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.

Monday, July 14, 2025

Jacob appoints special team to probe abuse at children’s homes

by

1153 days ago
20220517

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.”

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored