Holy Name launches probe into allegations against principal

AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­[email protected]

Holy Name Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, is break­ing its si­lence about the al­le­ga­tions against its prin­ci­pal Sis­ter Re­nee Hall, an­nounc­ing a full, in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

What orig­i­nal­ly start­ed as an in­spi­ra­tional Moth­er’s Day pro­file by Guardian Me­dia, in­tend­ed to cel­e­brate Sis­ter Re­nee’s 25-year ca­reer and her “spir­i­tu­al moth­er­hood” to­ward her stu­dents, took a turn on Sun­day night. A so­cial me­dia firestorm erupt­ed, with hun­dreds of so­cial me­dia users hav­ing neg­a­tive things to say about Sis­ter Re­nee, with some even ac­cus­ing her of trau­mat­ic abuse. Many of the posters claimed to be past and present stu­dents.

The al­le­ga­tions made, rang­ing from emo­tion­al dis­tress to sys­temic mis­treat­ment, have sparked a na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion and wider con­cern.

There’s now an on­line pe­ti­tion with over 1,000 sig­na­tures as of yes­ter­day evening, push­ing for the prin­ci­pal’s re­moval.

It was al­so on­ly then that the school’s board of man­age­ment re­leased a for­mal state­ment, break­ing its si­lence on the mat­ter, ac­knowl­edg­ing the “con­cerns, emo­tions, and ex­pe­ri­ences be­ing shared.”

“We recog­nise the deep con­nec­tion many past and present stu­dents, par­ents, staff, and alum­ni have with the school, and un­der­stand that these dis­cus­sions are deeply per­son­al for many with­in our com­mu­ni­ty,” the state­ment said.

The board said that the in­quiry would be shield­ed from in­ter­nal in­flu­ence and would be con­duct­ed in­de­pen­dent­ly of both the Board and the lead­er­ship of the Do­mini­can Sis­ters of St Cather­ine of Siena, ad­her­ing to the pro­to­cols of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

“We will seek and en­cour­age truth in all of these mat­ters, and there­fore re­quest cur­rent stu­dents to file any com­plaints through the ex­ist­ing process­es. We en­cour­age oth­ers to go through the process­es yet to be out­lined in the up­com­ing in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Now, pri­or to the re­lease, Guardian Me­dia reached out to Sis­ter Re­nee, who re­fused to com­ment on the mat­ter, along with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath, TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe and the school’s alum­ni group.

At­tempts to reach Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain Fa­ther Ja­son Gor­don were al­so fu­tile.

And as the flood of com­ments on so­cial me­dia con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Camille Quam­i­na said the pub­lic glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of an au­thor­i­ty fig­ure may have act­ed as a pro­found trig­ger for those with a dif­fer­ent lived re­al­i­ty– prompt­ing the vast amount of re­ac­tions.

“It can be very frus­trat­ing and feel very dis­em­pow­er­ing when your ex­pe­ri­ence with a per­son is one thing, but then you see that per­son be­ing glo­ri­fied, or, you know, giv­en ac­co­lades in an­oth­er set­ting,” Quam­i­na told Guardian Me­dia.