Disturbing stories of our neglect

DR GABRIELLE JAMELA HOSEIN

YESTERDAY, a newborn baby girl was found in a garbage bag, abandoned by someone who cared enough to want her kept warm, wrapped in a blanket and fed if she was hungry.

Adolescence and poverty are often at play when this happens, for these are the groups of mothers facing the greatest challenges, which can be exacerbated by being abandoned by fathers of their children. This little girl’s story starts at birth.

Over the last month, there have been news reports, police media statements and editorials on missing girls. When did their story start?

On August 4, Newsday reporter Sean Douglas reported that 154 minors went missing in the first half of the year. Of those, 121 were girls and 33 were boys. One hundred and fifteen of the girls and 27 of the boys were found. The police report a 92 per cent recovery rate and this is consistent with what is published in the field. Globally, the majority of girls who run away have been sexually abused.

Girls who leave their home may be groomed by men, fleeing difficult home environments, and struggling with trauma and mental ill-health. They are at higher risk of anxiety, depression, attempted suicide, rape, STDS, adolescent pregnancy, involvement in transactional sex and prostitution, and committing criminal offences to survive.

Commenting on the 2022 data, acting CoP Mc Donald Jacob also observed that many missing minors run away from home repeatedly, sometimes three or four times a year.

The numbers may therefore not reflect the overall number of girls, but the number of reports made, sometimes in relation to the same girls. Still, it’s just as disturbing that girls are returned to family settings which they repeatedly flee. Our current approaches to institutionalising girls also have their own problems, and are hardly a solution.

On Sunday, I had to put down the newspaper after reading the story of a seven-year-old girl’s strangulation, accompanied by a photo of a makeshift board home in Palo Seco. Significant commentary has sought to hold police and the Child Protection Unit accountable for not following up, given alleged reports by a neighbour about a close relative’s mental ill-health.

Few have noted that there is no word about the child’s father and that the close relative is just 25 years old. She gave birth as an adolescent at 18, and again at 19, when her new-born son died.

That pastors thought prayer would be enough to help an extremely poor, young woman, with well-known depression, and no responsible child father is disturbing. Now, this tragedy has become her story.

These three examples are connected.

Babies are abandoned when they are not wanted or parents cannot cope financially or emotionally. In TT, women cannot access safe and legal abortion in such circumstances.

Only a hypocritical public would focus on the crime of abandonment when state legislation and policy close off other options for women who become pregnant. It's astounding that we are also not prepared to acknowledge the responsibility of the patriarchal state.

On average, nine per cent of all births are to girls aged 19 or younger. Poverty is increasing. What are the social conditions that can lead to a baby’s abandonment? How are these hidden by the presentation of an individual story?

Relatedly, the State’s approach to health and family life education (HFLE) is defined by some excellent curricula and dedicated teachers.

Yet, it deliberately forecloses sufficient discussion about sex, contraception and transactional sex (or exchange of sex for food, phone top-up or school costs) as realities adolescents are negotiating.

There are belated efforts to include more on child abuse and gender-based violence, but it’s hardly enough to resonate with those most vulnerable, who may then become the missing teenage girls highlighted in the press for running away.

There is also excessive state and religious resistance to properly informing adolescents about consent, and both the pleasures and dangers of sex.

In presenting curricula geared toward some ideal child, the girls that go missing can be considered abandoned by State and church, long before they run away from home. We refuse to meet them where they are before it's too late.

Whether in terms of HFLE or access to sexual health services as adolescents, our national strategy is hardly sufficient to prevent and protect girls from the high rates of sexual abuse, adolescent pregnancy, or running away/going missing.

It certainly doesn’t link these issues of sexuality to risks to mental health and vulnerability over the life course, from birth to adult motherhood.