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Friday, July 18, 2025

Senior cop tells rape victims:

Report sex crimes to police

by

Sascha Wilson
1605 days ago
20210223
Clair Guy-Alleyne

Clair Guy-Alleyne

De­spite hor­ror sto­ries over the treat­ment met­ed out to rape vic­tims by po­lice of­fi­cers, head of the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU) Supt Clair Guy-Al­leyne is en­cour­ag­ing sur­vivors to go to the po­lice.

Fol­low­ing the na­tion­wide can­dle­light vig­ils call­ing for an end to vi­o­lence against women in the wake of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt, sev­er­al rape vic­tims have spo­ken out about be­ing ridiculed and dis­missed when they went to the var­i­ous po­lice sta­tions to make a re­port.

In­ter­viewed on CNC 3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Guy-Al­leyne said peo­ple are sup­posed to treat with dig­ni­ty and pride when they re­port in­ci­dents of rape and oth­er heinous crimes.

She said, “I don’t have the in­for­ma­tion about the bad be­hav­iour of po­lice of­fi­cers with re­spect to those crimes but what I can tell you is that in the Po­lice Ser­vice we are not a per­fect or­gan­i­sa­tion. Po­lice of­fi­cers come from the wider so­ci­ety and we would ex­pect that af­ter six or sev­en or eight months of train­ing we are go­ing to change be­hav­iours, change the nar­ra­tives from some of these of­fi­cers, but some­times it does not hap­pen.”

How­ev­er, she said the vic­tims must make a re­port in or­der for the po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate and ar­rest the per­pe­tra­tors.

“When it comes to rape, rape is a crime and the per­pe­tra­tors must be held ac­count­able and that is the on­ly way we could erad­i­cate rape from T&T,” she said.

While there are of­fi­cers in the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit and Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment trained to deal with rape vic­tims, she said some vic­tims pre­fer to speak with a po­lice of­fi­cer of their same sex.

She ex­plained, how­ev­er, that a vic­tim could re­quest ei­ther a male or fe­male of­fi­cer to take their re­port and re­quest to be in­ter­viewed in a pri­vate area.

She cau­tioned, “Be pre­pared to re­late that heinous ex­pe­ri­ence again. You will have to re­late it to the of­fi­cer and in the courts.“

How­ev­er, she said the TTPS will soon es­tab­lish a Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment to han­dle re­ports of rape and oth­er heinous crimes.

“More po­lice of­fi­cers will be added to my unit as it is to in­crease the strength and be able to in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty for in­ves­ti­ga­tors to in­ves­ti­gate these heinous crimes. Some peo­ple may be want­i­ng to know why form an­oth­er unit, but it’s be­cause of the com­plaints you spoke about ear­li­er we want to cre­ate an av­enue where vic­tims are com­fort­able to come for­ward and make re­ports. So the for­ma­tion of these small units, re-train­ing the minds of these of­fi­cers, that is the rea­son why units are formed with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” she said.

How­ev­er, Guy-Al­leyne en­cour­aged vic­tims to come for­ward, re­gard­less of the date of the sex­u­al as­sault, as those crimes do not car­ry a statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tion.

She said the po­lice ser­vice al­so pro­vides psy­cho-so­cial sup­port to vic­tims through­out its Vic­tim Sup­port Unit.


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