The police are careless when laying charges against offenders who are cruel to children, says attorney Dana Seetahal SC. In recent cases where parents and caregivers have been charged with burning the hands of children, Seetahal said they were charged under the Children's Act rather than the Offences against the Person Act, which carried a stiffer penalty.
Seetahal, who called for part of the Children's Act to be revised, was speaking at a three-day conference on violence against children at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.
Yesterday's session focused on physical and sexual abuse.Seetahal said the Act dealt with special offences against children, special procedures for hearing matters where children were victim/offenders and special punishment for children and young people.
In some cases, she said, the Offences against the Person Act provided more serious penalties.Seetahal added:"The authorities therefore may choose to charge under the general law. With regard to burning of a child, under the Act there is a specific penalty for that... of about $400 and if the person is charged not under the Children's Act, but under the Offences against the Person Act the penalty could be 15 years if it is a charge for causing grievous bodily harm or if it is inflicting grievous bodily harm, which would be five years."
Saying there were many options available to the police rather than the Children's Act, Seetahal urged the act should be revisited to institute stricter penalties.She said: "Why create these specific offences if the penalty is so minor? Either it is unnecessary or you review the laws to make specific provision if you intend to protect children... make it mean something to protect children under the Children's Act."
Asked what would prompt an officer to charge under the Children's Act rather than the Offences against the Person Act where the penalty was much higher Seetahal said it could be for a number of reasons.She said:"Maybe they (police) just see that and they see where there is an offence and they say let's go under the Children's Act. That's probably what they did because I can't imagine otherwise. There is other legislation which is more serious.
"Why would you go for that small penalty?" Seetahal asked.She said she was also informed in some cases where a child was burnt by the parent the officer laid the charges on his own rather than approaching the Director of Public Prosecutions for advice on laying the charge.On orphaned children, Seetahal said the State needed to focus more on them.
"There are three orphanages who are there forever and all they do now is assist little homes...this government and the last government and the government before that haven't put in finances in orphanages.
In response to the claim that police were "careless," Margaret Sampson-Browne, former assistant commissioner of police and manager of the police Victim and Witness Support Unit, said the "ingredients of the law in the Children's Act would also link to the offence being committed."She said: "If a mother burns a child... if you go into the Children's Act you will see that offence there with the penalty. But what we have to do is perhaps to move away from that and go for the stiffer penalty."
Sampson-Browne added that police had the discretion to lay charges as they believed fit and did not have to go to the DPP in every instance.
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Section Six of the Children's Act Burning of a child negligently.If any person over the age of 16 who has the custody, charge or care of any child under the age of seven and allows that child to be in any room or yard containing a coalpot, stove or other fire not sufficiently protected to guard against risk of that child being burnt or scalded, without taking reasonable precaution against that risk and by reason thereof the child is killed or suffers serious injury he is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $400.
