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Saturday, July 5, 2025

CCSJ in call for action on child abuse: Strategy review needed urgently

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The Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice (CC­SJ) has added its voice to the call for the Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish speed­i­ly a ful­ly-func­tion­al Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty and put sys­tems in place to pro­tect the hu­man rights of chil­dren.

In a press re­lease, the com­mis­sion, head­ed by Leela Ramdeen, called on the Gov­ern­ment, re­li­gious lead­ers, com­mu­ni­ties, me­dia and the Po­lice Ser­vice, among oth­ers, to re­view strate­gies for child abuse and its pre­ven­tion. Ramdeen specif­i­cal­ly called for a re­vis­it of the po­lice's re­sponse to child abuse and for the me­dia to ex­am­ine its role in child abuse pre­ven­tion.The com­mis­sion called for six steps to be tak­en to ad­dress the is­sue of child abuse.

Its calls come af­ter the rape and mur­der of six-year-old Keyana Cum­ber­batch in Mal­oney last week.Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has es­tab­lished a Child Pro­tec­tion Task Force in the wake of the killing, which shocked the Mal­oney com­mu­ni­ty and the na­tion.The CC­SJ called on re­li­gious lead­ers to "in­still in the hearts and minds of their fol­low­ers morals and val­ues that will help to build their char­ac­ter and lead them to live by the tenets of their faith."

It al­so called on com­mu­ni­ties to es­tab­lish vic­tim sup­port groups and restora­tive jus­tice groups to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with both vic­tims of crime and per­pe­tra­tors of crime and for ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions to play their part in "fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­te­gral hu­man de­vel­op­ment" which, it said, in­clud­ed adding ethics, morals and val­ues to the cur­ricu­lum.

The com­mis­sion al­so said it was time for the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to re­view whether or not the cur­rent sys­tem dealt ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly with cas­es in­volv­ing child abuse, adding it was time so­ci­ety pro­tects its most vul­ner­a­ble–the el­der­ly and chil­dren.The re­lease added: "The Catholic Church be­lieves that the ba­sic moral test of any so­ci­ety is how it treats its most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers, among whom are our chil­dren."

"Every child is a gift to hu­man­i­ty. We have a du­ty to pro­mote the hu­man rights and the dig­ni­ty of our chil­dren and cre­ate con­di­tions and safe en­vi­ron­ments that will en­able them to re­alise their po­ten­tial. So­ci­ety can­not turn a blind eye to the heinous crimes that are be­ing com­mit­ted against the na­tion's vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren."It said Cum­ber­batch's death must spur the so­ci­ety to ac­tion and cit­i­zens should com­mit them­selves to be­ing role mod­els and men­tors.While say­ing each cit­i­zen had a role to play in pro­mot­ing hu­man rights, the com­mis­sion said the State "has a du­ty to cre­ate so­cial con­di­tions that al­low peo­ple to reach their full po­ten­tial and re­alise their hu­man dig­ni­ty."


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