The High Court has turned down the request of an advocacy group to get two female wards of the Government Industrial School (GIS) relocated from the facility amid abuse allegations.
The ruling was delivered by Madam Justice Barbara Cooke-Alleyne on Wednesday, a day after the one-year-old Operation Safe Space (OSS) filed a constitutional motion on behalf of the teens who, after escaping from the reform school more than a week ago, turned themselves into authorities on Tuesday night.
“We placed an order before the court to have the girls re-housed. Since there were allegations of abuse that were made, we thought that it would have been important to have the girls moved away from the facility while the investigative process and the judicial process took its course,” co-director of OSS Marsha Hinds, who expressed disappointment in the ruling on the matter of the girls’ relocation, told Barbados TODAY.
However, Justice Cooke-Alleyne’s ruling is not the end of the matter. She instructed the lawyer for the juveniles, ages 13 and 15, to return before her on May 5 armed with case law that proves the High Court has jurisdiction to overturn the ruling of the magistrate who sent the girls to the GIS on a charge of wandering.
“Now, the children are placed in the Government Industrial School by order of the Magistrate’s Court. As an advocate, I do believe that the High Court does have jurisdiction to overturn the Magistrate’s Court [ruling], because the High Court’s responsibility should be the best interests of the children,” contended the women’s and girls’ advocate.
“Just as a judge could remove a child from a home where she deems that the child was unsafe, she could also remove a child from a government institution where she deems that that institution is unsafe.”
Hinds said the OSS will continue to focus on the juvenile reform institution for girls and boys as well as the entire system that deals with the care of children in Barbados. She said those in conflict with the law require urgent overhaul.
In the meantime, however, Hinds said the OSS is concerned about the two girls.
“Our concern is that while we are preparing to return to court, these young ladies are still being housed in solitary confinement, and still in an institution where they have alleged abuse and where we have heard of historical abuse of the type they outlined, by wards who have been there before them,” she said.
The state was represented at Wednesday’s hearing by Principal Crown Counsel Marsha Lougheed from the Solicitor General’s Office while attorney-at-law Anya Lorde appeared for the two minors.
The girls ran away from the Barrows, St Lucy institution on 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 the internal investigations into an attempted escape in recent weeks, had both been put to bed.
Abrahams, along with GIS Chair 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.
Minister Abrahams was again unavailable for comment on Wednesday, but since the escape of the minors he had maintained that their safe return was a priority for his ministry. emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
