Man­ag­er of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Home and Cri­sis Nurs­ery Ker­ri-Ann Leon Sing has been sus­pend­ed over breach­ing the terms of her con­tract and pro­ceed­ing on unau­tho­rised va­ca­tion leave from the fa­cil­i­ty. 

De­spite this, Leon Sing, who spoke out on re­ports of sex­u­al abuse at the home, in­volv­ing a 12-year-old res­i­dent, said she does not re­gret her de­ci­sion. 

Leon Sing was is­sued a let­ter from the home’s di­rec­tor Li­nus Rogers on Wednes­day, which out­lined an ap­par­ent breach of con­tract by di­vulging mat­ters re­lat­ing to an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion at the home, ref­er­enc­ing her ap­pear­ance on CNC3’s news­casts. 

“This rep­re­sents a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of para­graph 5 of your con­tract of em­ploy­ment which de­bars you from mak­ing any pub­lic state­ments of the op­er­a­tion of the home.” 

In the let­ter, Leon Sing was in­struct­ed to pro­ceed on paid ad­min­is­tra­tive leave from June 3 un­til the board de­cides on how to pro­ceed. 

In the let­ter, Rogers al­so ad­vised that Leon Sing was not al­lowed to en­ter the com­pound with­out his ex­pressed per­mis­sion and was in­struct­ed to re­turn any keys, pass­words and doc­u­ments that are prop­er­ty of the home. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Leon Sing said she does not re­gret speak­ing out pub­licly on the is­sue. 

“If I had stayed silent things would have been run­ning nor­mal. 

“I don’t know what the board had ex­pect­ed, but I guess that is what I should have done be­cause talk­ing meant I lose my job, but be­ing qui­et meant chil­dren con­tin­ued to get hurt. 

“I don’t re­gret any­thing,” she de­clared. 

Leon Sing al­so main­tained that she stood by a let­ter she sent re­port­ing the al­leged sex­u­al abuse at the home and a sep­a­rate let­ter of no con­fi­dence that she and oth­er staff is­sued against a se­nior of­fi­cial at the home. 

She added that “all op­tions” were be­ing con­sid­ered at this time and wel­comed any le­gal ad­vice on how to pro­ceed with her cur­rent sta­tus. 

Leon Sing al­so called on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to pri­ori­tise the pro­tec­tion of whistle­blow­ers in ur­gent sit­u­a­tions. 

“We need a whistle­blow­er pro­tec­tion pol­i­cy that gives some guar­an­tee in a sit­u­a­tion like this to come for­ward and speak,” she added. 

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions via What­sApp to the home’s chair­per­son Bev­er­ly John but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to press time yes­ter­day.

At­tor­ney: Peo­ple are man­dat­ed to speak up

At­tor­ney Mar­tin George weighed in on the de­vel­op­ment. He said that based on the ur­gency of the re­ports de­scribed by Leon Sing, no con­fi­den­tial­i­ty could over­ride her du­ty to re­port in­stances of abuse. 

“There are pro­vi­sions with­in the Chil­dren’s Act which specif­i­cal­ly man­date if you have knowl­edge of an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a child, you have a du­ty to re­port it. 

“There’s no ques­tion of any con­fi­den­tial­i­ty in the home over­rid­ing that. 

“I would cer­tain­ly stand in sup­port of her de­ci­sion if she did so with the gen­uine in­ten­tion of putting this to an end,” George said.  

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, gen­der and child jus­tice ad­vo­cate Mar­cus Kissoon said prop­er over­sight from a reg­u­la­to­ry body would en­hance the work of chil­dren’s homes while re­duc­ing in­stances of abuse. 

Kissoon, who al­so worked as one of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors on the Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones re­port on Chil­dren’s Homes, said pro­tect­ing whistle­blow­ers was on­ly part of the sit­u­a­tion as ro­bust mech­a­nisms were nec­es­sary to en­sure that wrong­do­ing was not on­ly high­light­ed but al­so ad­dressed. 

“Every­one should be com­fort­able to re­port some­thing if they feel un­com­fort­able. 

“When we fail to pro­tect chil­dren, we re­pro­duce a sys­tem of lazi­ness or cow­ardice, and we fail the chil­dren,” Kissoon said.