Da­ta ob­tained from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is point­ing to an in­crease in re­port­ed preg­nan­cies among mi­nors over the last ten years, with the fig­ures ris­ing from 46 in 2015 to 176 last year.

So far this year, law en­force­ment has been look­ing in­to 94 cas­es of girls be­com­ing im­preg­nat­ed, adding to a to­tal of 1,660 cas­es in less than a decade. How­ev­er, of­fi­cials be­lieve the num­ber of un­re­port­ed may take this to­tal even high­er.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, head of the TTPS’ Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit, Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent Michelle Row­ley-Pow­der, ex­plained that in the last year, on­ly one male adult had been charged for im­preg­nat­ing a mi­nor. In that case, the per­pe­tra­tor was 24 years while the vic­tim was 13 at the time.

“The re­ports are not al­ways made. As for the ones that are made, the chal­lenge that we are hav­ing is the preg­nant per­sons, who is the child, would gen­er­al­ly refuse to give in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the oth­er par­ty in the mat­ter. They have this method of pro­tect­ing their part­ner, es­pe­cial­ly when they think that per­son may be ar­rest­ed and charged, so they are very hes­i­tant to give in­for­ma­tion there are times we can hard­ly find out who the of­fend­er is.”

Row­ley-Pow­der added that the ages of those in­volved may al­so con­tribute to the low con­vic­tion rate.

“There are times when both par­ties, mean­ing the preg­nant child and the oth­er per­son re­spon­si­ble for the preg­nan­cy, hap­pen to be the same age, or prob­a­bly one year apart or two years apart, so that sort of age dif­fer­ence de­crim­i­nalis­es crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween chil­dren of sim­i­lar age.”

The is­sue was brought to the fore re­cent­ly when a teenage Point Fortin girl and her one-year-old son were re­port­ed miss­ing. They have since been found but the child’s fam­i­ly com­plained that they re­port­ed the mat­ter to the au­thor­i­ties and noth­ing was done.

Row­ley-Pow­der said in re­cent times, the po­lice have been ramp­ing up their school sen­si­ti­sa­tion pro­grammes aimed at ad­dress­ing teenage preg­nan­cy.

“Sen­si­ti­sa­tion is one of the main ways we in­tend to treat with the is­sue. We have start­ed out­reach pro­grammes since the unit start­ed and as time pro­gressed, based on the num­ber of re­ports, we in­creased the sen­si­ti­sa­tion for those chil­dren. For the year we’ve gone in­to 50 schools across var­i­ous ar­eas. We have al­so part­nered with stake­hold­ers to as­sist in this ven­ture.”

Mean­while, Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy said ad­dress­ing the is­sue of teenage preg­nan­cy must have na­tion­al en­gage­ment to en­sure it is ef­fec­tive.

“A preg­nant child rep­re­sents a child who may have been abused and I’m call­ing on all of Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­mem­ber we can pro­tect all our na­tion’s chil­dren, it’s not sole­ly the re­spon­si­bly of the Gov­ern­ment but the col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of every in­di­vid­ual and if we start fo­cus­ing on our chil­dren and en­sure they are cared for and pro­tect­ed, then we will have stronger homes, stronger com­mu­ni­ties and ul­ti­mate­ly a more sta­ble Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

Web­ster-Roy main­tained that a whole of gov­ern­ment ap­proach con­tin­ued to be tak­en in tack­ling mat­ters af­fect­ing the na­tion’s youth.

Act­ing man­ag­er at the St Jude’s Home for Girls, De­o­raj Sookdeo, al­so said he has ob­served more than just an up-tick in teenage preg­nan­cies in the last 18 months.

“A lot of them, even if they get preg­nant, a lot of them have been los­ing the ba­by, so what is hap­pen­ing they’re not us­ing the nor­mal, they go­ing and get the back house abor­tions or buy­ing dif­fer­ent things on the mar­ket be­ing used. There are quite a few of them we would have heard be­ing preg­nant and then they lose the ba­by so a lot us­ing the back house abor­tions.”

Ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art, a process is trig­gered when a preg­nant mi­nor seeks med­ical at­ten­tion at a pub­lic hos­pi­tal.

“Med­ical staff must con­tact the par­ents and they al­so must in­form the po­lice. This is fol­lowed by all health­care work­ers, it is a stan­dard pro­to­col, what hap­pens af­ter is out of our hands.”

Phar­ma­cy Board pres­i­dent Ri­car­do Mo­hammed al­so con­firmed that based on eth­i­cal prac­tices, phar­ma­cists can con­tact the par­ents/guardians of mi­nors seek­ing to pur­chase preg­nan­cy tests.