SCHOOL-AGED children from a wide cross-section of communities – some of which have repeatedly been featured in reports of missing children – were on Thursday sensitised to ways in which they are targeted and influenced by perpetrators whose intent is to abduct them.
Speaking with students from more than five high schools at the Child Protection and Family Services Agency’s (CPFSA) Ananda Alert youth forum, Judine Webb-Brown, children’s officer at the CPSFA, said when a child runs away from home it is with the belief that a better life awaits them on the outside.
It is within this vulnerable state that children become victims, she noted.
“They come to you under the pretence that you will have an improved quality of life,” Webb-Brown said, noting that perpetrators were extremely skilful in identifying and feeding off the vulnerability of children.
She added that teens with low self-esteem, those who were seemingly alone travelling on the road, or persons from a lower economic class, are examples of the kind of students who are preyed upon.
“They pretend that they’re meeting the needs of the teen that is so depressed and stressed out and so, after they get you in a space.. .they isolate you from your family... and they entice you with money,” she said.
“So, if it is that you are depressed and you believe that there is no one you can talk to, there’s always someone to talk to,” she said, pointing students to various avenues within their schools, such as confiding in teachers or guidance counsellors who could assist them or contact the child abuse helpline at 211.
The forum, which was led by teenagers ages of 13 to 16, was held in commemoration of International Missing Children’s Day, observed on May 25. Children within this age range are reported as being prevalent in the nation’s data on missing children.
Youth-focused solutions
Hosted at the Altamont Court Hotel in Kingston, the goal of the forum was to identify and discuss youth-focused solutions to be implemented by the CPSFA through the Ananda Alert unit to deal with Jamaica’s high rate of child abductions and disappearances.
Last year, 952 reports of missing children were made across the island. The majority of those reported missing were girls, who accounted for approximately 82.5 per cent, while boys contributed to 17. 5 per cent of the reports.
Fayval Williams, minister of education and youth, encouraged youths to be alert and conscious. Shemplored them to trust their instincts when they felt uneasy in a certain environment and to take action in removing themselves from potentially dangerous situations.
“Adults are not always honest, they’re not always persons you can trust, unfortunately, and so, as young people, you would have to have that discerning measure about you as to who you can trust ... this is something you would have to develop,” she said.
Williams noted that the National Parenting Support Commission was another entity that aids parents seeking to learn good parental practices.
“A lot of parents, when they have children, they don’t always know how to parent properly. We have to read books, we have to ask those who have experience, [and] we should go the classes,” she said.
Williams added that the ministry was training mentors to assist parents across Jamaica in this regard.
Michelle McIntosh Harvey, acting chief executive officer of the CPSFA, said the issue of missing children remained a global crisis.
“One of the scariest things for a parent is not being able to find their child. When the child goes missing, minutes feel like hours, hours begin to feel like days and, what is most important, we feel for any parent, is the assurance that everything is being done by the State, by everyone, to search for that child and bring them home safely,” she said.
McIntosh Harvey gave the assurance that since the 2008 inception of Jamaica’s national response to missing children – the Ananda Alert - hundreds of children have been recovered safely. She lamented, however, that many children were still “missing without a trace”.
She said the CPSFA remained committed to forming and continuing its partnerships with both local and global partners for the protection of the nation’s children.
Some of the students in the interactive session stated that some factors that influenced a child to run away from home included lack of communication between parents and their child, children not having or feeling that their home was a safe place, being overwhelmed or stressed by the state of their environment, being bullied, or experiencing various forms of abuse.
Each year, more than 1, 500 children are reported missing in Jamaica and have run away from home. Among other reasons, children may go missing because they are abducted.
asha.wilks@gleanerjm.com