Will the arraignment last week of four male adults from Enmore Village on the East Coast − on charges of “carnally knowing” a nine-year-old girl − have any effect on the administration’s human security and public safety policies?
As might be expected, the four accused men − a fisherman, a porter, a painter and a disabled man − were neighbours who were familiar with the victim’s family, not strangers. Expectedly, also, the abuse had allegedly occurred repeatedly over a period of several months. Speaking generally on a previous occasion, UNICEF representative Suleiman Braimoh had pointed out that child abuse in any form is “totally despicable and unacceptable.” He added, correctly, that research has shown that the abusers tend to be people that are known to the children.
This country has been acquiring a nasty reputation for failing to protect its children from sexual predators and for failing to arrest, convict and punish many perpetrators of those crimes. The record of sexual abuse of young girls reads like a gazetteer of rural Guyana. The worst cases occurred in communities such as Hubu, Johanna Cecilia, La Grange, Mahdia, Onderneeming, Parika, Paramakatoi, Pouderoyen, St Cuthbert’s, Wakenaam, Warren and Woodley Park.
These incidents indicate how the rate of this type of crime has risen and how the level of human security has fallen, particularly for girls. There have been scores of reports of more violent abuse – including the rape-murder of schoolgirls – without any apparent improvement in the performance of the Police Force or the policies of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The problem is well known. The US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s most recent Report on Human Rights Practices for Guyana stated, “Reports of physical and sexual abuse of children were common. During the year [2008] Help and Shelter handled 55 cases of child abuse and an additional 14 cases of rape in which the victim was 17 years of age or younger… Law enforcement officials and NGOs believed that the vast majority of child-rape and criminal child-abuse cases were not reported.”
The latest Enmore incident was exposed not by the Guyana Police Force or the local Community Policing Group. It was only when officers of the Social Services Department of the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security were notified that investigation began. That ministry established a Child Care and Protection Agency and launched its 24-hour “prevent child abuse hotline” only last November.
Despite the frittering of funds on the much-favoured Community Policing Group and Neighbourhood Policing programmes, there has been little impact on human security. Nine months ago, Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee handed over the keys to yet another SUV to the Enmore Policing group to boost the group’s efforts in “securing their community.”
The Government Information Agency lauded the same Enmore Community Policing group as “among some of the best performing groups in ‘C’ Division on the East Coast Demerara.” Rohee boasted that the vehicle will aid enhancement of the group’s ability to effectively patrol the community and urged the public to be “instrumental in getting rid of criminal elements and their activities in all neighbourhoods in villages, towns, cities and anywhere else.” Yet, it is in Enmore itself that abuse allegedly festered. What is the point in having a community policing group if it cannot protect its weakest members?
This recent Enmore incident has exposed the seeming inability of the Ministry of Home Affairs to comprehend the scale and causes of the human security crisis in our communities. As long as the paranoia that guides the administration’s strange concept of community policing persists, no policies are likely to be put in place to ensure the safety of the country’s most vulnerable citizens – very young girls.
