The National Child Protection Council and the Committee on Families and Children have warned the media to protect the identity of children who are involved in incest

Nat’l Child Protection Council Warns Media

By Kendea Smith
Jones Bahamas



Members of the media got a stern warning yesterday after officials from the National Child Protection Council in conjunction with Committee on Families and Children sought to warn the media to protect the identity of children who are involved in incest.

Just recently, the media reported on the identity of a man who has been charged with incest.

Some media houses showed the man’s face and others decided not to report on his identity.

During a special forum meeting with the media, Chairman of Committee on Families and Children Cleopatra Christie said the identity of the child victim should always be protected.

And this means not identifying the perpetrator or victim, their addresses or anything that could remotely identify the victim.

“How do children cope? Do they ever cope from this when they’re exposed? Victims-children need to trust who they turn to for help – teachers, churches, the police, the courts and the social workers. Children rely on them to protect their identity.

Otherwise we run the danger of these same or other victims not coming forward with creditable complaints. A child’s fear is always who will find out. They fear the thought of their teachers, friends, neighbours and classmates. Do they want the details to be known? Can you imagine those details about their bodies being exposed? Therefore the disclosure of the victims, names, addresses, schools, the daycare centre the name of the parents or the offending family member for example a mother or father should never be disclosed,” Ms. Christie said.

To support her claim, Ms. Christie referred to the Child Protection Act 2009.

She also spoke about the punishments for media houses if too much information about the perpetrator or victim is released.

“It shall be offense for anyone to publish any material that is intended or is likely to identify any child that has been involved in any proceedings before the court. Anyone who commits the offense is liable to a summary conviction not exceeding $5,000 or an imprisonment of 12 months or both. So that’s how serious the law takes it,” Ms. Christie said.

Deputy Chairman National Child Protection Council Dr. Novia Carter asked reporters to put themselves in the shoes of the victim and the perpetrator.

“We need to find a way to get the story out without raping the child all over again,” she said.

“In our country, everyone knows everyone. So as soon as you put a name out there and even though some media houses may not say the name and you may say dependents in our small country it is only a matter of time before everyone knows. Always consider that if it were my child – how does my child go to church? How does my child go to the mall knowing people are looking and pointing and saying – what did you do to cause this abuse to happen? Be mindful of one guiding factor- Suppose it was my child?”

June 28, 2013

The Bahama Journal

Caribbean Blog International

Our children deserve better...

Some Sad Facts of Life


The Bahama Journal Editorial



Some of this nation’s youth – through no fault of their own – are fated to be failed by any number of this nation’s social institutions inclusive of both Church and State.

Most of us seem to have forgotten that there was once a time when our people [fathers, mothers and other extended family] did care about the well-being of their off-spring.

Alas! This was not to last.

To this very day, there yet remains a hardy few of oldsters among us who can remember the arrival of that time when Bahamians fell in love with a brand new kind of ethos – one that trained its eye on ego-run amok: – of all my mother’s children, I love ME the most and thus the fervent idolatry of ME and MINE.

As a direct consequence of this new worship, we now have on our collective hands some of the results that inevitably follow when greed, selfishness and rampant consumerism are allowed free rein. As some among us gloat about their good fortune; some others pig out.

Sadly, thousands upon thousands of others are obliged to beg for a crust of bread, a taste of sugar and a vulgar bed wherever the day leaves them.

Some of this nation’s children are schooled and educated in comfort while others are left to fend for themselves in places where gun-fire can blast out its bloody report in a moment and in a twinkling of an eye.

Our children deserve better. Sadly, they may be in for worse piled upon even more of the same. Information reaching us speaks a story of horror, neglect and indecisiveness as regards the current state of affairs in any number of public schools which are bulging to the point of bursting their banks with students.

Today we have schools where classrooms are chock-full of students – many of them at the primary level – where only so many can ever really benefit; and so the beat continues for hundreds upon untold hundreds of this nation’s youth.

This is no basis upon which we can ever even hope to build a thriving Bahamian Nation; and clearly, the times are hard and they may get even harder.

Scarier than this is this sad fact of life: – This nation’s children deserve far better than they are presently getting from their parents, their pastors and their parents’ representatives in parliament. Indeed, one of the signs of the times in today’s Bahamas has to do with the extent to which any number of undocumented women – especially Haitians – now make it their business to produce as many children as they possibly can.

Evidently, they do what they do because they have come to the conclusion that things are truly better in the Bahamas for them – and that – these things are going to be quite fine for their brood.

Interestingly, there is today every indication that some of the Haitian women who are – as the saying goes – ‘dropping-baby’ – are utterly dependent on their male counterparts. As interesting is the fact that some of these men have left family members behind in a Haiti where things are still verging on bad tending towards worse; this notwithstanding reconstruction work taking place in Port-au-Prince and its immediate environs.

In direct counterpoint to this Haitian story of baby-making gone rampant, we have a situation on our collective hands where far too many of this nation’s men routinely abuse drugs that can and do destroy mind, body and soul.

As the Minister of National Security recently commented, “…There is a segment of our society where the widespread use and abuse of mind altering illicit drugs, alcohol and other substances… is prevalent. We often see the consequential bloodshed and death as gang members destroy themselves and others in seeking to maintain and/or establish turf in a war between and among our people…”

Nottage goes on to note the obvious when he indicates, “…The focal point to building a safer Bahamas must be a commitment to national renovation and renewal and that the security of the country is a vital pillar on which to build a thriving nation…”

These resounding words must yet be translated into action on the ground. As night follows day, so does it follows that today’s brutalized thug was once some cooing mother’s bundle of joy.

The same principle applies to the girl-child who – at the age between twelve and fifteen – is laden with child; and thus a rape-victim.

She too was once some one’s precious princess of a child. This is all so very sad.

We can and should do better.

September 17, 2012

Jones Bahamas

Caribbean Blog International