THERE are no shortage of horror stories and court cases involving children as victims of sexual abuse and exploitation, but the police and child authorities have never seen the need to document the activities of local paedophiles and are clueless to the size of the problem.

In fact, the term hardly ever appears in court cases and never in police reports and the local media, though experts have a clear definition of the deviance.

Police statistics show 700 to 900 sex abuse cases against minors annually, but the authorities believe many more cases go unreported and undocumented.

The majority of the perpetrators are males, but the police statistics do not identify offenders by age grouping, only indicating that they are over 17 years old.

Local experts define a paedophile as anyone who is sexually attracted to and molests a child five years his or her junior, but legally Jamaica has labelled the offence ‘carnal abuse’ or ‘incest’.

Available statistics from the police on sex crimes against children – which include buggery, carnal abuse, incest and rape – indicate that every year, hundreds of children under 16, the legal age for sexual consent, are the targets of predators.

Inspector Grace Gordon at the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) in Kingston and St Andrew insists, however, that a single case is one too many.

“From the standpoint of the centre, I can safely say that a lot of children are being affected by paedophilia,” said Gordon.

In March alone, CISOCA had 11 carnal abuse cases.

But: “One is too much,” said the policewoman.

Data from the statistics unit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force show that:

In 2005, recorded sexual abuse cases involving children under 16 included:

. 337 cases of carnal abuse, with 320 of the perpetrators over 17 years old;

. 380 cases of rape, with 350 of the perpetrators over 17 years old; and

. 14 cases of incest, with the majority of the perpetrators being the children’s fathers.

In 2004, the numbers were higher:

. 409 cases of carnal abuse, with 373 of the perpetrators over 17 years old;

. 465 cases of rape involving children under 17 years old, with 406 of the perpetrators over 17; and

. 32 cases of incest, with the majority of the perpetrators being the children’s fathers.

Two of the more disturbing cases in 2005 involved the double rape and murder of two primary school girls – Shanna Kay Legister, 9, and Sheneka Shakes, 8 – in Town Head, Westmoreland, whose bodies were found inside canefields near their school, a day after they were reported missing on June 30; and the abduction, rape and murder of a six-year-old girl, Shaneika Anderson, from a food market, downtown Kingston on May 1.

“I can tell you that the police are anxious to find this little girl’s killer,” Corporal Troy Anderson said in June 2005 of Shaneika’s killing.

“The savagery of the murder shook up many persons, including some hard-core policemen and women, and they have vowed to find her killers.”

Both cases have gone unsolved.

There are indications that the island’s problem with paedophilia runs deeper than that reflected in the statistics.

Dr Sidney McGill, a family and clinical sex disorder therapist, is not surprised by this. The reality, he noted, is that not every case of paedophilia is reported or even acknowledged by some parents.

McGill theorises that there is an ’embarrassment’ factor.

To acknowledge the abuse, he said, is to bring to the fore inadequacies that many people and parents feel.

“The reality of it is so traumatic and brings out a lot of the deficiencies in the Jamaican family structure, which includes problems of economics and not having a father in the home. And so a mother, for example, does not want to accept (that her child has fallen prey to a paedophile) initially,” said McGill.

“You also have some mothers who are very over-protective and the child feels claustrophobic and does not feel that they can go to their parents.”

Children, said McGill, who is also head of the Ocho Rios-based Family Counselling Centre of Jamaica, may also have difficulty talking about the incident since the paedophile is usually someone they trust.

“It could be the Sunday School teacher, a close family friend, a neighbour, a cousin or so on,” said McGill.

“You are angry with the perpetrator but he is also somebody that you think highly of. The thing about paedophiles is that they are so very secretive and a lot of times, the children they offend are known to them and they are very well liked. They bring them into their own confidence and into their own trust. So when they offend the child, though the kids know it is wrong, this is also somebody who has treated them very well.”

The victims of paedophilia, meanwhile, are left with emotional scars.

“The effect of paedophilia is awesome,” noted psychiatrist Terrence Bernard. “The child is going through a lot of developmental changes, growing not only physically, but also psychologically. If sex occurs at a time when it really should not be happening, then the effects are going to be damaging.

Rape has a deleterious effect on an adult who is fully grown. The effects are multiplied in a child because of the effect on their development. Their development may be arrested or it may be warped in some way.”

They also, he said, have to contend with issues of sexual identity.

“The damage, which occurs includes the effect on the child’s sexuality. Some children will respond by becoming sexually inhibited. Some will respond by becoming promiscuous,” explained Bernard.

“Many of them think that what happened to them is their fault. This compounds the situation because they experience guilt and shame, in addition to the fears, anxiety and other emotions associated with a traumatic experience.”

Bernard also identified paedophilia as being among the ways in which children were exposed to homosexuality even as they run the risk of themselves becoming sexual predators.

“Homosexual paedophilia is one of the ways in which young people enter into homosexuality if it is done by someone of the same gender,” said Bernard. “Boys may be molested by men and girls may be molested by women. In other words, it becomes a form of initiation into homosexuality. The victims sometimes become sexual predators themselves.”

It is against this background that parents are encouraged to keep the lines of communication open with their children, even as they see to their supervision.

“We just have to beg the parents, the caregivers to spend some time with your children, listen to them. If you see a child who is always upbeat and then becomes withdrawn, find out what is happening with that child. Spend some time with your children,” urged Inspector Gordon.

“Communicate with them; they are crying out for that. If something goes wrong, let it not be that they think ‘mommy going to beat me’. Let it be that they say ‘I don’t like the way uncle Roy touch me, I am going to mommy’,” the inspector added.

williamsp@jamaicaobserver.com