Gail Alexan­der

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor El­ton Prescott has come out in sup­port of fines or dam­ages to be paid by par­ents whose chil­dren go astray. "Way­ward chil­dren are the re­sult of poor par­ent­ing," Prescott said dur­ing Wednes­day's Sen­ate de­bate on the Chil­dren Bill. He said par­ents would be­gin to "see the way we're mov­ing" when the bur­den of fines or dam­ages to be paid hit them in the pock­et. Prescott, a se­nior coun­sel, al­so ad­vo­cat­ed pro­tec­tion for whis­tle-blow­ers who re­port of­fences com­mit­ted against chil­dren. Prescott said those who were aware of of­fences com­mit­ted against chil­dren should feel free to bring it to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ties and not have to face the al­leged of­fend­er. He said com­mu­ni­ca­tion should be en­cour­aged with the au­thor­i­ties about acts com­mit­ted against chil­dren, and par­ents, old­er sib­lings and chil­dren should be en­cour­aged to make such com­plaints. He agreed that med­ical ex­am­in­ers who, in ex­am­in­ing chil­dren, note of­fences com­mit­ted against them should al­so re­port this to the po­lice.

Prescott ad­vo­cat­ed the use of video or oth­er forms of record­ed tes­ti­mo­ny for child vic­tims so that they wouldn't have to en­dure trau­ma a sec­ond time or have to face the of­fend­er in court. He said vic­tims might lose their nerve or "worse, end up dead," if they had to go to court. Prescott said the leg­is­la­tion must have the hu­man and phys­i­cal re­sources to make it prac­ti­cal, and there was no point pass­ing it oth­er­wise. Not­ing a news­pa­per sto­ry ear­li­er this week about a 12-year-old who died a few years af­ter be­ing raped, Prescott said the child might have sur­vived if coun­selling had been avail­able. Prescott called for the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty to be the first point of con­tact for a way­ward child, rather than the po­lice. He sug­gest­ed sec­tions of the bill ban­ning chil­dren from sell­ing should be less re­stric­tive, to fa­cil­i­tate chil­dren of fam­i­lies who sell veg­eta­bles, for in­stance, or youths do­ing ba­by-sit­ting.

He not­ed the Bob-a-Job (a shilling's pay­ment for work) of years ago, which youths once did to earn mon­ey. In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Dr Lennox Bernard said the so­cial me­dia were fa­cil­i­tat­ing the pla­gia­rism of oth­er peo­ple's work.