As many as five teachers of Queen’s College (QC), including the headmistress and deputy, are now facing disciplinary actions in the form of demotions and denial of seniority for their “repetitive failure” in helping murdered teenager Neesa Gopaul while she was a student.
“I would safely say about four or five members of staff have attracted the attention of the team set up by the ministry to make recommendations based on the findings conveyed through the efforts of the investigative team,” Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon told reporters yesterday during his weekly news conference.
Dr Luncheon was at the time disclosing some of the recommendations of the investigation conducted by the Ministry of Education into the school’s role in the child’s case. The recommended sanctions come on the heels of the announcement of the recommended dismissal of two officers in the Child Care & Protection Agency (CC&PA) and the demotion of another.
Stabroek News understands that the school’s head retired yesterday but sources indicated that should the recommended sanction become a reality, then her benefits would be affected.
“Recommendations similar in its impact and gravity [as have been done with CC&PA officers] have been made in the Queen’s College report that deals with the staff. They are being recommended for discipline in the form of demotions and denial of seniority,” Dr Luncheon said.
He said the “actual compilation of what went wrong with Government and government agencies” into the child’s case would be done and form part of “the learning experience for those who enter into the delivery of social good and services on behalf of their employer, the Government of Guyana.”
The report had to come to grips with the failure of reporting, since there was considerable evidence that had already been accumulated last year about the dire straits under which the child was living. “…It would seem that whatever interventions had been made they operated at a level that did not allow for senior and definitely not officials in the school administration to be involved,” Luncheon said. He added that while “all sort of excuses have been offered” the fact that the child was subsequently murdered demonstrates that enough was not done. “The sanctions that were recommended are indeed a reflection of the failure, this repeated failure, because it is not one time that her plight came knocking on the door at school… and those failures were repetitive. A special team was asked to look at the failures and come up with recommendations and sanctions,” Dr Luncheon said.
Stabroek News had been informed that the Education Ministry’s report has revealed among other things that teachers at the school had photographic evidence of marks of violence on Neesa but failed to take them to the police or to the Human Services Ministry. Sources have also revealed that there was evidence of a forged entry in a log book at the school – an attempt to cover-up the actions or lack thereof of the teachers.
The mangled body of 16-year-old Neesa, a former student of Queen’s College (QC), was found stuffed in a suitcase in a creek at the now abandoned Emerald Tower resort on the Soesdyke/ Linden Highway on October 2. Her mother, Bibi Sharima Gopaul and her mother’s lover, Jarvis Small, have since been charged with her murder.
It was revealed that Neesa was brought to the CCPA’s attention since October last year and while two officers were assigned to her case, on two separate occasions she was still left to live in a home which was regarded as abusive.
Her death exposed lapses at the Ministry of Human Services & Social security, teachers at QC and police officers at the Leonora Police Station.
