The details surrounding the murder of Neesa Gopaul were so harrowing and caused such a public outcry, that the authorities were under enormous pressure to punish officials who may have been derelict in their duties in respect of the teenager. As such, therefore, when they set up an investigation into the train of events prior to her death, they were probably seeking a quick result – an objective which, if it becomes the dominant consideration in any inquiry, can impede the exposing of the truth. From what has emerged recently, however, it seems that this is exactly what might have happened, at least in respect of the staff of Queen’s College.
As we reported last Saturday, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon announced disciplinary action against “four or five” teachers at QC during his weekly press briefing. Guyana Teachers’ Union President Colin Bynoe later clarified that the figure was actually four. One teacher – the current deputy head Ms Hollingsworth – was barred from promotion for three years, while in the case of two others – Ms Williams and Ms Marks – the period was one year each. The headmistress of the school, Ms Friendel Isaacs, who has since retired, was demoted. These sanctions were apparently recommendations emerging from the Ministry of Education investigation, which according to Mr Bynoe was guilty of certain procedural irregularities.
In the first place, the investigation did not involve the union, which Mr Bynoe told Stabroek News was a contravention of the Memorandum of Understanding between the GTU and the ministry. In the second place, he pointed out that after the investigation had been completed, the teachers should have been formally charged, and a period granted for them to respond to the charges, but that this was never done. Furthermore, the teachers, the GTU President went on to say, were not initially told that an investigation was under way at all, merely that the team was trying to obtain some information to ensure that a similar situation did not occur again. Certainly in natural justice anyone who is to be ‘punished’ should be informed of the accusations against them, and should be given an opportunity to defend themselves against such accusations.
QC is a school which technically, at least, is administered by a board and not by the Ministry of Education; as such, therefore, the GTU President was correct to draw attention to the fact that the initial investigation should have been conducted by the board and not the ministry. He said that when this was raised with Minister Baksh, the latter responded that the board was not functioning at the time (the new board was instituted on November 3), a stance which he claimed to find puzzling, given that the ministry had been copying documents to the board during the course of the investigation.
But the issues in relation to the board do not end there. There is some suggestion that the headmistress should have informed the Ministry of Education about the situation in relation to Neesa Gopaul. Whether she did so or not is not known, because she has had nothing to say publicly on the subject of what action she took or did not take. However, one cannot help but feel that it was her duty to inform the Board of Governors of the school in the first instance, since she was immediately answerable to them. As it is, Mr Colwyn King, a former GTU president and a member of the QC board at the time told Stabroek News last week that the board had written a number of letters to Minister Baksh on the matter. It was not stated what the source of the board’s information was, but if it was Ms Isaacs, then in a technical sense she would have discharged at least a minimal duty as far as formal reporting is concerned.
Wherever the board obtained their information, and presuming they did indeed write the Ministry of Education at some level on more than one occasion, the question would then arise as to what the ministry did with the information thereafter. Why was all the focus on QC, which is at the bottom of the power pyramid and has little jurisdiction in a case like this? Why pursue the ordinary teachers especially, when they have no authority to ensure action is taken by those whose responsibility it is to follow up such cases? They do have a duty to report to their superior(s), which they say they did.
Why was the light of inquiry not shone as well on the ministry, whose higher echelons at least have the authority to liaise with, and if necessary put pressure on the Ministry of Human Services? And exactly where was the Schools Welfare Department in all of this? Did they know about Neesa Gopaul, and if they didn’t, why not, and if they did, what action did they take? In other words, exactly what part did the Ministry of Education play in the whole story, and were any officers interviewed in the course of this investigation? If not, then why not?
The three QC teachers have spoken to this newspaper, and Ms Hollingsworth has claimed that she was not deputy head at the time, Ms Gem Rolehr was. Schools are not democratic institutions, of course, and if it is indeed the case that Ms Hollingsworth was not in a position of authority in the hierarchy at the time, and had no immediate responsibilities in relation to Neesa, then why has she been singled out? She did admit to a colleague telling her about the girl, and went on to say that she told her to report the matter to the ministry. She further claimed that it was indeed reported to the ministry.
Ms Marks and Ms Williams gave a full account to Stabroek News of what they had tried to do to help Neesa, which prima facie, at least, would appear to give the ministry no cause to sanction them. Without going into all the details, one of their claims was that they handed over to a case worker in the Human Services Ministry a file which (among other things) contained photos of the bruises Neesa had sustained from a beating. Yet the letters they received from the ministry stated that they were being sanctioned because they had information which they had suppressed and that their reporting had not been done in a timely fashion.
On the basis of reliable information Stabroek News had earlier reported that the investigating team had found that the photographs had not been forwarded either to the police or the officers of the Child Care Agency. Since presumably the teachers took the photographs themselves, it must have been with a view to providing evidence, so it would be surprising if they had hung onto them. Is it possible, one wonders, that the photos simply got lost in the bureaucracy of the Human Services Ministry?
Considering that the teachers’ attempts to help Neesa had begun on October 18, 2009, and that on that day (a Sunday) they had spoken to the police, the West Demerara Hospital and the girl’s grandparents, on the Monday to a case officer in the Child Care Agency, and later on to the headmistress of QC more than once; and considering that the child was on and off in school until June of this year, exactly what timely reporting were the investigators talking about? Was the investigating team conducting an impartial inquiry, or was it just casting around for anything which might suggest culpability?
Ms Williams told our reporter that it was being claimed that they did not report to the Ministry of Education. As it was, they went out of their way (and arguably beyond the call of duty) in going to West Demerara to see Neesa at her grandparents’ home, speak to the police, etc, and it was hardly for them to contact the Education Ministry. That was the job of the headmistress, possibly through the agency of the board in the first instance.
A more serious accusation which this newspaper understood the investigating team recorded was that a forged entry had been made in a log book in an attempt to cover up lapses by the teachers. At what level this was done, we did not discover, and neither was it clear whose dereliction in particular it was intended to cover. Certainly the team should have been able to verify what Ms Williams and Ms Marks did on that October Sunday and Monday, since it involved various institutions and individuals, so they would hardly have need to ‘cover’ anything there.
Mr Bynoe is calling for the letters sanctioning the QC teachers to be withdrawn until the investigation is conducted in the proper way with the union’s involvement. Minister Baksh would be well advised to concede on this one; any investigation which to the general public appears patently unfair – and this one was not in accordance with natural justice while the teachers’ own accounts raise questions about the possible thoroughness of the inquiry – will seem little better than a cover up. An appearance of a witch hunt, even if that is far from the intention, will do nothing to bring about the kind of conditions which would make it unlikely that the bureaucratic shortcomings in the Neesa Gopaul case would ever be repeated.
