Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is vow­ing to purge schools of vi­o­lence as she re­peat­ed her warn­ing that there will be se­ri­ous con­se­quences for crim­i­nal be­hav­iour. 

She made the re­marks hours af­ter five fe­male stu­dents from three sec­ondary schools were charged wtih as­sault oc­cas­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm in con­nec­tion with the beat­ing of a 15-year-old Holy Faith Con­vent stu­dent on June 10.

Sev­er­al videos, which went vi­ral af­ter be­ing record­ed on stu­dents’ cell­phones, showed the vic­tim be­ing beat­en in front of the school in Cou­va by a group of young girls who were bare­foot­ed and not in uni­form. The vic­tim had to seek med­ical treat­ment af­ter sus­tain­ing in­juries.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for South/Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar con­firmed that the girls who range from age 14 to 18 years old were charged with as­sault oc­ca­sion­ing ac­tu­al bod­i­ly harm, fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions by WPC Boodoo of the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion. The stu­dents, ac­com­pa­nied by their par­ents, went to Oropouche Book­ing Cen­tre last week where they were in­ter­viewed by the po­lice. They would re­ceive a sum­mons to at­tend court to an­swer the charges.

In a state­ment, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the TTPS was com­mit­ted to school safe­ty.

“Stu­dents can­not be ex­pect­ed to reach their full po­ten­tial if they are un­der threat at or around their schools.”

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, the vic­tim’s moth­er was grate­ful that the au­thor­i­ties act­ed swift­ly, of­fer­ing hope to cit­i­zens that school vi­o­lence will not be tol­er­at­ed. 

“My daugh­ter can fi­nal­ly breathe a sigh of re­lief. She suf­fered night­mares fol­low­ing this as­sault and was con­stant­ly in a state of wor­ry. We are grate­ful that the per­pe­tra­tors will now be pros­e­cut­ed ac­cord­ing to law.”

Thank­ing every­one for their thoughts, prayers, and love, the moth­er es­pe­cial­ly thanked the charg­ing of­fi­cer, PC Nel­son and ACP Mys­tar for their sup­port through­out the or­deal.

PM: Coun­try fed up of vi­o­lence and wicked­ness

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter, in re­spond­ing to the news that the fe­male stu­dents were charged, said she would pri­or­i­tize the rights and pro­tec­tion of the ma­jor­i­ty of stu­dents who want to learn and not the mi­nor­i­ty who want to dis­rupt their schools with vi­o­lence. 

Re­fer­ring to an­oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing the at­tack on a Form Five stu­dent of South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was look­ing for­ward to its con­clu­sion soon. 

“I re­mind stu­dents and par­ents that any­one who en­gages in vi­o­lence, threats, in­tim­i­da­tion, drug deal­ing, ex­tor­tion and bul­ly­ing will be charged. We will purge our schools of this be­hav­iour by any and all means legal­ly avail­able. The coun­try is fed up of this vi­o­lence and wicked­ness in our schools and our so­ci­ety,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath al­so re­act­ed to charges be­ing laid.

He said the five fe­male stu­dents re­mained on ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion, pend­ing the out­come of a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion, af­ter which a de­ci­sion on ex­pul­sion would be made. 

Once ex­pelled, he said stu­dents aged 12 to 16 would be re­ferred to al­ter­na­tive ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes such as SER­VOL. Male stu­dents, 16 years and over, can be en­rolled in the MI­LAT pro­gramme.

He ex­plained that ex­pelled stu­dents will have ac­cess to struc­tured sup­port ser­vices through re­fer­ral to rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment agen­cies in­clud­ing the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, the Min­istry of Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, as well as the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice.  

How­ev­er, Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art said while they en­dorse the in­ter­ven­tion of law en­force­ment as a means of abat­ing the es­ca­lat­ing rise of school vi­o­lence among stu­dents, struc­tured mea­sures need to be in place to re­store and re­form the per­pe­tra­tors.

“It is equal­ly im­por­tant to ad­dress the sys­tems and root caus­es of mis­con­duct and to im­ple­ment mean­ing­ful and sus­tained ini­tia­tives to sup­port stu­dents’ over­all de­vel­op­ment,” he said.