Wandering worry

Girls compared to boys account for the majority of arrests for certain crimes – wandering and running away from home – at least 60 per cent.

This is according to Director of the Criminal Justice Research and Planning Unit in the Office of the Attorney General, Cheryl Willoughby, while stressing that children would not run away from a loving, safe environment.

She revealed that a survey showed that 15 years old especially, were being sexually abused, raped and as a result they were running away from those violent situations.
The Director pointed to this during a special presentation on “Violence in Schools and Communities: Causes and Solutions” at The St. Michael School.

“In Barbados, if you conduct research looking at this specific crime, you would recognise that rape is an offence that is usually committed by someone that the victim knows. So the majority of the rapes and sexual assaults that we looked at among our girls were committed by either family members or friends of the family,” she revealed.

“That should tell you that we also have to look at who we entertain within our home environment. Children would not run from a loving, safe environment… It is important that as a researcher, that when statistics jump out at me that I seek to look deeper to find out what are the underlying factors which would cause a person to commit certain offences.”

Willoughby recalled that as a social worker she would have dealt with situations with juvenile girls who were raped, and the onus was on the mother to bring the charges against the perpetrator and often the perpetrator was the breadwinner in the home.

“And some mothers are finding it difficult to bring charges or allow their daughters to give evidence against the perpetrators of this crime. Without evidence the law cannot proceed and so most of these cases fell through the system… It is something we really have to look at,” she explained.
(TL)