The 14-year-old who was allegedly prostituted by her mother is now serving two years in the New Opportunity Corps (NOC) after being sentenced by a magistrate for escaping from the Child Care & Protection Agency, shortly after she was removed from her mother’s home.
The child’s mother told Stabroek News that she was in court and after “explaining me side of the story” the magistrate sentenced her daughter to the juvenile remedial facility. The woman, who is still facing possible Trafficking in Persons (TIP) charges for allegedly prostituting the child, said she felt that it was the best thing for the child.
“I mean I don’t know if it is the right thing but if she could get some training and so and when she done she could do something I would be happy,” the woman said of her only daughter.
Observers have repeatedly criticized the operations of the NOC pointing out that instead of reforming the children many times they would return to society with serious issues that were not noticed before being sentenced to the institution.
Only recently former APNU parliamentarian Christopher Jones again criticized the operations of the NOC. Jones had pointed out that even after repeated recommendations for the Ministry of Youth to launch an investigation into the operation of the institution, the status quo remained. He had said the only change at the institution was the construction of what he described as “actual cells” which are equipped with bars as seen in police lock-ups. For him that meant that there is no intention of changing the modus operandi of the institution and the children who are sent there to be rehabilitated would leave worse than they entered.
He pointed out that the whole conception of an institution such as the NOC is to create an environment where troubled young people would receive the requisite assistance from trained persons, such as social workers. These trained persons should assess the young people as they enter, during their stay at the institution and after they would have left.
However, he had said “instead of rehabilitation of the young people the complete opposite is happening.
“They… go in not being sexually active and they leave sexually active. Some of them have contracted STIs [sexually transmitted infections] and some have gotten pregnant.”
‘Shocked’
President of the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) Simona Broomes, who had brought the child’s plight to the attention of this newspaper, said she is “shocked” that the child has been sent to the NOC since she is in need of help. While acknowledging that the child ran “away from the system”, Broomes said the answer is not the NOC adding that more should have been done for the child whose own mother would have failed her.
“The system has continued to fail victims of trafficking. A child like that you don’t just bring out and put in a home and expect the best behaviour,” she told this newspaper.
She pointed out that the child would have been operating as a woman and almost taking care of herself and these factors need to be taken into consideration when helping her noting that she would “have venting periods and should be allowed to vent.
“One of the things they would want to do is run away because it is like if they pick them up and put them in jail, it is unbelievable that they could send her to NOC. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying there should be no discipline but NOC is not the answer.”
According to Broomes most of the young TIP victims her organisation would have rescued over the years would have passed through NOC and it therefore means that institution is not the answer. She said it is precisely the case such as the 14-year-old that the GWMO has been struggling over the years to have a home for TIP victims and they have since achieved this with it being furnished and it is set to open its doors soon. She said the organisation’s home will be so designed to give TIP victims a second chance which they are promised under the requisite laws.
“We are getting there. I have had girls who have been through the system and they did not get help. What needs to be understood is that once the girls are from the interior they have a different behaviour pattern, it is different from a child on the coast so we need to understand this,” she said.
Broomes pointed out that the victims of TIP would have been sexually active and accustomed to using their bodies for money and living as adults and when giving them assistance this must be considered.
Heal
“These girls need time to heal,” she stressed pointing out that the 14-year-old was raped as a toddler and then allegedly pimped by her mother as a teenager which would have seen her being raped multiple times.
Her mother had also said to this newspaper that the child was raped by a man and she had reported the matter to the police but decided to drop the matter because she did not want to put the child through the embarrassment of walking up the court steps to testify.
The GWMO President called on the authorities to support the organisation’s effort to create a space for TIP victims to receive the necessary assistance in order for them to have a second chance.
“My heart go out to that child,” Broomes said sadly.
Meantime, the child’s mother said that she is still reporting to the police and cannot return to Mahdia in the meantime. She said the police have indicated that she would still be slapped with trafficking charges.
Recently the Sunday Stabroek had reported that the mother, a Mahdia resident, prostituted her daughter, standing outside the kayamoo—a crudely-built hut used for prostitution in the interior—as the child was raped inside and then accepting payment from the perpetrator. It was also reported that should the man fail to pay a report of rape would be made to the police, following which money would be demanded to drop the matter.
The child was removed from the area in January by the CC&PA and a source had confirmed that the agency had received similar reports and that the police were involved. The child told the police that she would give the money paid to her by various men to her mother and it is believed that based on this information the police will charge the mother with TIP. Officials at the agency said that they are now focusing on helping the child, who escaped from the institution where she had been placed but was caught in a bus destined for Mahdia.
Questioned as to why the child would tell officials that she gave her the money she received from men, the woman said, “Me daughter does lie and she tell me cousin that if she going down mommy gaffa go down to.”
While the mother denied prostituting the child she did not deny that the child had not attended school for a while. For her part, the mother cries that she is a security guard and hardly makes enough to support her six children even with the help from the father of her two youngest. She had said she has tried “everything” to help her daughter; she wants the best for her only daughter.
At present, her five other children are with relatives with whom they were placed by the CC&PA after their mother was briefly detained by the police.
