Government is forsaking its sexually abused children

Apr 13, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor:
There is a war on in Guyana and it is against our children.  Some adults, including some in high positions, are on the attack; sodomising, fingering and sexually assaulting our children. Today I open the SN and I read the headline “Gentleman jailed over phone theft”.
Isn’t this asinine?  Couldn’t this chap be made to do community services, cleaning up the cemetery, rather than sent to jail?
Would it not be more pleasing to the society’s moral revival if that headline read “Corentyne Pastor jailed for life for sexually assaulting child” or “Mahaica Pastor jailed for sexually assaulting his stepdaughter”?  These are make belief headlines but they represent two real cases that remain as unsolved criminal allegations.
They joined the thousands of other unsolved sexual assault cases against mainly children and most of them do not even get past the notation in the Police logbook.  This is life for many of our children in Bharrat Jagdeo, Donald Ramotar and the PPP Guyana.
Guyana has never seen such moral bankruptcy as it is experiencing today.
Every week when one opens the newspapers, one can read stories of children being abused in Guyana and there is no comprehensive response from the authorities.  Why?  Why? What is going on in Guyana? It is not that we are so naïve or unaware on this situation because we are constantly reading about children being abused in the media.
So why the silence?  Let me ask you this question:  If your child was sexually abused by an adult, would you not be outraged?  Would you want to personally strangle the abuser?  Would you do everything in your power to ensure that the abuser of your child was prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law?
Would you want to take justice in your own hands if the authorities failed your child?  Or, would you be ashamed to publicly acknowledge what happened to your child because of the purported stigma that will be attached to your family? Or, would you prefer to take a cash settlement from the abuser and keep quiet about your child’s sexual abuse?
Think about it because this virus had infected our society and no child has immunity against it.
I am being told by children rights activist in Guyana that there are further allegations that some of the State funded caretakers of these confined children are also abusers.  If this is true, this is sex slavery in perpetuity for these children.  If this is true, then the lives of these children are worse than a cruel death in my books.
Whether this is true or not, Minister Manickchand must offer greater access to NGOs like Help and Shelter and sister Ministries like the Ministry of Health to audit the operations of this facility so that these children can be better protected.
But there is a deeper undercurrent in the Guyanese society.  Most of these abusers are close relatives.  However, these families in their true to form clannishness; sacrifice the child and destroy their family’s future rather than face up to the vagabonds even if it means public embarrassment to the family.
In some cases they sell their children and take a payoff to “staan easy”.  One continues to read of these dastardly acts such as the one in KN of March 24, 2011, where the parents of the second form Berbice student who was allegedly raped by a Pastor are now in negotiations with the alleged rapist for a G$1 million dollar settlement.
Is this the cost of this goddess of a child?
This is not only financial corruption but moral and mental bankruptcy of the highest order.  But the argument is being positioned to me that the helpless families are so poor that they have no other choice than to accept the money to live.
I ask, before their child was abused, were they not living? Why do they need this $1million to live? What prevents them from selling their child again and again until that child blossoms into someone who mentally tells themselves that they have one and only one asset?
There is no shame in poverty and the only solution out of poverty is hard work and education, not selling your body.  But the people are not fools; they set their standard by what their leaders
do.  It was exposed the other day that the so called leaders of the people harbour male predators and pedophiles in the highest office of the land.
So what message is that sending to the nation?
This is the source of our moral and mental bankruptcy as a people.  All of the juices to sustain these immoral acts are being sources from that office in New Garden Street .
But my training makes me into a firm believer that good will overcome evil; it must happen, it will happen.
Whenever I am faced with these moral issues, I read my Bhagwat Gita.  The Gita in Chapter 1 verse 40-41 says “When immorality is prominent in a family, the women of the family become polluted and from the degradation of womanhood comes unwanted children.
“Increase of the unwanted population leads to a destruction of the family traditions”. This is what is happening in Guyana. Many of the leaders are immoral and the people learn fast from their leaders but there is hope – the faith-based organisations.What are the faith-based organisations doing to save our children?  Why are they not calling out the Department of Probation & Social Services?  I am told that in that Department has some of the most committed social workers in Guyana but their hands are tied as a result of lack of state funds and political support at the highest levels.
So why are these faith based organisations not calling out the political rulers for underperformance which is leading to destruction of the Guyanese family?
I was so pained to read that two children, one 11 years old and one 13 years old from West Coast Berbice are pregnant for vagabonds.  How can something like this happen and the neighbours not call out these vagabonds?
The Government has a duty to use whatever technology is available to jail these vagabonds.
It is not rocket science how to procure the required evidence to put these vagabonds away for life since this is what section 76 of the Criminal Laws Offence Act demands.
Philippe de Mazancourt, a forensic biologist at the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Garches, France used a DNA test that can prove a person has been raped even if no sperm specimen is found on their body.
The researchers found fragments of Y chromosome in nearly 30 per cent of the cases for which standard sperm tests were negative.
Why is the Government of Guyana not saving these children?   Ironically, Guyana is a signatory on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and “By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the Convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children’s rights and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community.
Parties to the Convention are obliged to develop and undertake all actions and policies in the light of the best interests of the child.” As per UNICEF’s website.
So let us hold the Government of Guyana accountable.
Sasenarine Singh

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