WE SHOULD all feel both a sense of shame and of outrage over the Sunday Gleaner exposé about activities taking place in some of the facilities which are supposed to care for children.The children who are placed in these homes and places of safety are wards of the state. Some of them have been abandoned and have no one to care for them; others have committed offences and, as a result, are sent to these institutions. The process is supposed to be one of rehabilitation, to provide these children with a degree of care and fostering which will allow them to rejoin society as whole human beings.
What is emerging is that adults who are supposed to be caregivers sexually abuse the children in some of these institutions from a very tender age and that levels of supervision are so lax that children are able to engage in sexual activity with each other and to commit acts of bestiality.
Caring for children in an institutional setting is at best less than the ideal. It requires an exceptional degree of care and humanity on the part of those who are placed in charge if the children are to emerge from the experience without deep emotional and psychological scars.
Something seems to have gone wrong with the level of care that is provided in some of these institutions. A social worker is quoted in the news reports as stating that while sexual interplay between children in a particular home was not new, in the last five to 10 years the situation has gone out of control.
Postures of denial and calls for an Ombudsman for Children are not likely to solve the problem; we already have an Ambassador for Children. The Ministry of Health has ordered a review of the island's children's homes and places of safety to see whether Jamaica is upholding the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is a step in the right direction but it is important that it should not become a witch-hunt.
One factor that the review should examine is the persons who are recruited to work in these institutions, to ensure that they are genuinely interested in the welfare of the children who fall under their care and are not driven by other motives.
