Jamaica Govt probes claims students being exposed to sex at hurricane shelters

The Ja­maica Gov­ern­ment says it is in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports that stu­dents are be­ing ex­posed to sex by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa vic­tims who are still shel­ter­ing in some schools.

Ja­maica’s Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dana Mor­ris Dixon said the al­le­ga­tions are of such grav­i­ty that they must be treat­ed with ut­most ur­gency and speci­fici­ty.

“Any al­le­ga­tion of in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour in a shel­ter en­vi­ron­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly where chil­dren may be af­fect­ed, is a mat­ter of the great­est se­ri­ous­ness,” the min­is­ter stat­ed. “I was shocked to hear the pub­lic al­le­ga­tion from [Dr Mark] Mal­ab­ver [Pres­i­dent of the Ja­maica Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (JTA)] for the first time by way of a pub­lic ad­dress. I hope he made for­mal re­ports to all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties be­fore do­ing so.”

“Nonethe­less, I am urg­ing Dr Mal­ab­ver to ur­gent­ly share with the Min­istry any re­ports, de­tails, dates, lo­ca­tions, or oth­er in­for­ma­tion in his pos­ses­sion so that these mat­ters can be ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed with­out de­lay.

“We have a moral and statu­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­port and in­ves­ti­gate these al­le­ga­tions in the short­est pos­si­ble time. The safe­ty and well-be­ing of our chil­dren will and must al­ways be our ut­most pri­or­i­ty,” the ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter added.

The JTA pres­i­dent, while ad­dress­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the JTA Ed­u­ca­tion Con­fer­ence 2026 on Tues­day, spoke of re­ports that stu­dents are be­ing giv­en a front-row seat to sex acts en­gaged in by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa vic­tims shel­ter­ing in some schools.

In a state­ment, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it has not been of­fi­cial­ly no­ti­fied of any case of in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour by shel­terees, es­pe­cial­ly in cir­cum­stances in­volv­ing chil­dren, at any school be­ing used as a shel­ter.

It said checks have been con­duct­ed with the re­gion­al of­fice that has di­rect over­sight for the schools in ques­tion, and not­ed that the re­gion­al di­rec­tor, Dr Michelle Pin­nock, has in­di­cat­ed that no such re­port was made to the re­gion.

“The prin­ci­pals of schools cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing as shel­ters were con­tact­ed, and none have con­firmed that any such in­ci­dent oc­curred on their com­pound. Nev­er­the­less, the prin­ci­pals have re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al time to un­der­take ad­di­tion­al ex­tra­or­di­nary due dili­gence, giv­en the se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions of the al­le­ga­tion. At present, there are 81 per­sons be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed across eight shel­ter sites,” the min­istry said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­istry said rou­tine shel­ter vis­its con­duct­ed by the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer and the shel­ter man­agers have not yield­ed ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate these al­le­ga­tions.

“The min­istry meets with the JTA on a month­ly ba­sis, and these spe­cif­ic al­le­ga­tions were nev­er raised in those meet­ings. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Min­istry was not made aware of the se­ri­ous con­tent of the pub­lic ut­ter­ances of Pres­i­dent Mal­ab­ver be­fore the state­ment was made yes­ter­day, April 7, 2026,” it added.

The min­istry said it takes all al­le­ga­tions af­fect­ing the safe­ty and well-be­ing of chil­dren se­ri­ous­ly and will con­tin­ue to treat this mat­ter with ur­gency and care. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)