Two turn themselves into police after almost two weeks on the run

A newly-formed child advocacy organisation has filed a case in the local High Court seeking a declaration on the manner in which girls at the state-run Government Industrial School (GIS) are treated.

Behind the action is the one-year-old entity known as Operation Safe Space (OSS), which is also responsible for returning two missing girls of the GIS back to the reform institution tonight. They escaped just over a week ago amidst claims of human rights abuses at the school.

Marsha Hinds, Co-Director of OSS and women’s rights advocate said on Tuesday that the decision to take court action was prompted by the group’s desire not to have the girls return to the institution in light of abuse allegations against some of the wards. The group’s preference was for a “safe space” for them outside of the school.

Hinds, a former deputy chairperson of the GIS and ex-president of the National Organisation of Women (NOW) explained that the reason for returning the girls tonight was because officials of the advocacy group were unable to reach a duty judge to hear the case which was filed today.

“The matter is now before the court and as long as we can get the judiciary in Barbados to get it into motion, we are ready to go. Papers were filed today and we were hoping that this matter could have attracted the attention of the judiciary as early as today for orders to be made about the safety and well-being of these children, and that did not happen,” she told Barbados TODAY.

The wards, ages 13 and 15, absconded from the Barrows, St Lucy facility on Saturday, April 16, two days after Minister of Home Affairs and Information Wilfred Abrahams, told the media that a police probe into a report of a girl being held naked in a cell last March and an internal investigation into an attempted escape in recent weeks, had both been put to bed.

Furthermore, he said, the incident reported earlier this month by a local newspaper had been “blown totally out of proportion”.

Abrahams, with agreement from GIS chairman Reverend Dr Lucille Baird, acting principal Ronald Jackman, and clinical psychologist Christa Soleyn, said there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of employees or management.

But Hinds said today that something fundamental has to be wrong with investigations which continued to find nothing amiss, despite constant claims of abuse over the years by girls at that reform school.

She said that she and her team of about 20 individuals from Barbados and outside the country, intend to take the matter as far as the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and beyond for the protection of the female charges housed at Barrows.

“We are willing to utilise all of the resources available to us…high court, court of appeal and the Caribbean Court of Justice and beyond that, because Barbados is signatory to a number of conventions, which means we have rights and obligations; human rights obligations and children’s rights obligations. We are not even limiting ourselves to the high court. We are willing to take this matter wherever it needs to go [regarding] the [alleged] atrocities at the Government Industrial School,” she told Barbados TODAY.

“If we keep doing investigations in Barbados and finding nothing, perhaps what we need, is an independent investigative process. And there are mechanisms through which we can get that. If it has now come to that stage to protect the children of Barbados, then that is what we will do,” declared the gender activist.

Hinds said it is intended that the pending court case, while it is initially aimed at providing a safe space outside of the GIS for the two girls, would benefit all the others presently housed there.

“It will benefit all the existing wards at the school. That is why we didn’t want to rush this matter. We would want to alleviate the concerns of these two children, but we also want to make sure that we leave enough of a legal imprint that they become the last cases…because we had this same thing play out last year and nothing really changed and that is part of my consternation that we are not getting stronger at dealing with these issues.”

The women’s advocate added: “There is an extensive legal strategy we have been working on over the past couple of days involving both lawyers from inside of Barbados and outside of Barbados. Because of prudence, I will not go into details of the strategy, but we are comfortable that we have a strategy which can work.”

Hinds argued that the two girls who escaped from the GIS are in need of care and are not in conflict with the law.

“They have not committed any criminal offence. Both girls have been taken up for this archaic charge of wandering. So we believe that the trick to this case is to question the validity of taking up a child who is in need of care, creating an archaic charge of wandering and then criminalising that child. We are going to do all in our power, hopefully, finally, to create a legal challenge around that concept,” she disclosed.

Hinds, whose organisation includes lawyers, lecturers and psychologists, promised that she and her team will leave no stone unturned to ensure no other girls have to go through this “façade” of wandering again.

She admitted that seeking a declaration from the law court has to be done because the government has been making promises in excess of 10 years.

“The government has conceded to UNICEF that this charge is archaic and that it needs to be removed from our books.”

She said that in spite of this, every time there is an incident at the school, the child at the centre is a victim of this law.

“It is problematic…and what I want the public to understand, contrary to popular belief, all of the children at the Government Industrial School are not deviant. All of them are not there because they are in conflict with the law. We do not have a system in Barbados where we have a safe space to put children who are in need of care. And so, children who are in need of care are put into a facility with children who are in conflict with the law; and that is the beginning of a lot of the issues that we are having inside the institution,” pointed out the former deputy chair of the reform school.

When Barbados TODAY reached out to Minister Abrahams this evening for comment, he was unavailable.

However, since the escape of the two girls, he has maintained that their safe return was a priority for his ministry.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb