Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials are yet to re­ceive any cor­re­spon­dence from the De­fence Min­istry man­dat­ing them to reg­is­ter three of the re­cent­ly re­turned de­por­tees on the Pub­lic Sex Of­fend­ers Web­site.

Last Thurs­day dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said three of the de­por­tees were sex of­fend­ers in­clud­ing two who were pae­dophiles.

Con­firm­ing this as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, ASP Toolah Julien said while of­fi­cers were aware of the re­turn of these de­por­tees, they had not been hand­ed any au­tho­ri­sa­tion to in­clude the three de­por­tees on the cur­rent data­base.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion in its cur­rent form does not spell out just how the is­sue of de­por­tees should be ad­dressed.

Asked how lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were track­ing the move­ment of these con­vict­ed peo­ple, he said, “The Crim­i­nal Records Of­fice has not re­ceived any of­fi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion with re­gards to plac­ing these de­por­tees on their web­site.”

Julien, who is in charge of the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment/Crim­i­nal Records Of­fice (CID/CRO), Port-of-Spain, as­sured that of­fi­cials were cog­nisant of what was re­quired be­fore these de­por­tees could be list­ed on both the Pub­lic Sex Of­fend­ers Web­site and the Sex Of­fend­ers Reg­istry.

The CID/CRO is re­spon­si­ble for pop­u­lat­ing both web­sites.

The T&T Pub­lic Sex Of­fend­ers Web­site is the of­fi­cial reg­istry of con­vict­ed sex of­fend­ers in the coun­try.

It cur­rent­ly lists 36 men along with de­tails re­gard­ing their of­fences which in­clude rape and sex­u­al as­sault.

The reg­istry was made pub­lic un­der the Sex­u­al Of­fences Amend­ment Bill (2021), which al­lowed for the es­tab­lish­ment of two reg­is­ters—one for the po­lice and one for the pub­lic.

The web­site in­cludes a warn­ing against shar­ing or re­pro­duc­ing the in­for­ma­tion, with penal­ties for vi­o­la­tions.

Al­though 21 de­por­tees were orig­i­nal­ly list­ed to re­turn to T&T via a char­tered flight on May 23, on­ly 17 ac­tu­al­ly ar­rived.

While the three re­main de­tained, the re­main­der were re­leased in­to the care of Vi­sion on Mis­sion.