As of June 2018, Guyana has recorded an increase in reported cases of sexual abuse against children.
The eye widening figure was related by the Director of the Childcare and Protection Agency (CC&PA), Ann Greene on Friday during an interview with Guyana Times International.
“By the end of June, we had 481 sexual abuse cases and that’s an increase,” she revealed. Greene went on to explain that she believes the high number exposed itself only due to intensive work by the department.
According to her, “it’s not an increase to say it is more now than what it was before because we got more awareness, we got more channels to report. We encourage persons to report more so when we do all these programmes and all these awareness and so on, put in a hotline and all of that, the reports would increase, but it does not signal that there is more child abuse this year than last year”.
She sought to point out that she believes the figure exposed is just a ‘tip of the ice berg’ since abuse, especially sexual abuse, is often hidden and goes unreported.
Greene said she believes a holistic approach is definitely needed, as the Department continues to raise awareness in the heart wrecking area of child sexual abuse.
It was further related by the child enthusiast that most of the children from the 481 figure are under the age of 16. Moreover, Greene said most of the matters reported are still being investigated.
Numerous cases of child sexual abuse have managed to ache the heart of readers in recent days. Several weeks after being found guilty of two counts of sexually penetrating a 10-year-old girl on May 30 and June 2, 2014, at a West Coast Demerara (WCD) village, Abdool Jamil, a 67-year-old pensioner, was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in jail.
On August 13, 2018, he was ordered to serve two life sentences by Sexual Offences Court Judge Priya Sewnarine-Beharry, who said the offender must serve at least 45 years before he was eligible for parole.
When he was allowed to have his say, the pensioner, a father of six, told the Judge that he never raped the child – lamenting several times, via vivid description, that he was impotent.
“I never had sex with a young person, much less this person,” Jamil told the court.
The child, through an impact statement read by child counsellor Celeste Mullen, said she could not concentrate or perform well in school. She said she could not forget what happened to her.
“I felt really bad and upset. My life has not been the same and my grades started to drop. I trusted him, he was nice to me, but I don’t want to see him again. I want him to be punished,” the now teenaged girl expressed.
Back in July, in what she said was meant to send society a strong message, Justice Sewnarine-Beharry also sentenced 46-year-old Navindra Badal, called ““Uncle Ravi,” to serve two consecutive life sentences for raping a nine-year-old girl on two separate occasions during 2016.
It was determined in the Sexual Offences Court that the acts were committed between July 1 and 31, 2016, and August 14 and 15, 2016, at an East Coast Demerara village.
Now 11 years old, the victim also said she wanted the offender to go to jail for what he had done to her.
Following a series of attacks on a young victim, Rohan Daniels, a logger, also known as “Shine Buck” was found guilty on two counts of sexual activity with a child family member by a 12-member jury at the High Court. The panel deliberated for about three hours and they were tasked with handing a verdict on four separate counts of child sex activity.
According to the particulars of the first and fourth counts for which he was found guilty, “Shine Buck” between April 12 and 13, 2014, and July 23, 2016 performed vaginally penetrative acts on the minor. She was between 10 and 13 years old during the span of the attacks.
