Gail Alexan­der

A large Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) is be­ing set up with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice to deal with crimes against chil­dren, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon said yes­ter­day.

An­nounc­ing this at yes­ter­day's week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Dil­lon said Gov­ern­ment had re­alised that with­in re­cent times there had been an in­crease in in­ci­dents of crime against chil­dren.

He said be­tween Jan­u­ary 2010 and De­cem­ber 2014, records showed that 1,575 males and 2,407 fe­males were vic­tims of crime. Sta­tis­tics al­so showed there were 1,075 and 1,961 sex­u­al of­fences against male and fe­male vic­tims re­spec­tive­ly.

Against that back­ground, Dil­lon said the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er had de­ter­mined that a ded­i­cat­ed, fo­cused en­ti­ty was need­ed to treat with crime against chil­dren in a con­cen­trat­ed way.

He said the unit would com­prise one su­per­in­ten­dent of po­lice, two as­sis­tant su­per­in­ten­dents, ten in­spec­tors, 18 sergeants, 28 cor­po­rals, 110 con­sta­bles, 36 SRPs, one busi­ness op­er­a­tions ad­min­is­tra­tor and one oth­er busi­ness op­er­a­tions as­sis­tant. It will op­er­ate across all eight po­lice ju­ris­dic­tions in Trinidad and the ninth in To­ba­go.

Per­sons will be spe­cial­ly se­lect­ed to han­dle the work in­volved and of­fi­cers would be trained ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and qual­i­fi­ca­tions would in­clude a cer­tain type of tem­pera­ment and ed­u­ca­tion as well as an affin­i­ty for chil­dren. Apart from a "soft" ap­proach, the unit would be pro­grammed to treat with chil­dren and in­ci­dents against them, he added.

The unit will work with the school sys­tem na­tion­wide, par­ents, teach­ers and com­mu­ni­ties as a whole.At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi al­so said the Chil­dren and Fam­i­ly Court Bill to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment to­day would pro­vide one suite of ser­vice to op­er­a­tionalise law and agen­cies, such as the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, to pro­tect chil­dren, deal with man­age­ment of youth of­fend­ers, fam­i­ly mat­ters and oth­er as­pects con­cern­ing chil­dren.

He said there would be spe­cial train­ing for po­lice on those mat­ters, in­clud­ing psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing of of­fi­cers in­volved.He added there would al­so be a move away from the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) mod­ule, where con­vict­ed of­fend­ers are housed along­side those who are not con­vict­ed, to use of half-way homes, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres and sim­i­lar fa­cil­i­ties.

The an­nounce­ment came even as re­ports sur­faced yes­ter­day that a 13-year-old stu­dent from a sec­ondary school in Cen­tral Trinidad had been raped by her 15-year-old class­mate.

The in­ci­dent is said to have oc­curred on the school com­pound on Tues­day, when the male stu­dent, who had been pres­sur­ing his fe­male class­mate to have sex with him, forced him­self on her. A re­port was made to the po­lice by the child and by her moth­er.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia yes­ter­day con­firmed the in­ci­dent and said the mat­ter is be­ing han­dled by the po­lice.