Children’s Authority interviews young victims

THE Children’s Authority has spent hours interviewing two teenage girls in South Trinidad after their older sister made an appeal for intervention to save them from a life of sexual abuse at the hands of a male relative.

In a release on Wednesday, the authority confirmed it had made contact with the family but said the matter will be treated with confidentiality and sensitivity because of the nature of the allegations.

But Newsday was told that the authority’s counsellors spent hours with the girls on Tuesday night, leaving their home around midnight.

Earlier that evening, the girls and their older sister had met with senior police in the Southern Division and gave statements on the abuse they have endured so far.

The older sister, who is 29, told Newsday on Monday that the relative had raped her since she was eight.

She said the man has now trained his sights on her younger siblings and she awoke last Thursday to find him asleep next to her younger sister, dressed only in his underwear.

The man does not live with the girls and is said to have gained access to their home by climbing in through a bedroom window.

The window has since been boarded over.

The older sister said the process of ensuring her sisters are left alone by this predator is daunting, as they have had to spend hours giving statements. But she is not giving up, as she says she cannot endure a future where he is left to do as he pleases to her sisters.