Carisa Lee

Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice at the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain chair Leela Ramdeen says the al­le­ga­tions of abuse of chil­dren at homes and care cen­tres must be con­front­ed.

Speak­ing at ‘A Con­ver­sa­tion about Faith and Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence’ at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour in Val­sayn yes­ter­day, Ramdeen said such abus­es were against the virtues and val­ues of Je­sus Christ.

“I think it’s time that faith com­mu­ni­ties like the Catholic Church take an hon­est look at our­selves and ad­dress the beam in our eyes and change our ways,” Ramdeen said.

Ramdeen said the church has con­trol of 12 homes and nurs­eries and ref­er­enced the fact that both the St Do­minic’s and St Jude’s homes were men­tioned in the 1997 Robert Sab­ga Re­port and the 2021 Ju­dith Jones Re­port.

“We have to ad­dress the is­sues…we shall do every­thing we can to bring heal­ing and jus­tice,” she said.

She said just like the short­est sen­tence in the Bible (Je­sus wept), she wept when she read the re­ports.

Page 36 of the 1997 Sab­ga re­port said a male mem­ber of staff (who was once a res­i­dent there) at the St Do­minic’s Home is al­leged to have per­pe­trat­ed mul­ti­ple sex­u­al acts with a num­ber of chil­dren up to the lat­ter part of 1995. It said he is re­put­ed to have mo­lest­ed some 30 –40 boys be­fore he was stopped.

The 2021 Ju­dith Jones re­port said at St Jude’s, fre­quent sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty oc­curs among res­i­dents, in­clud­ing sit­u­a­tions that res­i­dents de­scribed as “gang rape.” It said sex­u­al in­ter­ac­tion and groom­ing oc­cur be­tween res­i­dents and staff and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel.

The Catholic Church re­cent­ly an­nounced it was launch­ing its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the claims made to de­ter­mine if the al­le­ga­tions are true.

“The lit­mus test for me is what would Je­sus do…those of us who say we are dis­ci­ples of Christ must check our­selves and see if we are liv­ing wit­ness­es of our faith, or if our moral con­science needs to be de­vel­oped,” she said.

Ramdeen said when she was small, some priests used to en­cour­age vic­tims of gen­der-based vi­o­lence to try and re­main in their re­la­tion­ship and pray.

“Some even re­mind­ed vic­tims of their mat­ri­mo­ni­al vows stat­ed for bet­ter or for worse,” she added.

She said such ad­vice tram­ples on the dig­ni­ty of these vic­tims and en­cour­aged the cler­gy to speak out from the pul­pit against do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. She said the church needs to pro­vide out­reach pro­grammes in their parish­es to ad­dress this so­cial ill.

“Vic­tims need tips for pro­tec­tion, how to leave safe­ly where they can go,” she said.

She said the church can­not sit on the side­line and prayer in ac­tion in­cludes the vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors.

Abbess Jer­maine Jor­dan said the church has failed when it comes to deal­ing with gen­der-based vi­o­lence. She said some­times, spir­i­tu­al lead­ers need to come out of the bound­ary and scrip­tur­al teach­ings and deal with sit­u­a­tions as they re­late to the present.

“Be­cause some­times among your mem­ber­ship, there may be sit­u­a­tions but be­cause of your spir­i­tu­al be­liefs, you try to com­fort them both, es­pe­cial­ly in mar­tial sit­u­a­tions, you try to keep them to­geth­er,” she said.

Jor­dan said this ad­vice can cause women to stay in abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, which can lead to their deaths.

“I am maybe a rev­o­lu­tion­ist pas­tor, I say to them, run for your life,” she said.

She said there was a sit­u­a­tion where a pas­tor told a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tim that God would work it out but it did not and she was killed. She said so­ci­ety is way out of hand and val­ues have bro­ken down, so the time for cas­ing it is long gone.

The event was host­ed by the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion The In­dige­nous Cre­ative Arts Net­work.

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