Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy says she be­lieves the dev­il is cur­rent­ly busy in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, dur­ing the month of April, as has been my ex­pe­ri­ence since I’ve been min­is­ter, I don’t know why but every April we tend to see a spike in child abuse and I of­ten say that the dev­il busy,” she said.

The Min­is­ter made the com­ment dur­ing a brochure han­dover and dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny for ma­te­r­i­al on child abuse at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter at St Clair Av­enue, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Web­ster-Roy said every year as her min­istry ramps up aware­ness cam­paigns against child abuse, there seems to be an in­crease. She said, un­for­tu­nate­ly, as at­tempts are made to ed­u­cate peo­ple in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties about child abuse, there’s news of an­oth­er child hurt, killed, or a fam­i­ly in dis­tress.

For the month so far, a woman who was cap­tured ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly abus­ing two chil­dren in San Juan has been ar­rest­ed and charged with cru­el­ty, four-year-old Ama­rah Lal­lite was be­head­ed by a man close to her, an eight-year-old girl was hos­pi­talised af­ter she was ac­ci­den­tal­ly shot in the head with a ri­fle by an­oth­er child and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty had to re­move a child from her par­ent’s care af­ter she was record­ed us­ing an ob­ject re­sem­bling a gun. There was al­so an in­ci­dent late last month in which a woman was charged with abus­ing a child.

Web­ster-Roy re­vealed that she start­ed to pan­ic when she heard what had hap­pened to Ama­rah and said she would not know how to cope in such a sit­u­a­tion.

“I’m a mom of three, my youngest, my ba­by boy, just turned 12 this year and every time I see the news re­ports I have to go to my chil­dren and get com­fort from them, know­ing that at least I’m try­ing to raise girls and a boy who are go­ing to be up­stand­ing cit­i­zens and make a pos­i­tive im­pact,” she ex­plained.

But up­on lis­ten­ing to Ama­rah’s fa­ther’s plea for the jus­tice sys­tem to make it eas­i­er for fa­thers to see or get cus­tody of their chil­dren, af­ter ad­mit­ting that he was de­nied ac­cess to and cus­tody of his daugh­ter, the min­is­ter re­mind­ed those in the child care pro­tec­tion sys­tem that their guid­ing prin­ci­ple should be the best in­ter­est of the child.

“Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion all the fac­tors, the laws, etc, but un­der­pin­ning that should be the best in­ter­est of the child prin­ci­ple,” she said.

She al­so made a call for peo­ple to put aside pol­i­tics when it comes to child pro­tec­tion and rais­ing aware­ness against child abuse.

“If we fail, Trinidad and To­ba­go is go­ing to fail ... and you see the prob­lem is not politi­cians and the pol­i­tics you know, be­cause at the end of the day, we are all peo­ple,” the min­is­ter said.

She said that’s what the min­istry’s lat­est cam­paign fo­cus­es on, reach­ing peo­ple to ed­u­cate them on child abuse and child rights. It’s themed “Pass Brochure In­fo On” and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Cor­po­ra­tion, the brochures will be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to the pub­lic.

In a me­dia re­lease, the min­istry said re­cip­i­ents of the brochures will in­clude house­holds na­tion­wide via TTPOST, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, all NALIS li­braries, health and out­reach cen­tres with­in the var­i­ous re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions.