Preparations are underway to ensure a safe delivery by the 11-year-old girl, who was raped and impregnated allegedly by her father some seven months ago.
A source close to the case told Stabroek News yesterday the child’s enrolment in a clinic and an urgent evaluation of her health is priority.
Up to press time last night, the child was in the care of her mother, who is denying prior knowledge of the pregnancy. The source said that at the moment there is no threat that would warrant the child’s removal from her home.
Stabroek News was told that the police are investigating the case as rape and incest. The age of sexual consent is 16.
Officers from the Child Care and Protection Agency (CC&PA) on Monday went to a community along the Linden/Soesdyke Highway, where they found the visibly-pregnant child, who was being kept away from school while awaiting her Grade Six examination results for placement at a secondary school. This newspaper was informed that it is being claimed that the child was impregnated sometime late last year. Her mother, during questioning, denied knowing about the pregnancy. However, the source said that her claim is not credible.
Stabroek News was also told that the child’s father committed suicide by drinking poison last December.
The agency became aware of the case following a tip off through its hotline over the weekend.
Meanwhile Nicole Cole, a social worker and member of the Women and Gender Equality Commission yesterday described sexual violence against young girls as “unspeakable barbarity.” She at the time was commenting on the increasing number of cases of girls younger than 16 becoming pregnant and more particularly the case of the 11-year-old.
For this year, there have been three other known cases. The girls are ages 12, 13 and 14.
Cole told Stabroek News that society had reached a stage where “wrong is no longer seen as wrong.”
“It is not normal for an 11-year-old to get pregnant. These acts tell you that we have many paedophiles in our midst. A paedophile is someone who is psychologically sick. We have a serious mental health crisis in our midst,” she said, before opining that the international community “may have to bring in a team of psychologists to evaluate us and quickly build up a mental hospice.”
Cole told this newspaper that we live in a society where “boys are being harmed, girls are being violated, our children are being trafficked, our children are giving birth, or women are being murdered….”
