A male karate in­struc­tor, ar­rest­ed back in 2014 for the al­leged rape of three boys, will con­tin­ue to walk free un­less vic­tims come for­ward to as­sist the po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. In­ves­ti­ga­tors close to the case are urg­ing the par­ents of vic­tims and the vic­tims them­selves to come for­ward and help end the decades-long run of this al­leged pae­dophile preda­tor.

The man was first ar­rest­ed in 2004 un­der sim­i­lar charges but the case was dis­missed af­ter the vic­tims failed to tes­ti­fy against him in court.

The sec­ond mat­ter against him was heard in Jan­u­ary 2015 and is still cur­rent­ly “pend­ing” as rape and sex­u­al mo­lesta­tion is a bail­able of­fence.

Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tions found that a man with the same name was ar­rest­ed and con­vict­ed of sex with a mi­nor in the Ozarks, Al­aba­ma, back in 2003 but ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials there, he dis­ap­peared. Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Sex­u­al Of­fences Unit at the Dales Coun­ty Sher­iff of­fice in Al­aba­ma last Thurs­day and was told that the man “ab­scond­ed” af­ter his con­vic­tion in 2003. He went off their radar at that time.

One year lat­er, a karate in­struc­tor with the same name was ar­rest­ed for sex with mi­nors here in Trinidad but no one turned up to tes­ti­fy against him in court.

Doc­u­ments re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia show him earn­ing a cer­tifi­cate in the “se­cu­ri­ty field” by a Flori­da-based or­gan­i­sa­tion called the Ronin Po­lice Broth­er­hood in Oc­to­ber 2010. Back in 1998, he com­plet­ed a Rei­ki Heal­ing course.

Those fa­mil­iar with the man’s move­ments here in T&T and his pen­chant to move around re­mote ar­eas spec­u­late that he may have mo­lest­ed as many as 50 young boys since he be­gan of­fer­ing self-de­fence class­es in 2004.

Lo­cal­ly, par­ents of two of the al­leged vic­tims were iden­ti­fied to Guardian Me­dia but re­fused to speak about what their chil­dren went through. The two un­re­lat­ed fam­i­lies cit­ed the same rea­sons for keep­ing the mo­lesta­tion hush-hush - shame and em­bar­rass­ment.

The main theme be­hind their col­lec­tive si­lence is that they be­lieve that their chil­dren were the on­ly ones mo­lest­ed by some­one they trust­ed. But si­lence and shame mean that this one man was able to move through­out South Trinidad pos­ing as a self-de­fence teacher and us­ing his po­si­tion of trust to gain sex­u­al ac­cess to young vic­tims.

Self-de­fence in­struc­tor Paul Daniel-Na­hous told Guardian Me­dia that while he nev­er in­ter­act­ed with the man, ru­mours and sto­ries of his ac­tions re­ver­ber­at­ed through­out the self-de­fence com­mu­ni­ty for years.

“For a short time, I trained in a gym in Cou­va that he had re­cent­ly left train­ing peo­ple at by then. How­ev­er, one of his col­leagues and long-time friends still trained peo­ple there,” Na­hous said.

“I asked him about the in­di­vid­ual as ac­cu­sa­tions sur­faced and I heard they trained to­geth­er. He seemed re­luc­tant to an­swer and up­set over it, stat­ing that he (the of­fend­er) was some­one who ‘lost his way’.”

He said the same man who was al­leged to be abus­ing his young stu­dents was once dis­missed from an­oth­er train­ing school for “call­ing a boy up in front of the class and or­der­ing and forc­ing him to re­move his pants.”

“This was the first sick­en­ing in­stance I heard of and over the last decade, I would hear of him be­ing ar­rest­ed, some­times charged, some­times al­leged­ly es­cap­ing charges through pay­ing off fam­i­lies of the vic­tims. Each time though it was the same MO, sex­u­al as­sault/mo­lesta­tion, ar­rest when caught, re­lease and move to an­oth­er area where he is not known, usu­al­ly more rur­al ar­eas,” Na­hous said.

“He’s al­so been giv­ing him­self ti­tles and hon­orifics such as “Soke,” “pro­fes­sor,” “Dr,” when in fact he is no founder or se­nior of any re­al art, nor pos­sess­es any qual­i­fi­ca­tions of high skill from any rep­utable mas­ter.”

He added: “What is fright­en­ing is that he is on­ly one of many who go around, some with se­mi-le­git­i­mate qual­i­fi­ca­tions even at times, who open schools and use them to scout for vic­tims. I try to ed­u­cate par­ents on mar­tial arts and schools as there are a lot of mis­con­cep­tions, es­pe­cial­ly in more rur­al ar­eas.”

Sin­gu­lar cas­es such as these have res­ur­rect­ed ques­tions about the un­pop­u­lat­ed Sex­u­al Of­fences Reg­istry as it re­lates to re­peat of­fend­ers.

Last Wednes­day, po­lice bust­ed up an un­der­age sex ring and found 19 girls be­tween the ages of 15 and 19 held cap­tive. Hours lat­er, the Sen­ate be­gan its planned de­bate on the Sex­u­al Of­fences Amend­ment Bill.

It was re­vealed then that the sex­u­al of­fend­ers’ reg­istry be­gan 19 years ago and con­tained ze­ro names de­spite the fact that be­tween 2015 and 2018 there were over 2,000 re­port­ed cas­es of sex­u­al as­sault on chil­dren be­tween the ages of one and nine.

Ma­habir-Wy­att: TTPS du­ty to reg­is­ter sex of­fend­ers

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, hu­man rights ac­tivist and for­mer sen­a­tor Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att said the fail­ure to im­ple­ment the reg­is­ter over the past 19 years has con­tributed more to the cur­rent so­cial ills than the pub­lic re­alis­es.

She said pop­u­lat­ing the of­fend­ers’ reg­istry rests square­ly with the Po­lice Ser­vice but there are many gaps in the leg­is­la­tion.

“Set­ting up a new Reg­is­ter by law will not cure that, but we are hop­ing that a new ap­proach to ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Po­lice Ser­vice will do so,” she said.

She said a new board needs to be set up with sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Reg­is­ter.

“In the mean­time, and in or­der to pre­vent this in­ac­tion and/or dis­in­ter­est from go­ing on for an­oth­er cou­ple of decades, we are propos­ing that a board of qual­i­fied as­ses­sors be set up made up of prac­ti­cal and ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als to han­dle the Reg­is­ter,” she said.

Ma­habir-Wy­att said the board would then be re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that per­pe­tra­tors are cor­rect­ly as­sessed and put in the ap­pro­pri­ate cat­e­gories.

“And that ap­pro­pri­ate treat­ment be es­tab­lished and that ac­cess to the Reg­is­ter can be made through the board to those or­gan­i­sa­tions that need to know,” she said.

“We are ad­vo­cat­ing a spe­cial sex­u­al of­fences court which will in­clude the as­sess­ment, ex­am­i­na­tion of risk, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion through restora­tive jus­tice pro­grammes, which may in­clude pro­grammes in­clud­ing resti­tu­tion etc such as pro­grammes mod­elled by the ex­cel­lent Chil­dren Court that opened up this year.” Dur­ing last week’s de­bate, Al-Rawi sug­gest­ed mark­ing pass­ports of the of­fend­ers but Ma­habir-Wy­att does not think that is nec­es­sary.

“We know our cul­ture and are aware of the dan­ger of vig­i­lante jus­tice and of the dan­ger of the in­no­cent fam­i­lies of per­pe­tra­tors be­ing tar­get­ed, hu­mil­i­at­ed and iso­lat­ed in com­mu­ni­ties, de­nial of the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pri­va­cy they have,” she said.

“Im­mi­gra­tion may al­ready have the in­for­ma­tion about high-risk of­fend­ers, as by law they will have to in­form the board (if we ever get one) or the po­lice when they trav­el abroad. This in­for­ma­tion will be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­layed to In­ter­pol through the usu­al rec­i­p­ro­cal chan­nels. To put vig­i­lante pow­ers in the hands of any and every un­trained im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer in every air­port or sea­port in the world is dan­ger­ous and a vi­o­la­tion of hu­man rights,” Ma­habir-Wy­att said.

Stamp their pass­ports

Caribbean Com­mit­tee Against Sex Crimes chair and a di­rec­tor of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als, at­tor­ney Jonathan Bha­gan, sat in an NGO meet­ing with Ma­habir-Wy­att last Fri­day but spoke with Guardian Me­dia be­fore that on the is­sue of the non-ex­is­tent Reg­istry.

“The AG’s state­ment did have sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­tics on the state of child sex­u­al of­fences in Trinidad, it did not deal with re­search in­to re­duc­ing re­cidi­vism of sex of­fend­ers,” Bha­gan said.

“I do, how­ev­er, agree with the stamp­ing of the pass­ports of child sex of­fend­ers, as if they have the means they of­ten trav­el to coun­tries where sex with chil­dren is more eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble,” he said.

“This is a blow struck against the in­ter­na­tion­al child sex ring.”

Bha­gan said as part of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion mem­ber­ship, he sub­mit­ted com­ments on the bill in 2018 re­gard­ing its lack of pro­vi­sion for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion for of­fend­ers and this did not make it in­to the 2019 draft.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote said she was against the mark­ing the pass­ports. Re­fer­ring to this, Bha­gan said, “Sen­a­tor Chote took is­sue with the broad-brush ap­proach of the pub­lic reg­is­ter, which I agree with. There are dif­fer­ent crimes and dif­fer­ent types of sex of­fend­ers. Not every sex of­fend­er is a high risk to the pub­lic and plac­ing low-risk in­di­vid­u­als next to high-risk ones on a pub­lic reg­istry will di­lute the ef­fec­tive­ness of the reg­is­ter,” he said.

“Fur­ther­more, Sen­a­tor Chote re­quest­ed da­ta from the ex­ist­ing sex of­fend­ers’ reg­istry which I my­self have re­quest­ed via let­ters to the ed­i­tor and to the TTPS but nev­er re­ceived.

“I agree with Sen­a­tor Chote that there must be an un­der­stand­ing of the bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise the Par­lia­ment must do be­tween hu­man rights and the pub­lic in­ter­est. A bill like this can back­fire and re­sult in con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions to strike it down as not be­ing jus­ti­fi­able in a so­ci­ety that has re­spect for the fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms of the in­di­vid­ual.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Chote through her of­fice on Tues­day but was told that she could not speak on the Sex­u­al Of­fences Amend­ment Bill as it was still to be de­bat­ed.