Children’s Authority takes charge of 13-year-old girl who was reported missing

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­firmed that the 13-year-old girl who was re­cent­ly re­cov­ered af­ter be­ing re­port­ed miss­ing for 26 days is in its care.

In a me­dia re­lease, the Au­thor­i­ty said it would en­sure the child re­ceives the nec­es­sary psy­choso­cial in­ter­ven­tions and sup­port, guid­ed by es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures and the best in­ter­ests of the child.

The con­fir­ma­tion comes amid pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the girl’s dis­ap­pear­ance and the pub­li­ca­tion of a video iden­ti­fy­ing her af­ter she was found by the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team, led by Sham­sudeen Ayube.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed the team’s in­volve­ment in find­ing the girl while ac­knowl­edg­ing that lessons must be learnt fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and mem­bers of the pub­lic about the pub­li­ca­tion of the video.

The TTPS had called for the video to be tak­en down, warn­ing that iden­ti­fy­ing the child could ex­pose her to stig­ma, trau­ma and fur­ther harm. The po­lice ser­vice al­so said the pub­li­ca­tion was a crim­i­nal of­fence.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions in lo­cat­ing miss­ing per­sons, the TTPS stressed that im­ages of miss­ing chil­dren are cir­cu­lat­ed for the sole pur­pose of find­ing them and that their iden­ti­ties must be pro­tect­ed when they are the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.