JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

154 minors run away from homes in 7 months

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1070 days ago
20220804
Assistant Superintendent of Police Darryl Ramdass addresses the media during yesterday’s TTPS briefing at the Police Administration Building in Port-of-Spain.

Assistant Superintendent of Police Darryl Ramdass addresses the media during yesterday’s TTPS briefing at the Police Administration Building in Port-of-Spain.

KERWIN PIERRE

The An­ti Kid­nap­ping Unit (AKU) is not­ing an alarm­ing trend af­ter record­ing a to­tal of 154 miss­ing chil­dren since the year be­gan.

Ac­cord­ing to Asst Supt Dar­ryl Ram­dass, the ma­jor­i­ty of these chil­dren have run away from their homes and some of the rea­sons for this in­clude par­ents/guardians dis­ci­plin­ing their chil­dren, prob­lems with­in homes and sex­u­al groom­ing by adults.

Speak­ing dur­ing the week­ly T&T Po­lice Ser­vice me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Ram­dass said 142 per­sons, or 92 per cent, of the mi­nors re­port­ed miss­ing had been re­turned to their homes, while ten per­sons, or ten per cent, are still un­ac­count­ed for.

“Out of all the mi­nors, 121 were fe­male ju­ve­niles and 33 were males,” Ram­dass said.

Giv­ing a fur­ther break­down, he said of the miss­ing mi­nors, 115 fe­males and 27 males were ac­count­ed for and six fe­males and four males were un­ac­count­ed for.

Pro­vid­ing some in­sight af­ter­wards in­to what had prompt­ed the mi­nors to run away, Ram­dass re­vealed, “What we have un­cov­ered as it re­lates to these chil­dren, some­times it may be a case of par­ents dis­ci­plin­ing chil­dren at home and they just leave with­out stat­ing where they are go­ing to or ac­count­ing for their where­abouts.”

Ad­dress­ing the cat­e­go­ry of fam­i­ly is­sues, Ram­dass ex­plained that this could in­clude in­ap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­al re­la­tions/acts be­tween adults and chil­dren (in­clud­ing step-par­ents and stepchil­dren); the pulling and tug­ging that of­ten arise in bro­ken house­holds; too much pres­sure on chil­dren to per­form aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and not enough so­cial in­ter­ac­tion with­in the fam­i­ly cir­cle. He said so­cio-eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances al­so play a part over­all in in­flu­enc­ing be­hav­iours among both mi­nors and adults.

Not­ing the var­i­ous sce­nar­ios mem­bers of the AKU have en­coun­tered dur­ing the pe­ri­od, Ram­dass said, “We have to have so­cial in­ter­ven­tions, so we work hand in hand with our Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice, our Child Pro­tec­tion Unit, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, with a view to al­le­vi­at­ing these sort of be­hav­iour and giv­ing that sup­port sys­tem for these vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.”

Not­ing that he him­self and oth­er of­fi­cers who deal with cas­es have been af­fect­ed by what they have seen on the job, Ram­dass ad­mit­ted, “It is dis­heart­en­ing at times to hear some of the sto­ries but we try all in our re­mit to fos­ter and take the ab­solute care in bring­ing these re­ports to clo­sure, and seek­ing the so­cial in­ter­ven­tion that is re­quired for these vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.”

To par­ents, he ap­pealed, “Take cog­nizance of your chil­dren. Look at the be­hav­iour­al pat­terns that ex­ists around them. See who they com­mu­ni­cate with. We are in the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, pay at­ten­tion to their phones.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, he im­plored the loved ones of miss­ing and un­ac­count­ed for adults to, “Pay at­ten­tion to your loved one. Look at the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that ex­ists around them, and in that way, you can as­sist the AKU and by ex­ten­sion, the TTPS in bring­ing clo­sure to mat­ters of these na­ture.”

Over­all, Ram­dass said a to­tal of 327 per­sons have been re­port­ed miss­ing for the year so far.

Of this num­ber, 275 per­sons, or 84 per cent, have been re­turned home, while 34 per­sons, or ten per cent, were said to be un­ac­count­ed for.

Three mat­ters of kid­nap­ping for ran­som have been record­ed for the year so far and of this num­ber, the AKU has suc­cess­ful­ly solved two, while in­ves­ti­ga­tors for the third are seek­ing ad­vice from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

In 2006, the TTPS changed its man­date not to ac­cept a miss­ing per­son’s re­port in un­der 24 hours. The new pol­i­cy now al­lows par­ents and loved ones to re­port some­one miss­ing once a cou­ple hours have passed.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored