State agencies alone cannot solve sexual abuse crisis

It’s an all too familiar story that, unfortunately, is allowed to continue by a largely accommodating society — adult men having sex with under-aged girls.

The irony is that many of the men guilty of this illegal activity themselves have daughters and would go ballistic if they were to learn that their daughters were engaged in similar activity with older men.

Outside of the despicable carnal behaviour of these men, there are a number of factors that drive this sexual abuse of young girls. Among them are financial needs, an absence of self-esteem, poor parenting, and ignorance of the law.

That last point appears to be at the root of the relationship between 29-year-old Ms Nickiesha Keeling and Mr Stenneth Wilson, the 62-year-old father of her child, that ended in her brutal murder on Sunday in Parnassus, Clark’s Town, Trelawny.

According to Ms Keeling’s brother, Mr Christopher Jack, he had strongly objected to the relationship between his sister and Mr Wilson since it began when she was a student at Muschett High School.

Mr Jack told this newspaper that he had forced the older man from his yard before, but the man persisted and eventually took her out of school when she was just 13 years old.

Ideally, Mr Wilson, from the day he started that relationship with Ms Keeling, should have been made a guest of the State. Had that been done she most likely would have been alive today, as hopefully he would have learnt the hard way that the law protects under-aged girls from people like him.

But, as we said before, these types of relationships are too common and they are made worse in a society where sexual abuse is a pervasive challenge; a society in which, experts tell us, one in four Jamaican adolescent girls, aged 15-19, has experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.

Add to that school closures and curfew measures imposed because of the novel coronavirus pandemic and we cannot be surprised to learn that more of our children are being victimised.

Indeed, a recent Caribbean Policy Research Institute study conducted in 47 of Jamaica’s poorest and most volatile communities to determine the pandemic’s impact on domestic and community violence found a worrisome trend of transactional sex between under-aged girls and older men.

According to lead researcher Ms Jenny Jones, the girls involved range in age from 12 to 15.

Ms Jones explained that once there is a so-called agreement — which in some cases may be coming more from the family — many people in the communities see nothing wrong with the practice.

The older men, she said, regard this as helping poor families. “There’s no concept of the fact that a 12- or 13- or 15-year-old child is not only legally capable of consent,” Ms Jones said, adding that in the majority of the communities studied there is no awareness of the emotional and psychological damage of early sexualisation.

Her diagnosis that this is a “national crisis” is correct, as the study also found an increase in sexual abuse of girls by their stepfathers and boys.

It will take a lot of work to reverse the culture that feeds these types of atrocities. Regardless of how difficult that is, we cannot give up.

The State agencies with responsibility for the protection of children cannot do it alone. They will require the help of all well-thinking Jamaicans. There are avenues available to report known or suspected cases of abuse. We all need to use them.

Except for the views expressed in the column above, the articles published on this page do not necessarily represent the views of the Jamaica Observer.