A most sickening case of incest, involving an 11-year-old girl and her “father”, has been exposed in the Trinidad and Tobago media. Those with weak stomachs could well puke on reading the details.
The rape of the little girl by this man, who is her ‘father’, has understandably provoked outrage with the disclosure that the horrifying criminal act has resulted in consideration of the child having to  undergo an abortion process to terminate the awful pregnancy.
Medical authorities are quite apprehensive, as the child’s sexual organs are still undeveloped. It is a very painful, agonising decision, made more complicated by conflicting religious/cultural views among family members.
Disclosure of the raping of the child by her father in their home in the Chaguanas area was made public by Margaret Sampson-Browne, head of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service Victim and Witness Support Unit (VWSU)  as reported in last Wednesday’s ‘Trinidad Express’ under the headline, “Daddy’s Little Girl Pregnant”.
Pregnancy by rape or incest, with fathers, step-fathers, uncles or other close male family members being the criminal, has been emerging as an abominable social plague in various Caribbean nations, with high rates in T&T, Guyana and Jamaica.
For Samson-Browne, speaking in relation to the situation in our neighbouring CARICOM partner, some areas are more infamous for child sex abuse than others. Chaguanas is one such area, with reports for this year alone involving three hundred (300) victims of gross sex abuse cases.
In this context, it would be useful to learn of the gravity of this problem in Guyana with disclosure of some current official data from authorities or via relevant non-governmental organisations.
A shared experience of child sex abuse in communities and countries for social workers, or those engaged in police programmes, as in the case of T&T’s Police Service VWSU, is that the victims continue to live in the homes of their abusers with traumatised mothers/guardians or close relatives remaining in a state of denial, instead of removing the victims with the guidance of State or private agencies.
It is more than high time that all who really want to help expose and eradicate the sickness of child sex abuse to seek how best they could contribute to arrest the kind of abomination that has afflicted the little 11-year-old schoolgirl in Chaguanas.
That child is now pregnant from an act of rape by her “daddy”, and facing an abortion challenge with undeveloped sexual organs. Wonder how many such nightmare cases are being kept secret in Guyana?