It takes a vil­lage to raise a child, an of­ten re­peat­ed African proverb, did not ap­ply in the case of Makeisha May­nard, just eight-years-old, who got lit­tle pro­tec­tion from her com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try in her short, trag­ic life. As more de­tails of her dif­fi­cult life and bru­tal, un­time­ly death come to the fore, it be­comes painful­ly clear that she was a lit­tle girl lost, a child who fell be­tween the cracks, her plight un­de­tect­ed by wel­fare agen­cies and law en­force­ment.

There is no oth­er way to ex­plain why this child, the vic­tim of an as­sault when she was just eight months old, still end­ed up in the cus­tody of the par­ent charged in that mat­ter so that even­tu­al­ly he be­came her mur­der­er.

Even the sketchi­est of de­tails about Makeisha’s dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly cir­cum­stances should have raised alarms, such as the fact that she and her old­er sib­ling had not been at­tend­ing school for about a year. That alone should have brought some scruti­ny and in­ter­ven­tion but the peo­ple who knew—fam­i­ly, friends, neigh­bours—kept silent. On­ly now, in hushed tones and most­ly un­der the cov­er of anonymi­ty, are some speak­ing about the hell­ish con­di­tions, in­clud­ing abuse, that this lit­tle girl en­dured.

Yes­ter­day, as he de­tailed po­lice in­ter­ven­tions in mat­ters in­volv­ing the May­nard fam­i­ly, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith com­ment­ed that “peo­ple knew that some­thing was hap­pen­ing and they failed to step for­ward.” His ap­peal to mem­bers of the pub­lic to say some­thing if they see some­thing should be tak­en to heart by every sin­gle cit­i­zen of this coun­try that has been re­coil­ing in hor­ror at the lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty in­flict­ed up­on lit­tle Makeisha in the fi­nal mo­ments of her life.

No amount of hand wring­ing or ex­pres­sions of re­gret and de­spair will make a dif­fer­ence for this lit­tle girl we have lost and, re­gret­tably, Makeisha is not the first child in this coun­try whose plight was over­looked un­til it was ex­posed fol­low­ing a heinous crime. When four-year-old Amy An­na­muntho­do was tor­tured and beat­en to death by her step­fa­ther 14 years ago, the out­rage and grief from all cor­ners of T&T were al­most pal­pa­ble, on­ly to die down as soon as her sto­ry fad­ed from the head­lines.

The vil­lage that is T&T is falling far short when it comes to nur­tur­ing and pro­tect­ing chil­dren. Those who lost their lives get at­ten­tion when it is much too late, those that sur­vive car­ry deep phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al scars in­to adult­hood—all be­cause their com­mu­ni­ty kept silent. And we won­der why the na­tion is plagued by so much vi­o­lence and crime.

Decades af­ter this coun­try signed on to the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child and com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing them from abuse and harm, T&T stands ac­cused of break­ing that pledge.