Joel Julien

Po­lice of­fi­cers went to the St Mary’s Chil­dren’s Home in Tacarigua on Wednes­day, as their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the 1997 Robert Sab­ga re­port in­to abuse at chil­dren’s homes across the coun­try grew wider.

Of­fi­cers al­so vis­it­ed the St Do­minic’s Chil­dren’s Home in Bel­mont for the sec­ond time in as many days yes­ter­day.

On Mon­day, act­ing Se­nior Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne, who is head­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­tents of the Sab­ga re­port and the re­cent Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones Re­port, led a team of about a dozen of­fi­cers to St Do­minic’s in the com­pa­ny of three vic­tims who claimed to have been sex­u­al­ly abused at the home dur­ing their stays there.

Guy-Al­leyne and her team al­so vis­it­ed the St Mary’s Chil­dren’s Home yes­ter­day.

The of­fi­cers plan to vis­it oth­er chil­dren’s homes named in the Sab­ga re­port as part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the Sab­ga re­port. We are deal­ing with that right now and it will take us to dif­fer­ent homes,” As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Sharon Coop­er told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day con­tact­ed Sab­ga, the chair of the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed 1997 task force, for his com­ments on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments with re­spect to the case.

“I am very pleased. It took them long enough, but I am very pleased that fi­nal­ly, some­thing is hap­pen­ing,” Sab­ga said.

Sab­ga said he is pleased that law en­force­ment is al­so get­ting as­sis­tance from the vic­tims.

“One of the things that I called for from the be­gin­ning when all of this came back in­to the news, was that there should be some kind of truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, a se­ries of pub­lic hear­ings which would al­low the vic­tims from that pe­ri­od to come for­ward, let them give their vic­tim state­ments be­cause those are the on­ly things that will con­sti­tute ev­i­den­tiary proof, Sab­ga said.

Sab­ga said the mere fact that vic­tims have been able to point out what hap­pened and where, now con­sti­tutes “ev­i­den­tiary proof.”

“Which is what we could nev­er do when we did our in­ves­ti­ga­tions which led to that re­port,” he said.

“Every­thing we had, be­cause we nev­er were wit­ness to the ac­tu­al abuse, this is the key point you know, every­body keeps say­ing why did you all not do any­thing. We did every­thing we could but be­cause we were not wit­ness to it, at best all we had were al­le­ga­tions. It is not the same as ev­i­den­tiary proof in the law,” Sab­ga said.

Sab­ga said all the team could do was make rec­om­men­da­tions based on all of the ev­i­dence they gath­ered.

The Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed Sab­ga-led task force in­clud­ed Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att, Ha­ly­con Yorke-Young, Bas­dai Gayadeen-Catch­pole, Va­lerie Al­leyne Rawl­ins and Si­ta Be­har­ry.

“Our re­port is 25 years old. I was orig­i­nal­ly stunned that it was even rel­e­vant any­more, but I am very pleased, de­spite the fact that so much time has passed, I am very pleased that fi­nal­ly, those vic­tims are go­ing to find the kind of jus­tice that we wished we could have brought to them,” Sab­ga said.

“A lot of peo­ple ask me if I have any re­gret. My on­ly re­gret is that we could not do more than we did. That was my on­ly re­gret be­cause I feel as though in some way, these kids, be­cause they were kids at the time, all we could do was doc­u­ment and make our rec­om­men­da­tions, we could not ar­rest any­body, we could not do any of those things. So, I am grate­ful. At least now, they are get­ting some kind of jus­tice.”

Mean­while, David Mil­lette, the lone jour­nal­ist who broke the sto­ry on the Robert Sab­ga Re­port then, says he too is hap­py that some­thing is fi­nal­ly be­ing done.

Mil­lette, who worked at the T&T Mir­ror when he broke the sto­ry back in De­cem­ber 1997, said when he got the trou­bling Sab­ga re­port, his in­for­mant told him the con­tents were be­ing swept un­der the car­pet.

“It’s good to see that some­thing seems to be hap­pen­ing now. Bet­ter late than nev­er. If those per­sons who were af­fect­ed by it can get some jus­tice even this late in the day... they say jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied but in this case, it should bring about some clo­sure for these peo­ple and that ought to be good,” Mil­lette said.

“I am hap­py that some­thing is be­ing done at this stage and let’s hope that there is a fol­low through and that they could bring it to some pos­i­tive end for every­body,” he added.

So far, po­lice have not ar­rest­ed any­one in con­nec­tion with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the Sab­ga re­port.

How­ev­er, the po­lice said al­though the mat­ter is 25 years old, charges can still be laid in­dictably against the ac­cused abusers. This is be­cause the of­fi­cers said there is no statute of lim­i­ta­tions in the mat­ter.