Two mat­ters con­cern­ing chil­dren are cur­rent­ly in the news, gen­er­at­ing con­sid­er­able pub­lic at­ten­tion and emo­tion­al in­vest­ment.

Not for the first time, a tod­dler, com­plete­ly un­able to ad­e­quate­ly look af­ter him­self, has dis­ap­peared, trig­ger­ing fears across the coun­try that the worst could have hap­pened to him. The two-year-old ba­by, An­ge­lo To­bias, dis­ap­peared from his par­ents’ home at Good­wood, To­ba­go, and if sub­se­quent re­ports are to be be­lieved, his body was lat­er seen float­ing in the sea but au­thor­i­ties are yet to con­firm this.

While we con­tin­ue to hold out hope that he will sur­face un­harmed, there is an equal­ly trou­bling sec­ond mat­ter, once again in­volv­ing the young, that has emerged. It in­volves Sis­ter Re­nee Hall, prin­ci­pal of the Holy Name Con­vent (Port-of-Spain), one of the most no­table and suc­cess­ful girls’ schools in this coun­try. It’s a school found­ed in 1902 by French Do­mini­can nuns. The al­le­ga­tion is that the prin­ci­pal has been re­spon­si­ble for ill-treat­ing the teenagers un­der her charge.

Now this is a se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion, which is said to have a mea­sure of his­to­ry to it. This begs the ques­tion: How can such al­leged be­hav­iours have been tak­ing place not yes­ter­day, but for a yet to be de­ter­mined pe­ri­od of time, with­out any­one rais­ing a con­cern? Or is it that re­ports have been qui­et­ly made but kept hid­den, ig­nored, and by whom—staff, par­ents, the board of the school, a par­ent-teacher body; was there no sus­pi­cion, in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing; or are the al­le­ga­tions of re­cent vin­tage?

There is al­so the re­al­i­ty that in such a school, there is cer­tain to be a large body of par­ents of stu­dents who are in­tel­li­gent, forth­right and in­flu­en­tial peo­ple, who will not tol­er­ate their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren suf­fer­ing ill-treat­ment of the kind re­port­ed with­out rais­ing their voic­es. Stat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, the par­ents and grands are per­sons with voice, au­thor­i­ty, po­si­tions in the so­ci­ety and there­fore not afraid of any po­ten­tial vic­tim­i­sa­tion which could fol­low them rais­ing the is­sues, if, in fact, there was ad­van­tage of some kind be­ing tak­en against their chil­dren.

Like­wise, as in­di­cat­ed, Holy Name is a school with a heavy spir­i­tu­al back­ground and flavour. It is un­think­able that not one priest, nun, even the of­fice and per­son of Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don, would have heard of it and de­ter­mined to keep it qui­et.

There­fore, some­thing does not click and fit in­to place in this un­fold­ing sce­nario.

Now it’s good and com­mend­able that the whis­tle has been blown, even if it is late. Ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion, if in fact there was need for it, should have tak­en place.

Sure­ly, it is not our in­ten­tion to re­open wounds which must be clos­ing, but it must be said that any­one found to be re­spon­si­ble for caus­ing phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and men­tal harm to their charges, must be held ac­count­able.

And in the spe­cif­ic in­stance of the tod­dler dis­ap­pear­ing with­out trace, that pat­tern of un­con­scious care­less­ness by those re­spon­si­ble for the care of small chil­dren, needs to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed and a more re­spon­si­ble ap­proach adopt­ed.

Even so, we re­main hope­ful that there will be a hap­py end­ing to the sto­ry of ba­by An­ge­lo in To­ba­go.