Freeport police were last night moving to lay charges against a 55-year-old Hindu pundit in connection with the grievous sexual assault of a teenager.Police said the incident is alleged to have occurred at a business in Chase Village, Chaguanas, where the girl and her father had gone for her to receive physiotherapy for scoliosis, a medical condition in which a person's spinal axis has a three-dimensional deviation.
In a statement to police, the 18-year-old victim said she had five appointments with the pundit, who is also a chiropractor. However, during the third appointment on January 31 the man said he had to conduct a vaginal examination on the girl and proceeded to do so using his fingers. On Valentine's Day, during the fifth appointment, the pundit allegedly took a phallic object resembling a sex toy and inserted it into the teenager. She later made a report to police.
Investigators said yesterday that this was not the first time such allegations had been made against the pundit. Two years ago, a 34-year-old Freeport woman also said she was molested by the man. He was taken before the Chaguanas Magistrates court but the police later dropped the charges when the victim refused to testify.Investigators also said the man was a practising chiropractor in Miami but was sent back to Trinidad because of similar offences.
The business remained closed yesterday but several residents who were interviewed said it was time for Government to establish the Sex Offences Registry to ensure repeat offences do not occur.A woman who lives nearby, who did not want to be named, said, "I heard that things like that happened there before. I am not surprised."Clive Benny, of Chase Village, said Government had an obligation to protect citizens.
"So long we hearing that the Sex Offences Registry was coming. They need to set that up now because we have to protect our daughters and wives," Benny said. Another resident said she knew of two women who went to the business for therapy but never had problems.Police said once the man was charged he would appear before a magistrate to answer the charges. WPC Josanne Parks is heading investigations.
Offender registry needed
Contacted yesterday, head of the Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, said it was regrettable that the Sex Offences Registry was never put in place."It seems the list is not important enough for successive governments to put in place because it has been proposed over the past ten to 12 years," Mahabir-Wyatt said.She said one of the setbacks was office space and staff, noting that at one time the coalition had offered to donate office space in its Belmont building but the offer was never taken up
Mahabir-Wyatt also said research must now be done to ascertain why religious leaders engaged in this sort of activity."There has been talk for years in the Roman Catholic church about this and now to have this occurring in the Hindu faith is alarming. We need to do a study about why we are finding so often and in so many cultures, that there are repeated cases of sexual abuse involving men of the cloth," Mahabir-Wyatt said.
In September 2011, former minister of justice Herbert Volney said the registry was being worked on and a bill pertaining to it was expected to be brought before Parliament by the end of 2011. However the registry still has not been implemented.