Yvonne Ba­boolal

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says any re­vis­it­ing of the law re­lat­ing to penal­ties for fail­ing to re­port statu­to­ry rape has to be a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion.He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia at an event out­side the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.He said there were two pow­er­ful com­pet­ing in­ter­ests in­volved and a bal­ance had to be ar­rived at.

On one hand, he said, there was the State's oblig­a­tion to pro­tect chil­dren from statu­to­ry rape, ac­cord­ing to the law. He said pro­tect­ing chil­dren was of para­mount im­por­tance. On the oth­er hand, he said, there were the con­cerns of oth­ers who feared crim­i­nal reprisals for re­port­ing the crime.Ram­lo­gan's com­ment comes in the wake of Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan's stat­ed in­ten­tion to dis­cuss a re­vi­sion of the law with Ram­lo­gan in light of re­cent cas­es in­volv­ing teenage vic­tims.

Med­ical per­son­nel have raised con­cerns about the law which states that par­ents, guardians, doc­tors, teach­ers and oth­ers must re­port sex­u­al of­fences against mi­nors. Fail­ure to do so car­ries a $15,000 fine and a jail term.Doc­tors fear the guardians of preg­nant chil­dren will seek the ser­vices of back­yard abor­tion­ists, putting their lives in dan­ger. Doc­tors said they al­so feared for their own lives be­cause they could be threat­ened by crim­i­nals.