THEY CAN RUN BUT THEY CAN’T HIDE 

By Karin Dear, Nation News

A newly established register to track the history and whereabouts of pedophiles living in Barbados, could spell an end to the anonymity behind which such child molesters have been hiding for years. That’s the word from Child Care Board senior officer Katrina Smith, who officially started tracking perpertrators who prefer sexual acts with youny children “by determing their names, their ages , where they are living and the ages of the children involved.”

Information will be culled from the  boards database, police and hospital records and other source material.  “The name pedophile does not even exist in this country’s Sexual Offences Act” she said in an interview with the Sunday Sun, ” and theses persons who may have appeard before the courts and been charged with an incident of child abuse, eventually just disappear into the society.”

But that’s all about to change as Smith, who has responsibility for child abuse, is determined to compile a comprehensive record of the whereabouts of these offenders, as well as document data relating to previous offences against children.

“That way when we put a name into the system, it pop up and indicate whether that person may have molested several other children as well.”

Her efforts were strongly supported by psychologist Albert Selby, who counsels a number of the sexually abused children. Smith and Selby are adament that  “paedophilia is very much a reality in Barbados, yet the word is hardly included in the local vocabulary.” 

There is a strong evidence that pedophilia is occuring in a number of homes as well as in other settings such as schools and within the minibus sub-culture, where a number of young girls beween the ages of 13-15 are targeted by older hard-back men, some of whom may have as many as six or seven such girls” said Smith. “In some stances, they may be targeting girls younger than 13.”