The closure of the Goodyear tyre factory in St. Thomas several years ago has contributed to the rise in unemployment in the parish. - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer

Gareth Manning and Marlene McPherson, Sunday Gleaner Writers

Fourteen-year-old Stacey-Anneis from a poor community in the parish of St.Thomas. She is five months pregnant. Her mother is unemployed and Stacey-Anne rarely sees her father because he is abroad on the farm-work programme.

The first of several children for both parents, she lives with her mother and stepfather. Stacey-Anne had an 18-year-old boyfriend with whom she had sex occasionally. Now she is pregnant with her stepfather's 40-plus brother's child.

"Him used to keep asking me for sex all the time, and one day I just give in and say yes," a shy Stacey-Anne tells The Sunday Gleaner. It happened twice whenno one was at home. She missed her menses, and then the sickness came at school. "I started vomiting, then they carried me to (a private doctor) and he said I was pregnant," she relates.

The social issues in St. Thomas contribute significantly to carnal abuse and, by extension, teenage pregnancy, parish officials say. Statistics from the Registrar General's Department show that, outside of the Corporate Area, St. Thomas had the second-highest occurrence of teen births in Jamaica in 2005, with 1,228 births to mothers aged 15-19 years old. Thirty-six of those births were to girls under 15, while 95 were to 15-year-old girls. Only 355 of the girls actually lived in the parish, but compared to its small population of just over 9,000 girls, the rate of teen birth, is still considered among the highest.

Carnal abuse alarming

According to the police, carnal abuse in St. Thomas is "alarming". It is more frequent in the deep rural pockets of the parish, they say, and is without doubt, one of the main contributors to early pregnancy in the parish. The perpetrators are often men age 18 to early 20s, officials say, who are often in a position to offer poor girls a way out of their circumstances.

Barrington Drysdale, child-care officer for the parish and St. Thomas native, paints a depressing picture of those circumstances. He says a rancid culture exists in St. Thomas where females see themselves as mere child-bearers. Hence, many give birth to several children and are often not capable of giving the attention or care needed because of the prevailing social circumstances.

"The mothers can't take care of them, so they have to work for it on their own," he says. As a result, there have been cases where girls end up in prostitution, but more commonly, in relationships with older men whom they feel can better their circumstances.

One of the main things it has given rise to, he acknowledges, are taxi men-schoolgirl relationships where girls exchange sexual favours in return for free transportation and sometimes lunch money.

Barbara Dunn-Glover, director of the St. Thomas branch of the Women's Centre Foundation of Jamaica, agrees. She adds that often, parents know of the relationships, but condone them because the money their daughters get from these men contributes to the household income.

"A lot of the parents are financially poor and sometimes they encourage their daughters to get into relationships for financial gain," she says, recollecting a case which she dealt with recently, in which a mother encouraged her 14-year-old daughter to end the relationship with the father of her child and find another man because she was not getting the financial support she needed from him.

She argues that much of this happens not simply because parents are poor, but because they have not been prepared for parenting. Several of the girls the Women's Centre sees, she says, are themselves a product of teenage pregnancies. "They (the mothers) don't know themselves, so they have nothing to pass on to the girls," she says.

But the social structures are just plain rotten in St. Thomas, she says. There are not enough developmental programmes and in most communities, community centres are non-existent. "Unemployment is very high and the recreational facilities are very few ... If employment was there for these parents, if they had a community centre, they would have somewhere else to put their creative energies," she says.

Lack of supervision

Behaviour among the youths is atrocious, parochial authorities say, due to a lack of parental supervision. Speaking with The Sunday Gleaner, Constable Charmaine Shand of the Sexual Offences Unit in the parish, notes that the police have had to clamp down on illicit sexual practices commonly involving students on the beach and in parks. A day prior to The Sunday Gleaner's visit to the parish, she acknow-ledges, six students were taken into custody for lewd sexual conduct in a public park.

"We have to be down there (on beaches and in the parks) every day." As a result,she says, the police have started an education campaign in the schools to warn students off loitering in the park and on the beaches.

But to add to the woes, Drysdale says people are not understanding that they can be penalised under current laws for having sex with girls under 16. He says despite a public-education campaign, awareness is crumbling because the supporting resources are limited. He says there are only two child-care officers in the parish, and in many cases, the campaign never makes it to some communities because they are remote.

Drysdale is advocating intensified collaboration between the police and other social agencies in the parish to address the issue of education. he says investment and employment are desperately needed to help rid St. Thomas of some of its social ills. But until that happens, he says, "the future looks bleak."

Name changed to hide identity.

Live teen births by age of mother per parish in 2005