WHEN KIDS GET CAUGHT

A 62-year-old grandmother is wishing for a better 2026, and hopefully an end to the troubles she has been enduring since her 16-year-old grandson, an honour roll student and prefect at a St Andrew-located high school, was charged with sexually assaulting his teenage “girlfriend”.

The incident happened earlier this year when the teenagers - the girl, a student of a prominent all-girls high school, also in St Andrew – were both 15 years old and were reportedly involved in a “boyfriend and girlfriend” relationship for three years.

The grandmother, whose name The Gleaner has chosen not to share to protect her grandson’s identity, broke down in tears on the weekend as she recalled how the teenager, “a soft-spoken, well-behaved” child, has been dragged through the courts on charges she fears will smear his police record forever.

While displaying several badges and certificates chronicling his scholastic achievements, she noted that he has lost days at school but, with strong encouragement, has not slipped back academically. The ordeal, however, has taken a mental toll on him.

The two students were found by security guards inside a bathroom at the girl’s high school last April. She said her grandson was reportedly invited to the school by the girl at an after-school function. Both reportedly met up in the bathroom and, as they admitted, were sexually touching each other. That’s when a female security officer turned up. The guard tried to detain the boy, the grandmother said, but he managed to free himself and make his way home. The female student, however, was reprimanded and reported to her school’s authorities.

Days later, the grandmother said she received a call from the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) instructing her to turn over her grandson to be charged for grievous sexual assault and indecent assault. Her world shook before her, she said, adding that, since then, she has accompanied her grandson to court hearings, all of which have taken a toll on her and the boy. His mother, her daughter, is far less able to mentally deal with the ordeal, she said.

EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE

“Why is it that, if two children of the same age get caught, you are only charging one, the boy? I think the girl should have been charged as well. Because it is not like he rudely did what he did. She was his girlfriend, she invited him there, and they were doing their thing together,” charged the grandmother, noting that the children’s relationship was known to both sets of parents or guardians, including the girl’s grandfather, who she said transported them to and from movie outings.

“If you do something, the two of you are wrong. I don’t think you can just say, ‘Is he doing it’ and everything empty down on him,” she continued.

“And, even if you don’t charge them, call me in with my own, and the mother with her own, and warn them that what they are doing is wrong. They need to know that education comes first, and that they will have enough time to do all of those things. Counsel them, ‘cause they are on social media seeing the things.”

Sexual offences, particularly ‘consensual’ sexual intercourse with a person under 16 years old, make up the bulk of cases that have been referred to Jamaica’s Child Diversion Programme, an initiative launched in 2020 to steer children in conflict with the law away from the formal judicial process and towards rehabilitative interventions.

It accounts for 62 per cent of the 1,517 cases referred between March 2020 and June 2024, ahead of assault-related offences (15%), property crimes such as larceny (7%), disorderly conduct and indecent language (2%), and drug-related offences at less than one per cent.

For that reason, human rights group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), following its ‘Civil Society Review of the diversion of alternative measures for children in conflict with the law’, recommended that consensual sexual intercourse between persons under 16 years old be decriminalised. This position has received pushback from members of the public.

Perfect example

This case perfectly exemplifies the reasons for many of the study’s recommendations, argued Jade Williams, lead attorney and policy researcher at the human rights body. It also shines a light on life-changing nuances within the country’s laws and court system.

So far, the boy has been ordered to undergo the diversion programme, while rehabilitation efforts for the girl are still pending, she said, adding that details of the programme, which may include counselling and community service, will be made known in January.

“The court can only order the accused person to go through the process. So it would be him alone, and then, on the side of the ‘victim’, that person would normally be recommended to go to the Victims’ Support Unit. But I did not hear that recommendation in court, I guess, since the court would have become aware that there was no force,” said Williams.

“We have to look at how the first schedule of the Child Diversion Act is set up, in that it would not allow for this particular case to be diverted at the police stations because of the specific offence, which is grievous sexual assault. If it were that they had actually had sexual intercourse, he could have been diverted from the police stage,” Williams argued.

“So, I think this is a gap that we may not have considered when we created the schedule. Another issue is that we still have a slow parish court process, and that means numerous dates, victims not being there when they are supposed to, and so on. This means that my client, a minor, would have to miss school to come to court. He would also be on bail, which has special conditions such as curfews that affect even how he could be transported to school,” she said.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com