By NAN Contributor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Sept. 28, 2018: Dr. Christine Blasey Ford held a nation spellbound Thursday as she detailed details of an alleged sexual assault she claims the Donald Trump pick for Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh committed against her over three decades ago. Thousands of miles away, in the Caribbean region, a number of cases of reported and alleged rapes, including committed on teens, continue to grab headlines there daily.
In Guyana on Monday, a viral video of the alleged gang rape of a teen created shock waves on social media. A day later, the body of one of the man who allegedly was on the gang bang video was recovered from the ocean at the Kitty seawall in the vicinity of Selena Resort, in Georgetown, the country’s capital.
The Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA) is now investigating the rape of the minor, who has now said it wasn’t her on the video.
The news comes just days after a 22-year-old taxi driver was charged with allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl and less than two weeks after a 25-year-old man was handed a life sentence for raping a seven-year-old girl, whom he sodomized after she had been left in his care.
In Jamaica, the cases are no less horrific. In late August, a 14-year-old girl was found in an inner-city neighborhood in Kingston, the country’s capital, raped, murdered and burnt. Police this month said sexual attacks on females remain a big concern for the police in St. Mary.
In Trinidad & Tobago yesterday, a 23-year-old woman told police she was raped by a a driver to take her to a job interview. Instead she was taken to a house where she was repeatedly raped. The rape was watched by three accomplices of the suspect, who cheered him on as he carried out the assault.
The rape came days after a 35-year-old man allegedly sexually assaulted his 12 year old daughter when drunk and after a 30-year-old security guard man was charged with two counts of sexual penetration after his 17-year-old neighbor said he impregnated her and less than a week after a 13-year-old schoolgirl from south Trinidad escaped being raped by her 16-year-old neighbor while they were at an abandoned house near to their homes.
Trinidad’s Child Protection Unit, (CPU), in the Western Division is now also probing the rape and impregnation of 25 teenagers between the age of 13 and 17.
In Haiti, police there say they have seen 32 cases of rape of children over the past nine months of this year alone. Among the cases to shock the nation this year was the kidnapping and rape of a 12-year-old girl by a 55-year-old head of a network specializing in the kidnapping of children.
In Grenada, a report this week claimed that an ongoing investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of a 14-year-old secondary school female in the Southern end of the island by the Royal Grenada Police Force has already resulted in five men being arrested and charged, among them a secondary school athletic coach.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines this week, a man accused of raping a 13-year-old in 2017, was charged with having unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13 and for indecently assaulting the minor by touching her about the body with his hands.
And in Antigua & Barbuda, last month, two police constables were slapped with charges of rape and buggery over a 2017 assault on a 19-year-old woman.
While data for this year is at yet unavailable, the US State Department 2018 Crime & Safety Report claimed last year in Jamaica, there were 442 rapes alone. In the twin-island Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, the US report said reported instances of crimes related to sexual assault and domestic violence increased to 531 in 2017 from 491 in 2016.
In Guyana, the Child Care and Protection Agency indicated that over 400 sexual abuse cases were reported for the first half of 2017 alone.
For the Eastern Caribbean, the report claimed in April that for 2017, the latest data available, there were 215 reported cases of sexual assault in St. Vincent & the Grenadines per 100,000 citizens.
There were 138 in Saint Lucia; 182 in Grenada, 135; 80 in Saint Kitts and Nevis; 60 in Barbados and 31 in Antigua.
A United Nations report last year said Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world for women.
The report released by the UN Women and the UN Development Programme, (UNDP), found assaults on women persisted in the region, despite severe laws aimed at curbing the phenomenon. It found three of the 10 countries with the highest rates of rape of women and girls were in the Caribbean.
