Acting Commissioner of Police McDonald Jacob says allegations of abuse in children’s homes emerging in the recent Judith Jones report and the 1997 Robert Sabga report are being investigated.
Speaking with Guardian Media yesterday, Jacob said a special team was created to look into the allegations last week and will be headed by acting Superintendent of the Gender-Based Violence Unit (GBVU) Claire Guy-Alleyne.
He said the primary focus of the investigations will be on the allegations in the more recent Jones report, as they are still searching for a copy of the 25-year-old Sabga report. If located, Jacob noted the allegations will have to be evaluated to determine which allegations are still viable to pursue.
“Some of them (allegations), depending on the nature of the reports, it may have passed the statutory period...if there is any evidence for it, we will investigate,” Jacob said.
“We will look into it but we are more concentrating, at this time, into the present report of Justice Jones’ recent report.”
He said they are also digging into their archives to determine if the police began any investigations back then into the allegations presented in the Sabga report.
“I have detailed some persons to look at that report to see if they can locate that report and also to ascertain whether or not the police, at that time, did any sort of investigations still...and if there were any closure concerning it,” Jacob said.
He said the search began for the Sabga report on Sunday after he read about it in the newspaper, one day before the Prime Minister publicly called on him to locate it and investigate the allegations.
“It wasn’t dependent on the Prime Minister’s call. It depends on us, as police officers, if we hear of such a report, we will try to find out what happened in 1997,” he said.
However, speaking on i95.5 FM yesterday, chairman of the 1997 task force who compiled the report, Robert Sabga, said the focus should be placed on Jones’ report in response to the Prime Minister’s call.
“Act on what is current. You’re chasing ghosts, you’re chasing dinosaurs. A lot of the people we had in our sights back then are dead, they’ve moved on,” Sabga said.
Sabga expressed regrets over how the contents of their report was dealt with in the last 25 years.
“There’s a part of me that feels like I, somehow, let down those children that trusted us, that told their stories to us, because they’re now 25 years older and they never got the justice they deserve. They never got the interventions they hoped would come and that we hoped we could bring for them.
“I don’t want to say that I feel we somehow failed them, that was never our intention. We did everything we could but I regret we couldn’t have done more,” he said.
On Monday, Prime Minister Rowley publicly called on Jacob to locate and act on the Sabga report while speaking in Parliament.
“I am today publicly calling on the Commissioner of Police to take immediate steps to find this Sabga Report and the evidence of all those who were aware of this frightening situation and take all necessary action against all who have been implicated in or with these very shocking revelations as published,” Rowley said.
Meanwhile, International Women’s Resource Network (IWRN) president Adriana Sandrine-Rattan yesterday expressed pleasure with the Prime Minster’s call. However, she lamented that “the time has come to stop the finger-pointing and instead expend energies on coming together with ideas/solutions aimed at protecting the nation’s children.”