-Michael Sloley/Freelance Photographer
Two children from the Pringle Place of Safety in St. Mary on Friday pore over a copy of The Gleaner during a reading session.
Yvonne Chin, Staff Reporter
THE LARGE number of children in state care who have been sexually molested and abused before or after entering care has forced the Government to immediately investigate their child care institutions.
There are allegations that children living in some state-run homes and places of safety frequently engage in sexual activities with each other and, in isolated cases, with animals. Some are also sexually abused by adults who either work on or visit the premises.
At least two child care and protection institutions have admitted that they are facing problems with an increasing number of sexualised children in their care.
A social worker in one of the institutions spoke candidly to The Sunday Gleaner about the sexual problems the children in that home are having. The worker who requested anonymity told The Sunday Gleaner that "sexual interplay between children is not new, but we've never had it to the extent that we do now." According to the source, in the last five to 10 years the situation has gone out of control.
"I know we are not the only home with the problem but people are afraid to talk about it. I know of cases involving children from six years old to 16 who have been caught engaging in sexual activities with each other. Some children don't do it regularly, others are caught four or five times a week engaging in sexual activities."
One woman has reported that she came face to face with the problem last year while in the process of adopting a seven-year-old boy from one of the island's children's homes.
According to the woman, when she took the child to the United States where she lives, he made sexual advances towards her on two occasions. She said she stopped the child and used the incidents to teach him about appropriate and inappropriate touch, but this did not help. She said she subsequently caught the child engaging in anal sex with the family dog on several occasions.
The child's adoptive mother said that despite close monitoring and admonitions the child used opportunities when she was distracted to continue to have sex with the family dog. When the child was taken to child sex abuse specialists and evaluated, the seven-year-old revealed that he had engaged in oral sex with seven other dogs and also had anal and oral sex with a number of children during the three-month period which he spent in the United States.
The boy who had been a ward of the state since he was two years old, lived at the Reddie's Place of Safety and Pringle Place of Safety before the adoption was pursued. The child was also reportedly living on the streets for some time.
The boy, has also reportedly named three adults at the homes where he lived and said they frequently sexually molested him and another child. He also reportedly spoke of regular episodes of sexual activity involving himself and a number of other children and dogs at Pringle Place of Safety. According to the child, he and other children were beaten when sexual episodes were discovered.
According to the social worker with whom The Sunday Gleaner spoke, sexual activity often occurs between children of the same sex and is most times consensual.
"I know of a case right now where a child has virtually become a sexual predator on the other children. It's become a case of - 'Which child will he try to have sex with tonight?'," the social worker said.
"We've had to take a kid off the back of the cow. Another kid was caught having sex with a puppy recently. It's a serious problem but we don't want to talk about it and if we don't talk about it we are never going to understand it."
Chairman of the board of the Pringle Place of Safety in St. Mary, which is run by the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, Reverend Maitland Evans, has denied that these incidences occurred at the home.
"We have thoroughly investigated the issue and there is no evidence that the children have been having sex with each other," said Reverend Evans. He said the child in question had only spent a year at Pringle and had in fact shown signs of having knowledge of sexual activities.
"There was one incident when the boy, with his clothes on, was seen with another child making sexual movements. We immediately put the child into counselling," he said. As far as a child engaging in bestiality is concerned, Reverend Evans said, "It is absolutely impossible for something as bizarre as that to have taken place in that kind of context without the information getting to the children or the staff at the home." He said both members of staff and the children at the home have said that nothing like that occurred.
When The Sunday Gleaner visited the home, which cares for 23 children (20 girls and three boys), the children who had been named by the seven-year-old boy as having taken part in sexual activities had been transferred to other homes by the Children's Services Division when the incident came up in the latter part of last year.
It's understood that the children were transferred after the adoptive mother reported the curious case of the seven-year-old boy to the Ministry of Health, the Ambassador for Children, Marjorie Taylor, and head of the Children's Services Division, Winston Bowen.
The Sunday Gleaner was told the children were transferred without the ministry investigating the matter thoroughly and without a psychological evaluation of the children.
Reverend Evans, who is also a trained psychiatrist, contends that before any conclusions are drawn about what happened to the child, all the contexts in which the child has lived must be taken into consideration. This includes the time he spent on the streets, in the children's homes and the time he spent with the adoptive parent in the United States.
Meanwhile, psychiatrists in both the United States and Jamaica who have evaluated the child have diagnosed him as one who has been sexually abused and has become highly sexualised as a result.
Without special treatment, the seven-year-old boy is expected to progress to become a sociopath.
The woman who was pursuing adoption of the child has returned him to the Children Services Division in Jamaica while she seeks to get the Ministry of Health, under whose purview children's homes fall, to foot the bill for his treatment.
The Sunday Gleaner was unable to make contact with the head of Reddie's Place of Safety to respond to the allegations of frequent episodes of sexual activity among the children there.
Investigations also turned up other cases of sexual abuse.
An adolescent said she was raped at age five by a man who visited the compound frequently and was sexually assaulted by a male member of staff at the home, when she was older.
"I remember the blood...I remember being taken to the hospital...I don't know what, if anything became of him. It was probably covered up," she said of the rape.
Other girls at the home, were also fondled by a male member of staff. "That was a regular past-time for this man a married man," she said. "He would lure the children in the room and then he would start hugging and feeling our breasts and tell us how big our breasts were getting. He interfered with several girls. Most of us fought him off."
But some were not always successful at eluding this predator as he was caught having sexual intercourse with one of the girls on one occasion. She became pregnant. The staff member was subsequently fired.
