The recent dismissal of five human trafficking cases against a female shop owner in the Bartica Magistrate’s Court is of grave concern to the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) whose President Simona Broomes has cited it as a clear indication of the authorities’ unwillingness to seriously address Trafficking in Persons (TIP) in Guyana.
Five human trafficking charges were dismissed against shop owner Ann Marie Carter by Magistrate Dylon Bess who ruled that insufficient evidence had been presented against the woman in court. Broomes said that some of the victims did not attend court and others did not return to complete giving evidence, and placed the blame for this at the feet of the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security and its Child Protection Agency as well as the Guyana Police Force.
She questioned how the Guyana government could effectively tackle the TIP problem when the victims, most of whom are in state care or have been placed in foster care, are not taken to court to testify against accused.
All five of the victims were rescued by the GWMO.
When contacted, Head of the Child Care and Protection Agency Ann Greene, while declining to comment on the specific cases, said that once victims are in state care or foster care and they have to attend court it is for the ministry’s TIP unit to liaise with the agency to ensure that the victims attend court. She said the unit has the responsibility for case management, but that it is also in the agency’s vested interest to ensure that the victims attend court. However, she said she would make no public declaration on what might have gone wrong in the recent cases as while she read they had been dismissed she was not sure of the reason.
“We have to get the facts; that is the important issue, to get the facts of what happened so I am not going to talk about a particular matter,” Greene told this newspaper.
Upon learning that the matters would be dismissed, Broomes wrote a letter to Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag) Justice Carl Singh, outlining the issue and the fact that the matters were about to be dismissed because the witnesses had not attended court. The letter had also outlined the organisation’s concerns about the manner in which victims in another matter and members of the organisation were being treated by a city magistrate while testifying in court. She said the way they were treated – herself included – was tantamount to being viewed as a “common criminal.”
The letter was written on February 13 and the matters were dismissed on March 2. Broomes said on Friday that the Chancellor had responded and they were expected to meet. The letter was also copied to Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee, Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang, Chief Magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry, Director of Public Pro-secutions Shalimar Ali-Hack and Police Commis-sioner Leroy Brumell, all of whom, with the exception of the office of Ali-Hack, have failed to acknowledge receipt of the letter.
Prior to the February 13 letter, Broomes said, the GWMO had written to the DPP asking that she appoint a prosecutor to prosecute the matters, but she indicated in a response that she did not have sufficient prosecutors in her chambers to be sent to those out-of-town locations.
And while those matters have been dismissed Broomes revealed that the husband and wife who were sentenced for human trafficking in August 2013 are out on the streets and the woman is back in the Oko Backdam, Region 7, operating the same shop in which she had trafficked the young girl. Candacy Anderson, 38, and her common-law husband, Wesley Hart, 41, of Pouderoyen, West Bank Demerara, were sentenced by Magistrate Adela Nagamootoo at the Reliance Magistrate’s Court for human trafficking.
“I don’t know what is going on, but the only matter that the government boast about getting conviction, the people are back out; I don’t know if they appealed the matter…”
She also charged that from late last year there has been a shift in how the authorities are handling matters where the GWMO removes suspected trafficking victims in the interior. She said the police are not arresting any of the individuals accused of human trafficking and the victims are returned to their parents or guardians, who would have facilitated them being taken to the interior in the first instance.
“There is a survivor who is fourteen years old who was brought out, and we have the man who is accused of trafficking her on record saying that it is part of his commandment that when these girls are in his shop they can’t move. We have him live on video; all that information and they have the child in the shelter frustrated from since last year November. No arrest has been made and they saying investigation continuing, that is all we are hearing; that is the new thing,” Broomes said in a recent interview with the Sunday Stabroek.
She stated that the human trafficking department in the police force last year saw new persons being appointed and since then no arrests have been made and that is a “clear indication to this organisation that they are trying to frustrate the work of the organisation and trying to frustrate the survivors.
“I want to say when they frustrate the work of the organisation they are bringing great injustice to human beings…”
‘Failed’
According to Broomes one of the victims in the recently dismissed cases had spent several months at the shelter through the Ministry of Human Services, but because she was pregnant she later left the location. However, she has indicated that she was never contacted by the authorities to attend court.
Further, Broomes said after months had elapsed and the police were still to arrest Carter it was decided that persons from GWMO would foster the two youngest victims and one of the girls was in her care when Carter was eventually arrested.
Broomes said the child was “very excited” about going to court to testify and she did so at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court and later she was in the care of the organisation’s vice-president Urica Primus, but it was the Human Services Ministry through its child protection agency that was responsible for ensuring she attended court. She said she is aware that twice the young girls failed to attend court and officials from the ministry indicated that funds were not available to transport them to court. Before this, she said, the girls attended court on more than one occasion but the matter was put down for various reasons, including the defence lawyer being unavailable. One eventually testified against Carter in Bartica but she was not cross-examined and this was not done subsequently either as the child never returned to court.
The GWMO president said the child was later taken from Primus’s care and sent with her father for a holiday and never returned.
“Child protection said to the organisation that they don’t have an officer to go and check for [name of the child] so it is not that she was not willing but child protection through human services again failed to ensure that this child return to court to be cross-examined,” Broomes said.
She was also surprised to learn in late January when she checked with the prosecutor in the matter that he was under the impression that the child was still in her care, and that he had attempted to contact her on several occasions. Apart from the fact that the numbers he reportedly called did not belong to her, Broomes questioned the information flow among the various state agencies and whether the victims’ best interests were ever a priority. At that time the prosecutor had no number for officials at the Ministry of Human Services.
The second victim who was in the foster care of the GWMO members was also returned to her parents, and Broomes said she contacted her in January and she also said she was not contacted about attending court.
A fourth victim, who now lives out of town, according to ministry officials, had indicated that she was not keen on the hassle of travelling to Bartica to testify.
Written
Broomes had written another letter to the DPP asking about the status of the five matters and in relation to the last victim, as is stated in Ali-Hack’s March 4 letter (two days after Carter was freed), she failed to attend court on numerous occasions and as a result the magistrate dismissed the charge for want of prosecution. The DPP also informed her that the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) found that checks were made for the victim at her last known address in Parika but her exact whereabouts were unknown.
“Information received that the VC returned to the ‘Backdam’. Further, the summons in respect to the VC, which was sent to her address by registered mail, was not returned to sender; thereby it could be inferred that the summons was delivered to the VC or someone at her address,” the DPP wrote.
Broomes described the information provided to the DPP as untruthful because this particular victim would have spent months in state care and she was later placed in foster care by the child protection agency. She was never informed about attending court and she is now very dissatisfied that the matter has been dismissed.
“She couldn’t afford to attend court on her own; she was pregnant and she had no money. She is seventeen and she never went back into the interior,” Broomes said.
Illegal shops
Meanwhile, Broomes once again mentioned the dialogue they had with Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud seeking to have shops in mining areas regulated and to ban persons convicted in the courts from operating such businesses.
She noted the precedent had been set where miners with legitimate businesses were banned from operating for infractions committed and questioned why the same could not be done for persons who are in fact operating illegal businesses.
“Now these are illegal shops and the minister and the government are not moving… to deal with this issue; it is like human trafficking is a Guyana Women Miners Organisation problem,” the irate GWMO president said.
She pointed out in last year’s US State Department TIP report on Guyana the government had indicated that lack of evidence was hampering successful prosecution and she said the recent dismissals of the court matters would amount to this. But she questioned who was preventing the evidence from being presented in the courts.
“We have evidence. We have survivors who are grieving that the matters are dismissed and they did not testify,” Broomes said.
She charged that Guyana is “condoning human trafficking as if it is a part of life in this country.”
Broomes said that after she had received the award last year as one of the US Government trafficking heroes she made a commitment to work with all involved, including the government, to ensure that Guyana is removed from Tier 2 in the trafficking report, but she feels as if she is in “opposition and like if we are bringing a crime to this country.”
However, Broomes made it clear that in spite of all that is happening the GWMO would continue to work and continue to rescue trafficking victims.
“We will continue to report… on human trafficking and not only at a national level but also at an international level,” Broomes said, adding that she would continue to write to Minister Rohee – who heads the country’s TIP Task Force – seeking an audience with him and other officials, even if they continue not to acknowledge the letters.
She also appealed to the opposition members of parliament to address the issue as they also have a role to play.
Broomes said that this year the GWMO will be putting out quarterly reports detailing its work and the problems it encounters.
