The re­port of the Ju­dith Jones Task Force made pub­lic ear­li­er this year ex­posed wide­spread sex­u­al, phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse of chil­dren at in­sti­tu­tions across the coun­try.

Reper­cus­sions from those hor­rif­ic rev­e­la­tions are still be­ing felt in a na­tion that awaits news about per­pe­tra­tors be­ing brought to jus­tice for the egre­gious crimes they com­mit­ted against vul­ner­a­ble wards of the state.

There were pos­i­tive re­spons­es to a Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion ear­li­er this week to re­in­state an award of al­most $2 mil­lion in dam­ages to a young man who was tor­tured and sex­u­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly abused at the St Michael’s Boys' In­dus­tri­al School and St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal. How­ev­er, the re­port on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in that case al­so served as a jolt­ing re­minder of what has been tak­ing place for decades at many chil­dren’s homes and child sup­port cen­tres.

If there had been any doubt about the har­row­ing or­deals en­dured by count­less young­sters at these fa­cil­i­ties, the case of this young man, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held to pro­tect his pri­va­cy, erased them all.

The cru­el treat­ment he re­peat­ed­ly en­dured was par­tic­u­lar­ly trau­mat­ic be­cause he suf­fers from Prad­er-Willi Syn­drome (PWS), a rare ge­net­ic dis­or­der that in­hibits phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive de­vel­op­ment, pro­duces feel­ings of in­sa­tiable hunger lead­ing to obe­si­ty, and is as­so­ci­at­ed with be­hav­iour­al prob­lems.

In­stead of the ther­a­py and pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­ven­tions he should have re­ceived from a very young age, this boy suf­fered ex­treme tor­ture and abuse.

The mon­e­tary award does not even be­gin to re­lieve the vi­o­la­tions this young man ex­pe­ri­enced. The phys­i­cal scars on his chest, ab­domen, arms and face are just the phys­i­cal signs of the trau­ma this young man will car­ry for the rest of his life. How­ev­er, it pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for him and his moth­er to be­gin re­build­ing their lives.

What is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing is that he is just one of count­less wards of the state, past and present, who are still await­ing jus­tice and re­main at high risk of falling through the cracks of T&T’s frac­tured child pro­tec­tion sys­tem.

For these and many oth­er rea­sons, there is more skep­ti­cism than re­lief at news that the Min­istry of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs has opened a home for mi­grant girls.

Ques­tions should cer­tain­ly be asked about why the keys to this new fa­cil­i­ty were hand­ed over to man­age­ment of the St Jude’s Chil­dren’s Home, an in­sti­tu­tion that fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the Ju­dith Jones re­port and the equal­ly scan­dalous Robert Sab­ga Re­port of a few decades ear­li­er.

Un­less, in a mat­ter of months, there has been a mirac­u­lous trans­for­ma­tion in the way St Jude’s is run, this new home for mi­grant girls has start­ed off un­der a cloud. Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy needs to pro­vide some clar­i­ty in this mat­ter.

Whether this new fa­cil­i­ty will sup­ply the sup­port and pro­fes­sion­al care mi­grant chil­dren need to pro­tect them from abuse, ex­ploita­tion, hu­man traf­fick­ing and ne­glect re­mains to be seen.

How­ev­er, there must be full ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy at all chil­dren’s homes and child sup­port cen­tres, as well as tan­gi­ble proof that the night­mares many of T&T’s most vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren and teenagers have lived through are fi­nal­ly com­ing to an end.