Dear Editor,

I read Diane Lee’s letter captioned ‘Police should not question children in the presence of alleged abusers’ (16.11.07) about child abuse in Guyana. The letter poses the question “Are we selling our children while the police and those in authority look the other way?” Such practices among vulnerable children have been going on in Guyana for a very long time, but the wrongdoing has been successfully kept under wraps.

This incisive letter revived my memory of events that took place over half a century ago. In the early 1950s, as a typist/clerk in the Government Probation Service, I overheard an officer tell a colleague how a boy of about 9 years old, resident at the Salvation Army hostel in Kingston, had mentioned to him that an elderly male SA Major was in the habit of fondling him and other boys, and it was causing them great anxiety and distress, as they had no one to complain to. The child actually gave the names of the boys abused by the Major; they all confirmed the allegation.

In those days child abuse was rare, and the probation officers either did not take the allegations seriously or else were not sure what to do. So the children probably had to endure the Major’s unwelcome attention for many more years.

Child abuse is nothing new to Guyana. But the subject is now in the public arena and people in a position to do something about it could now take appropriate action.

Yours faithfully,

Geralda Dennison