Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

A week af­ter her young daugh­ter was tar­get­ed by a sus­pect­ed pae­dophile, a Cen­tral moth­er is pe­ti­tion­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi to make the po­lice list of sex­u­al preda­tors pub­lic.

The woman start­ed the pe­ti­tion at around 10 pm on Wednes­day as she said the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence has left her 11-year-old daugh­ter trau­ma­tised.

The woman had pre­tend­ed to be the child when a man be­gan send­ing mes­sages to the child's phone last week Thurs­day.

The woman said many sex­u­al preda­tors were re­peat of­fend­ers and she be­lieved giv­ing the pub­lic ac­cess to the list of of­fend­ers would as­sist par­ents in keep­ing their chil­dren safe.

"Stop pro­tect­ing the pae­dophiles and al­low­ing them to re­peat these crimes to our ba­bies. As a moth­er that ex­pe­ri­enced this first- hand in hurts me in my womb when I study my child was in the pres­ence of this mon­ster all alone and the out­come could have been so dif­fer­ent... save our kids, pro­tect our fu­ture," she wrote on the pe­ti­tion.

Sup­port for the pe­ti­tion has been slow in com­ing but the woman said she was not both­ered by that.

"I am not wor­ried be­cause I know the sup­port will grow once peo­ple know it's out there be­cause a lot of peo­ple have been telling me this is what is nec­es­sary. I am just mak­ing the nec­es­sary moves to get it done," she added.

Yes­ter­day, so­cial ac­tivist Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att said while she sup­port­ed the move, the task to get a list made pub­lic was a try­ing one.

"We tried many years ago to get a sex­u­al of­fend­ers reg­is­ter done up but con­cerns were raised over whether it would be a vi­o­la­tion of the peo­ple's con­sti­tu­tion­al rights," she said.

Ma­habir-Wy­att said there were oth­er fac­tors that need­ed to be con­sid­ered be­fore a reg­is­ter could be im­ple­ment­ed.

"The first thing is that the on­ly time some­one's name can go on that list is af­ter they have been charged and con­vict­ed of a crime of a sex­u­al na­ture.

"The sec­ond thing it is very trau­mat­ic for chil­dren to have to re­live those mem­o­ries con­stant­ly for the courts and many moth­ers do not want their chil­dren to be ex­posed to that, so many times the cas­es are not re­port­ed to the po­lice.

"The third ma­jor fac­tor is once po­lice have the name and ad­dress of the of­fend­er, they just move and the po­lice don't have the re­sources to fol­low up on every­one of these peo­ple," she said.

She added she be­lieved peo­ple with a crim­i­nal record for sex­u­al of­fences should not be giv­en taxi badges.

"In my opin­ion the trend of taxi dri­vers tar­get­ing young girls has been on­go­ing for the past 30-40 years and I think no one who is con­vict­ed of a crime of a sex­u­al na­ture should ever be giv­en a taxi badge." she said.

Ma­habir-Wy­att says she hopes the moth­er's ef­forts will in­spire oth­er cit­i­zens to think of pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures against sex­u­al abuse.

"She is right in do­ing this but what we need to find is pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures. Maybe your read­er­ship can help with sug­ges­tions on how to we can go for­ward. This needs to be a con­ver­sa­tion at na­tion­al lev­el."

Calls, texts and What­sapp mes­sages were sent to the cell­phone of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi but up to yes­ter­day evening he had not re­spond­ed to ques­tions.