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.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Sabga report: Recommendation given to man who molested 40 boys

by

1163 days ago
20220519

The 1997 Robert Sab­ga re­port in­to abuse at 10 chil­dren’s homes is now in the pub­lic do­main and its con­tents are just as dis­turb­ing as the re­cent 2021 in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

With­in the 70-page doc­u­ment, ti­tled “Re­port of The Cab­i­net Ap­point­ed Task Force to Re­view the Op­er­a­tions of Chil­dren’s Homes and In­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” is a sto­ry that can ri­val even the most chill­ing re­ports of abuse in the more re­cent Ju­dith Jones-led in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Page 36 of the Sab­ga re­port re­veals the al­leged crimes of a staff mem­ber of the St Do­minic’s Home for Chil­dren, who mo­lest­ed up to 40 boys be­fore the fa­cil­i­ty’s man­age­ment stepped in.

The re­port states that the staff mem­ber com­mit­ted sev­er­al acts of sex­u­al abuse.

“These in­clud­ed forced bug­gery, en­cour­ag­ing boys to have sex with each oth­er while he watched, strip­ping and beat­ing the old­er boys while the younger ones looked on, en­cour­ag­ing the chil­dren to ‘play’ with him, etc.”

This was first high­light­ed in the now-de­funct T&T Mir­ror news­pa­per in De­cem­ber 1997.

But two-and-a-half decades lat­er, the de­tails are still dis­turb­ing.

The re­port says, “One young boy fi­nal­ly dis­closed all and the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor was con­front­ed. He ad­mit­ted his ac­tions and ex­plained that he too had been abused by St Do­minic’s.”

How­ev­er, what hap­pened next as­ton­ished the in­ves­tiga­tive team.

“Sr Ma­ri­na asked him to vol­un­teer his res­ig­na­tion that day, and all of his leave etc. was paid to him in full.

“The mat­ter was then prompt­ly swept un­der the car­pet and no coun­selling or fol­low up with the chil­dren in­volved was done, os­ten­si­bly to pro­tect the rep­u­ta­tion of the home.”

The re­port went on to say that, “most as­ton­ish­ing of all is this Mr. (name with­held) al­leged­ly got a let­ter of rec­om­men­da­tion from St Do­minic’s and he is now re­port­ed­ly em­ployed at St. Ann’s Hos­pi­tal.”

Not hold­ing back, the in­ves­tiga­tive team said, “Giv­en the enor­mi­ty of his crime, Mr. (name with­held) would, in any oth­er so­ci­ety, be brand­ed a mon­ster of the worst kind, and he would be put away for life.”

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors lament­ed that “very lit­tle else ap­pears to have been done about his ac­tions, ei­ther in terms of him get­ting pro­fes­sion­al help, or - more im­por­tant­ly, as not­ed above - any of the stag­ger­ing num­ber of chil­dren he mo­lest­ed get­ting help ei­ther (one child even wrote a let­ter to a staff mem­ber plead­ing for help).”

Twen­ty-four years lat­er and the Ju­dith Jones re­port has found that at the same fa­cil­i­ty, “Staff at St Do­minic’s some­times fail to iden­ti­fy and pro­tect res­i­dents from groom­ing and thus sex­u­al abuse.”

The 2021 re­port adds, “The home has met all con­di­tions for a res­i­dence li­cense ex­cept the re­quire­ment that it pro­vide po­lice cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter for all its staff.”

Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day at­tempt­ed to reach out to the man­age­ment of the home to find out what mea­sures were put in place to im­prove the qual­i­ty of care of chil­dren be­tween 1997 and now. How­ev­er, we were told man­ag­er Sis­ter Ar­lene Greenidge was not in of­fice and our con­tact in­for­ma­tion was tak­en.

Vic­ar Gen­er­al of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain, Fa­ther Mar­tin Sir­ju, said while the board of the home is best placed to an­swer the ques­tions, he is look­ing for­ward to im­prov­ing the sys­tem fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion the church an­nounced on Wednes­day.

Sir­ju said the scope of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, in­clud­ing dead­lines, is still be­ing sort­ed out.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored