Dear Editor,

Jamaica has no shortage of words for its children: “Children are the future.” “The children are our heritage.” We tell them they can become anything they put their minds to. We tell them they will become rulers and shapers of society; future lawyers, doctors, judges, pilots, teachers, and engineers of Jamaica. Yet UNICEF reports that these very children are being exposed to violence at a young age.

Social commentator and human-rights advocate Dr Michael Abrahams, in his recent The Gleaner article, ‘The hidden toll of childhood sexual abuse’, notes that victims of sexual abuse frequently suffer from mental and emotional effects, and these can lead to poor school performance, which severely limits their potential. They are most likely to develop psychiatric disorders and are more likely to be suicidal or inflict harm to themselves.

This forces us to confront difficult questions: What happens when the children we call the future do not live long enough to see it? What happens when they are abused before they can become?

Too many Jamaican children are fighting simply to survive the Jamaica they are living in now, some do not get to finish primary school, sit their examinations, discover their strengths, build careers, or determine how they will contribute. Instead, they become photographs held by grieving parents and statistics in reports we read, hiss our teeth at, and eventually forget. They become another name we mourn. Another Ananda Dean, Danielle Rowe, Shani Coke, Jessina Pearce, or Jace Pinnock. Another Kimana, Shemari, and Kafana Smith, another Kishaun Henry.

Across Jamaica, too many children are being robbed of the ordinary things that should define childhood and, instead, they become newspaper headlines. We need to stop reciting “the children are the future” as a slogan and start treating it as a responsibility. Their safety matters. Their education matters. Their mental and emotional well-being matters. Their protection from sexual abuse matters. Their right to grow up without violence matters. Their right to live long enough to become Jamaica’s future matters. They matter.

How much more evidence do we need before we demand greater transparency about those convicted of sexual offences, particularly when children are at risk? The numbers should disturb us.

Jamaica’s 2023 Violence Against Children and Youth Survey found that 23.7 per cent of females and 11.7 per cent of males surveyed experienced sexual violence during childhood. Between January 2019 and December 2020, 43,312 incidents of child abuse were reported to the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), an average of approximately 60 reports every day!

At what point does a statistic become a national emergency? At what point do we stop simply mourning individual children and confront the conditions that continue to put children at risk?

When gang members are killed, we see protests and public outcry. Yet when children are killed, abused, or kidnapped, Jamaica falls silent. Why does one death move us to the streets while another barely moves us at all? Behind every number is a child with a name, a family, a personality, a dream, and a future that should have been theirs to discover.

A child whose innocence is stolen through sexual violence may carry those wounds long after the headlines disappear. A child who disappears leaves behind a family searching for answers and a nation forced to confront another painful question. If we keep killing, abusing, and failing to protect Jamaica’s children, who exactly are we expecting to inherit this country?

This is a national emergency that needs to be addressed. What are we willing to do for them? Will we protect them before tragedy strikes? Will we listen when they speak? Will we strengthen the systems meant to safeguard them and demand accountability when those systems fail?

Protecting Jamaica’s children cannot be treated as someone else’s responsibility. It belongs to all of us. Let us stop merely telling children that they are the future. Let us protect them so that they may be able to live it.

Shadonaye N Squire

shadonaye.squire@mycavehill.uwi.edu