KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A 13-year-old girl miss­ing for 26 days has be­come the sub­ject of pub­lic scruti­ny since her dis­cov­ery in a for­est with a 49-year-old man, but a coun­selling ther­a­pist is warn­ing that the child is now at risk of fur­ther harm from the very ex­po­sure sur­round­ing her res­cue.

Coun­selling ther­a­pist Gre­go­ry Isaacs says the re­sponse is wrong, warn­ing that the pub­lic ex­po­sure sur­round­ing her dis­cov­ery could cause fur­ther harm to a child whose cir­cum­stances re­main un­clear.

“She’s way too young, and the lev­el of ex­po­sure and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty fac­tor is too high,” he said, stress­ing that she can­not be placed in an adult en­vi­ron­ment, even if she may have be­haved like one.

Isaacs said the po­ten­tial for fur­ther dam­age be­gins with the ex­po­sure it­self, as pub­lic scruti­ny threat­ens the girl’s heal­ing and de­vel­op­ment.

The con­tro­ver­sy has in­ten­si­fied fol­low­ing the re­lease of videos by Hunters Search and Res­cue com­man­der Sham­sudeen Ayube, show­ing the mo­ment the girl was found.

The Po­lice Ser­vice has since urged the pub­lic to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of mi­nors and called for the video to be tak­en down. Both clips have since been re­moved from Face­book.

Ayube has in­sist­ed he did noth­ing wrong and plans le­gal ac­tion against the me­dia. He and Val­lence Ramb­harat, who leads the oth­er Hunters Search and Res­cue team, were both re­cent­ly ho­n­oured with the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold).

The fall­out has al­so drawn a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who ques­tioned whether the video was re­al­ly the prob­lem when a girl miss­ing for 26 days had been found liv­ing in the for­est with a 49-year-old man.

She said State agen­cies and pri­vate search groups waste mon­ey, time and man­pow­er on peo­ple who vol­un­tar­i­ly go to live else­where, be­fore turn­ing her at­ten­tion to teenagers.

“If you want to be­have or mis­be­have like adults, you will be treat­ed like adults by the law,” she warned, adding that, if law­less­ness con­tin­ues, the coun­try could end up like Haiti in a few years.

How­ev­er, In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work pres­i­dent Adri­an­na San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan said the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks were too broad to be ap­plied to the cir­cum­stances of this par­tic­u­lar case.

“That state­ment is very broad, and it doesn’t fit in the con­text of this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.”

Isaac-Rat­tan stressed that no one yet knows how the child end­ed up where she was.

Draw­ing on her 20 years of civ­il so­ci­ety work, she said her or­gan­i­sa­tion had in­ter­viewed girls who left home for var­i­ous rea­sons, in­clud­ing abuse.

She de­scribed the shar­ing of the videos as ir­re­spon­si­ble and urged the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty to in­ter­vene as soon as pos­si­ble.

Diego Mar­tin May­or Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er al­so ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of vic­tim-sham­ing in a Face­book post.

Glas­gow-Warn­er said groom­ing had not been es­tab­lished, but ar­gued that the pos­si­bil­i­ty should be care­ful­ly ex­am­ined be­fore any­one rush­es to judge the girl’s be­hav­iour.

For­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al, mean­while, drew at­ten­tion to the le­gal pro­tec­tions af­ford­ed to chil­dren in a LinkedIn post.

Cit­ing the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child, she not­ed that a child’s best in­ter­ests must be a pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion and that chil­dren are pro­tect­ed against in­ter­fer­ence with their pri­va­cy and rep­u­ta­tion.

While com­mend­ing those who search for miss­ing peo­ple, Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al said there must be lim­its to what is made pub­lic about a child.