Child sexual abuse in Guyana – Some thoughts

Oct 06, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
For these eight months of 2017 sexual attacks on minors seem to have increased over similar periods of the past, also the acts have become more vicious and the perpetrators bolder. Among these, in April a priest was imprisoned for raping a 6-year-old, in May a 12-year-old was rapes, and a ten-year-old sodomized. Now, in September a family has lost a young member and a nation has lost a bit of its energy and hope for the future with the rape and murder of 13 year old Leonardo Archibald.
While in the light of these reprehensible acts it is tempting to give up on Guyana, let us recognize that this specific plague infects people in almost every part of the modern world. Here in the USA we have had day care center operators charged with sexual molestation of their charge. On 25th September 2017 that impressive orator, congress man Anthony Weiner was sentenced to 21 months for sexting with a 15year old. In a report coming out of Britain in 2016, we read of a girl aged 2 year and 4 months old being sexually abused by her grandfather. And of a sister and brother in Wigan being sexually abused by their step-father.
The Nordic countries are admired for their low level of violent crimes, but they all record distressingly elevated levels of sex crimes. Iceland with perhaps the lowest level of violent crimes among these countries nevertheless, leading in sex crimes, with sex crimes against children under the age of sixteen being the main contributing area.
Closer home, in Jamaica, a 2015 report defines child sexual abuse on the island as “endemic.” For year ending December 2016 the Caribbean Vulnerable Community Coalition reported that 40% of Jamaicans reported having experienced forced sexual contact before reaching the age of consent. While the Child Protection Unit in Trinidad and Tobago reported probing 886 sexual offences against minors between May – December 2015. In May of this year a man known to constantly reveal himself to children told a court in Trinidad “Ah like them lil children.”
I remind readers of all of this not to suggest in Guyana we ought to take comfort in the fact that we are not alone in the sexual exploitation of children. But to remind us that today most societies are similarly diseased, and that the tendency to present Guyana as cursed because of such occurrences is wrong, misleading. My hope is that with this appreciation of the problem we would be energized, committed to seeking creative responses to this challenge. But first let us examine what we have been doing in response and contemplate doing.
Our responses to child sexual abuse reflects that we hold two views on its cause – offenders are either evil or sick. When our justice system sentence perpetrators to imprisonment it suggests, to some, that the wrong doers are wicked, perhaps even evil and should be punished. In early days of the modern prison when guilty of committing serious crimes and wrongdoers were given prison term, it meant solitary confinement. Prisoners would not be allowed to hear or see other humans during their period of confinement, their only companion would be the Holy Bible. The Quakers (who had a high influence on the concept of the early prison) believed that being alone with the bible would allow one to reflect on one’s wicked ways and seek penance (hence why prisons were referred to as penitentiaries).
Today in Guyana I doubt child sexual offenders are held in solitary confinement and given a bible. We just warehouse them as if the intention is merely to satisfy our anger or we hold the false belief that imprisonment is effective as deterrence. Further, since I have no knowledge of many offenders being imprisoned for life without the possibility of parole, then at some point, like the vast majority of others incarcerated, those imprisoned for rape will be free. Thus, imprisonment can offer us only a respite from possible attacks from known rapists.
Those who hold the sickness explanation favor treatment for child sexual offenders. This usually consists of offenders being given indeterminate sentences at a mental institution under care of a psychologist or psychiatrist. This seems to work to an extent since statistics for rape offenders generally indicate a recidivism rate of 12-24%. But as you might expect since rape can have severe physical and psychological effects on victims 24% recidivism is hardly comforting.
None of the above approached have worked to satisfaction and occasions of reported child sexual abuse continues to rise. So, now in Guyana we rightly, seek to introduce other approaches intended to stem this rising tide of abuse of our children. The favorite ones seem to be, the development of a sex offenders register, developing a community response and demanding that parents be more responsible. We need to examine each of these.
Claudius Prince

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