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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Vigorous attack on incest

Samp­son-Browne: We are go­ing to lock them up

by

20120202

It has been a hor­rif­ic start to 2012 for some chil­dren as heinous acts of in­cest were splashed across the news­pa­pers. On Jan­u­ary 19, 2012, Kr­is­han Ram­per­sad, 60, ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate In­dra Ramoo-Haynes charged with rap­ing a rel­a­tive. So se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised was the child that even at­tend­ing school be­came a night­mare. That same day, a 47-year-old busi­ness­man and a fa­ther of nine ap­peared in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court be­fore Mag­is­trate Mau­reen Ba­boolal-Gafoor charged with hav­ing sex with a 13-year-old girl on Jan­u­ary 1 and 3, 2012. On Jan­u­ary 25, 2012, 80-year-old Cephas Cal­len­der, of Main­go Trace, Basse Terre, Moru­ga, ap­peared be­fore a Princes Town mag­is­trate charged with 61 counts of in­cest and one count of griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault on an eight-year-old rel­a­tive. He was de­nied bail. The in­ci­dents were al­leged­ly com­mit­ted be­tween April 2006 and No­vem­ber 2011 when the vic­tim was eight years old. Two weeks af­ter the mat­ter was first called be­fore the court, the child, now 13, at­tempt­ed to com­mit sui­cide by drink­ing a poi­so­nous sub­stance at her home and had to be rushed to hos­pi­tal.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics, com­plied by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, there were 512 re­port­ed cas­es of rapes, in­cest and sex­u­al of­fences for 2011. The high­est months iden­ti­fied were March, May and No­vem­ber. Amid the de­spair the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit has promised hope and re­lief when it launched a vig­or­ous at­tack on in­cest at the start of the year. The unit's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Mar­garet Samp­son-Browne, said her of­fi­cials and po­lice of­fi­cers from var­i­ous di­vi­sions would be "mov­ing in­to com­mu­ni­ties with full force," to weed out sus­pect­ed per­pe­tra­tors and en­sure they were brought to jus­tice. Par­ents and guardians, Samp­son-Browne al­so warned, who con­tin­ued to de­lib­er­ate­ly turn a blind eye when chil­dren were mer­ci­less­ly sub­ject­ed to in­cest must be held ac­count­able. A promi­nent and sea­soned law en­force­ment ex­pert, Samp­son-Browne, a for­mer as­sis­tant po­lice com­mis­sion­er in charge of com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tions, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day said: "We are go­ing in com­mu­ni­ties to help and we are go­ing to lock up...make no mis­take about that.

"Chil­dren are be­ing de­stroyed dai­ly and we can­not con­tin­ue to turn a blind eye and pre­tend it does not ex­ist. We are com­ing with po­lice be­cause adults have ab­solute­ly no ex­cuse, chil­dren must be pro­tect­ed," Samp­son-Browne added.

She said the unit al­ready had part­nered with key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion, Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion and the Ser­vol Life Cen­tre to ren­der as­sis­tance to both chil­dren and adults, name­ly moth­ers who them­selves may be sub­ject­ed to abuse. She added: "Every­one is on board. We are clear in our man­date and the law is al­so very clear when it comes to the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act. "We would not be in­tim­i­dat­ed by any­one in con­duct­ing our du­ties."

As part of the out­reach process Samp­son-Browne said her unit al­so would be vis­it­ing schools. Last Tues­day, a team of of­fi­cials from the unit, led by Samp­son-Browne, went to a sec­ondary school in a far-flung area of east Trinidad where it was sus­pect­ed that one stu­dent was an in­cest vic­tim. Ex­plain­ing that the unit was not a crime-fight­ing body, Samp­son-Browne main­tained in­for­ma­tion was act­ed up­on by the unit's of­fi­cials, via a metic­u­lous scan­ning process.

She said: "When we go to com­mu­ni­ties in­for­ma­tion is giv­en to us which may or may not have mer­it in it. "We then scan that in­for­ma­tion by do­ing our own re­search and al­so work hand-in-hand with po­lice of­fi­cers who will then ini­ti­ate ac­tion if need be, in­clud­ing con­duct­ing ar­rests," Samp­son-Browne ex­plained. While the ma­jor­i­ty of vil­lagers in ar­eas vis­it­ed by the unit wel­comed the pres­ence of of­fi­cials, there were some who bla­tant­ly de­nied that in­cest ex­ist­ed in their com­mu­ni­ties. That has giv­en Samp­son-Browne fur­ther im­pe­tus to car­ry out her man­date. She said: " We are not about de­stroy­ing fam­i­lies as some may think. We have en­coun­tered bar­ri­ers. "While most peo­ple have been wel­com­ing to us, there are still some who are bury­ing their heads in the sand. "If we con­tin­ue to pre­tend in­cest does not ex­ist it will con­tin­ue to haunt us," Samp­son-Browne added. To tack­le this prob­lem, she as­sert­ed that ed­u­ca­tion, at all lev­els, was key.

Med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, she added, were al­so need­ed to be sen­si­tised to cer­tain as­pects of the law re­gard­ing guide­lines when phys­i­cal­ly ex­am­in­ing a sus­pect­ed in­cest vic­tim. "There are some doc­tors who in­sist that a par­ent must be present when the child is be­ing ex­am­ined but if the par­ent is the per­pe­tra­tor how could you have the per­pe­tra­tor in the same room as the vic­tim? "The law clear­ly states that an adult of the same sex could be present when the child is be­ing ex­am­ined and many doc­tors are not aware of this...these are the kinds of bar­ri­ers we need to break," Samp­son Browne in­sist­ed. Plans are on stream to place an of­fi­cer of the unit in To­co and Matelot and an­oth­er of­fi­cer is ex­pect­ed to be placed in To­ba­go this month. Sta­tis­tics com­plied by the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) last year showed that Matelot had the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of in­cest in the coun­try.

Heinous acts

Girls as young as 14 are forced in­to pros­ti­tu­tion by their moth­ers. When pen­e­tra­tions be­came too dif­fi­cult, step­fa­thers have used ob­jects like a knife to slit open the vagi­na of their step­daugh­ters and sub­se­quent­ly rape them. These were among the dis­tress­ing calls for help made to Child­line Trinidad and To­ba­go by abused chil­dren, when their cries to rel­a­tives had fall­en on deaf ears. Pro­gramme co-or­di­na­tor of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Mary Moo­nan, said the phys­i­cal scars in­flict­ed with a knife may be deep but the men­tal scars cut even deep­er, with the an­guish lin­ger­ing for years. She said in some cas­es moth­ers have be­come more will­ing to alert the po­lice but sad­ly in oth­er in­stances, abused chil­dren have been chas­tised and ig­nored by their moth­ers and there­fore were forced to suf­fer in si­lence. In one in­stance, a 13-year-old girl was hand­ed a pack of san­i­tary nap­kins when she cried to her moth­er that her vagi­na was cut open by her step­fa­ther and who then raped her. The girl made one call to Child­line and im­me­di­ate­ly ur­gent as­sis­tance was ren­dered, Moo­nan said. So­cial work­ers al­so played a crit­i­cal role in in­ter­ven­tion but as the re­ports of in­cest have be­come ap­par­ent­ly preva­lent con­cerns have arisen whether there were enough work­ers, es­pe­cial­ly to can­vas rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. "I won't say they are in abun­dance but there are enough to go around. We, how­ev­er, have to fo­cus on more out­reach pro­grammes, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas," Moo­nan added.

In­ter­ven­tion at­pri­ma­ry schools

Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as the Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety, al­so have recog­nised that there was an ur­gent need to in­ter­vene at all lev­els to save chil­dren. In Sep­tem­ber last year, the Save a Child Ini­tia­tive which fo­cused on pupils sev­en and eight years old, was sanc­tioned by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and was launched as a pri­ma­ry school in­ter­ven­tion. Fa­cil­i­ta­tor Na­tal­ie O'Brady ex­plained the project, which was be­ing con­duct­ed in three phas­es, was in its sec­ond stage of com­ple­tion.

The first stage, she said, was tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties and hold­ing dis­cus­sions and work­shops with prin­ci­pals and teach­ers.

The sec­ond phase was sen­si­tis­ing pupils about in­cest and reach­ing out to po­ten­tial vic­tims.

"The third en­tailed fol­low-up ses­sions where, once iden­ti­fied, help and coun­selling would be im­me­di­ate­ly giv­en.

"The Save a Child Ini­tia­tive, there­fore, is a holis­tic ap­proach to deal­ing with the is­sue of in­cest be­cause we want­ed to first­ly cre­ate a safe and com­fort­able space for chil­dren to talk about their feel­ings and to speak out about what both­ers them," O'Brady ex­plained.

The project, she added, was a spin-off from a pre­vi­ous ini­tia­tive ti­tled, Step Up, tar­get­ing chil­dren be­tween the ages nine to 11 and was pri­mar­i­ly to ed­u­cate chil­dren about gen­der-re­lat­ed is­sues

More con­vic­tions need­ed

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney has urged there be greater gath­er­ing of ev­i­dence in deal­ing with in­cest cas­es which would re­sult in greater con­vic­tions. With­out cast­ing blame on any par­tic­u­lar or­gan­i­sa­tion, Vol­ney, a for­mer se­nior High Court judge whose purview once in­clud­ed hand­ing rape cas­es, ex­pressed grave con­cern about child rape and in­cest.

Ques­tioned what was the sta­tus of the Sex­u­al Of­fend­ers Reg­istry, Vol­ney said it was at the lev­el of the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion fol­low­ing which the fi­nal draft is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by next year.

What is in­cest

In­cest is sex­u­al in­ter­course or oth­er sex­u­al acts, such as fondling, mo­lesta­tion, ex­hi­bi­tion­ism and sex­u­al abuse, ei­ther phys­i­cal or emo­tion­al, when it oc­curs be­tween fam­i­ly mem­bers. It can af­fect both males and fe­males and more than one mem­ber of the fam­i­ly can be abused.

The law and in­cest

Un­der Chap­ter 11.28 of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act of Trinidad and To­ba­go, states:

9. (1) A per­son com­mits the of­fence of in­cest who, know­ing that an­oth­er per­son is by blood re­la­tion­ship, his or her par­ent, child, broth­er, sis­ter, grand­par­ent, grand­child, un­cle, niece, aunt or nephew, as the case may be, has sex­u­al in­ter­course with that per­son.

(2) A per­son who com­mits the of­fence of in­cest is li­able on con­vic­tion to im­pris­on­ment:

(a) if com­mit­ted by an adult with a per­son un­der 14 years of age, for life;

( b) if com­mit­ted by an adult with a per­son 14 years of age or more, for life;

(c) if com­mit­ted be­tween mi­nors 14 years of age or more, for two years.

(3) A per­son is not guilty of an of­fence un­der this sec­tion if that per­son com­mit­ted the of­fence un­der re­straint, duress or fear.

(4) In this sec­tion, any ex­pres­sion im­port­ing a re­la­tion­ship be­tween two per­sons shall be tak­en to ap­ply notwith­stand­ing that the re­la­tion­ship is not traced through law­ful wed­lock, and "broth­er" in­cludes half-broth­er and "sis­ter" in­cludes half-sis­ter.


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