two-year-old Aaliyah John­son from San Fran­cique, Pe­nal. The tod­dler was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival at the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty on Sun­day night. Po­lice say she was a vic­tim of phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse.

Two peo­ple have been as­sist­ing po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. St Rose-Greaves spoke with re­porters dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate tea break at Tow­er D, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain. The min­is­ter said yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment alone could not deal with such un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dents.

"This is a task for the so­ci­ety," she said. "All of us have to be re­spon­si­ble...We have to put our hands in the mix." She said the Gov­ern­ment could pro­vide tem­po­rary shel­ter and ac­com­mo­da­tion for vic­tims of such vi­o­lence. She in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that there was need for par­ents to be bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed on how to raise their chil­dren in a safe en­vi­ron­ment.

She said neigh­bours and rel­a­tives must play a more crit­i­cal role in "pick­ing up" signs of child abuse in their re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties. She said sev­er­al things were be­ing worked on to deal with the prob­lem but "these things take much longer than we would re­al­ly like."

She said na­tion­al di­a­logue on such in­ci­dents must not take place in a heat­ed en­vi­ron­ment. St Rose-Greaves said many chil­dren in T&T who were "go­ing through re­al tor­ture and we have to wise up as a peo­ple and we must work to­geth­er." She said she was very hap­py that the Op­po­si­tion was work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to se­cure ear­ly pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect chil­dren in T&T.

The min­is­ter said change will not hap­pen overnight so fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties must be vig­i­lant. St Rose-Greaves al­so re­spond­ed to ques­tions on Cheryl Miller, who is em­ployed at her min­istry as an ac­count­ing as­sis­tant. Miller was ad­mit­ted to St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal last month for med­ical at­ten­tion.

Her fam­i­ly have in­sist­ed that she was forcibly ad­mit­ted but she had no med­ical prob­lem. Miller was re­leased af­ter an or­der by Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram on Good Fri­day. St Rose-Greaves said she would be hap­py to wel­come her back to work. "When the time comes for her to come back to work, we are try­ing our best to see how we can pre­pare the work­place and the staff to give her all the sup­port she needs," she said.