Geisha Kow­lessar

The Form Two stu­dent who was the main vic­tim in last Fri­day's fight out­side the Mu­cu­rapo West Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School is ex­pect­ed to be trans­ferred to an­oth­er school, her moth­er Chris­lyn Fair­bairn said yes­ter­day.She al­so ex­pressed con­cern that re­peat­ed com­plaints to the school's au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the prin­ci­pal, had gone un­heed­ed.Fair­bairn said since her daugh­ter was in Form One she had been beat­en and re­peat­ed­ly threat­ened by a gang of fe­male stu­dents who were known bul­lies at the school.

"From day one when all this hap­pened, I have been go­ing to the dean and the prin­ci­pal. Every time is the vic­tim's fam­i­ly keep com­ing and not the par­ents of the girls who do­ing the beat­ing," Fair­bairn told the T&T Guardian."In­struc­tions would be giv­en to hand out sus­pen­sion let­ters and then every­thing would go back to nor­mal."

She said last term she got in­for­ma­tion her daugh­ter was the tar­get of a beat­ing and when she went to the po­lice to make a re­port, she was re­ferred to the Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Unit and to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry."The rea­son we got is that they were mi­nors," Fair­bairn added.

She said her daugh­ter al­so start­ed stay­ing away from school on Fri­days, as beat­ings oc­curred par­tic­u­lar­i­ly on that day.

"Then the form teacher called me to say I should send her to school be­cause ex­ams com­ing up, so I sent her and the poor child get beat­en," Fair­bairn said.She said her daugh­ter was at­tacked by some 21 fe­male stu­dents as she made her way home last Fri­day."My daugh­ter is five feet, one and she is about 105 pounds if so much. If wasn't for her friends who jumped in to help her things would have been much worse," Fair­bairn added.

Ten fe­male stu­dents have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. The mat­ter is al­so now be­ing probed by the po­lice.Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams says the file on the school­girl fight will be sent to head of West­ern Di­vi­sion Se­nior Sup Ish­mael David.In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Williams said he could not make any state­ments on whether crim­i­nal charges would be laid, as he had not seen the state­ments from the stu­dents or saw the video.

On the broad­er is­sue of school vi­o­lence, Williams said that kind of be­hav­iour was rep­re­hen­si­ble. But at the same time, he said , treat­ing such in­ci­dents im­me­di­ate­ly with the full force of the law should be the last re­sort.He added: "At the end of the day these are chil­dren go­ing to school. Their be­hav­iour is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able but this does not change the fact that they are chil­dren.

"We al­so have to look care­ful­ly at what may have trig­gered such vi­o­lence... whether it may prob­lems at the homes, prob­lems in the com­mu­ni­ty and we have to make every ef­fort to find so­lu­tions to these prob­lems.