ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Frustrated by legal loopholes that botch attempts to bring perpetrators of child abuse to justice, Chief Education Officer Wendy Griffith-Watson, is pleading with Government for "an established procedure that works".

"We have no expertise in this area and I should like to see an established procedure to deal with cases of sexual and other forms of abuse that are brought to our attention
in a school environment," she told the SUNDAY SUN in an interview earlier this week.

Last week's SUNDAY SUN reported that five teachers over the past three years had been accused of sexual mis-conduct, but were still in the school system.

Senior Child Care Board (CCB) officer Katrina Smith echoed Griffith-Watson's sentiments who said regulations "must be put in place now that make it mandatory for
a head teacher to simultaneously inform the Ministry of Education, as well as the CCB,
when a case of sexual impropriety or other form of child abuse is reported to a teacher."

"In my opinion," Smith said, "we [the board] should sit in on whatever meeting takes place at that point in time.

"Anytime a child comes to a head teacher and says, so-and-so just touched meā that head teacher should immediately make two calls.

"One call should be to the Ministry of Education and one to the Child Care Board, because both of us should sit in on that interview with that child and his or her parents," said the officer.

"As things stand now," explained Smith who has responsibility for child abuse, "the head teacher is supposed to report the incident to the principal, who then should inform the Ministry of Education.

"But the ministry does not have to call the CCB about anything," the child care officer said.

"In fact, if the principal chooses not to send the information to the ministry, it goes nowhere, so a teacher [who may have been reported by a child for alleged sexual misconduct] remains in that school as does the child."

Psychologist Albert Selby, who counsels a number of the island's sexually and otherwise abused children, is equally concerned about the lack of effective communication between agencies.

"We have not sat down as a nation and discussed what we should do under these circumstances," he said in an interview with the SUNDAY SUN. "It is high time we dealt with these issues at a conference where all the relevant agencies would be participating," he urged.

"Right now, agencies are competing with one another and everything is fragmented," Selby said, adding that amid the confusion, the children become the victims over and over again.