‘Imagine if you were a teenage girl, neurologically your brain is still underdeveloped when it comes to risk assessment, you are pushing limits and discovering yourself’
I’VE been severely nauseous this past week. That kind of deep, organ twisting, cold sweating, skin crawling type of nausea.
Where did this feeling of intense sickness come from? Well not from my very empty uterus if you’re wondering, and not from my unexplainable courage to try sketchy street food.
This stomach upset came from an article published by the Sunday Express newspaper titled Child Predators.
For those who spared themselves, the brave warriors at the Sunday Express created an AI generated Facebook page of a 15-year-old girl named Selina, launched the page, and watched the sickos roll in.
During the short period of time that Selina’s page was active, she received hundreds of messages from thirsty, nasty, old men. And when I say nasty, I mean nasty. A plumber from Arima, knowing this was a CHILD he was talking to, sent her a video of himself beating his meat with hopes she would send him some explicit content of herself… again a 15-year-old.
Another stink man, aged 36, declared to her that if she wasn’t so young he would have asked her to come live with him, cook food and make money. Again, fully aware this is a child, he proceeded to offer to buy her a phone card so she could speak to him while she’s at school.
The grampa of the bunch, a 54-year-old sent, “Sweetness love your sweet lips sexy” … gags… and after Selina tells him she is 15, homie didn’t business and asked her for a sexy pic and a date.
None of them could turn around and say they didn’t know her age, because Sunday Express has the chats and Selina told them her age at the start.
God bless Khamarie Rodriguez and her team, because frankly I don’t know if I could have handled it.
After the third message I would have lost the plot, told these men let’s meet up, and ride with a pack of angry adults armed with 2x4s and cricket bats. Extrajudicial beatings served up… especially for you Mr Beat Yuh Meat from Arima.
But seriously I don’t know what we expected coming from a society where “after 12 is lunch” … oh vomit.
We, as a society, have failed to respect the boundaries of age and consent. Somewhere along the line, the younger the better became a sexual victory and my question is at what cost?
Every year we see dozens of girls running away from home and later found by some mystery male only for the ever so righteous to scream “these girls too fresh up!” No Betty, they aren’t fresh up, they have been groomed.
Imagine if you were a teenage girl, neurologically your brain is still underdeveloped when it comes to risk assessment, you are pushing limits and discovering yourself.
Imagine if you were from an unstable or unloving home. And along comes a man who shows you affection, makes you feel important, wanted, desired. Chances are you would jump ship, straight into his creepy old arms. Children cannot see the manipulation; they mistake it for attention and care.
Girls are not the only ones who being targeted. Our boys are in danger too. If you don’t feel there aren’t a bunch of stink hags all up in a 15-year-old boys DMs calling him “baby” and promising him to show him how a real woman can please a man, you are in La La land.
The unfortunate problem is the grooming of our boys is often unseen and unreported. Society has this idea that adolescent boys are sexual creatures, who are always up for a good time. We often forget they have things called emotions. Sexual advances and unwanted attention can also be confusing and dangerous for them. Our boys have boundaries too.
We also need to look at the economic factors that contribute to this problem. There are families out there who will encourage these types of relationships, especially in situations of financial hardship. If an older man, who appears to have money and stability, is willing to take their underage daughter and give her what they may see as a better life, many families will okay the union.
Unfortunately as we have seen time and time again these situations often lead to domestic abuse and other issues. How do we address this problem? Education. We need a proper sexual and psychological element added to our school’s curriculum.
We need to educate our teenagers on consent, on grooming, on sex, on birth control, on their right to say no. They need to be emotionally supported and empowered. With this in place we can ensure they are not easily manipulated and do not become predators themselves.
Additionally, as parents, we need to speak to our children. It’s not always easy, I don’t have teenagers yet, but I was one, and a difficult one at that, so I know this is easier said than done, especially if a parent has their own issues to deal with. But efforts need to be made at home to know what’s happening in our children’s lives and to let them know what is and isn’t okay when it comes to sex.
I don’t know how to help the current groomers, Grandpa Sexy Lips and Mr Beat Yuh Meat are lost causes at this point. My only hope is that they read the Sunday Express and understood how terrible their behaviour was and make some serious life changes.
That, or we can hope they eventually run into a parent who is having none of it and find themselves in jail, where they will hopefully be groomed into someone’s jail wife.
We teach Health and Family Life education (life skills) but we are still naive enough to think we can skip the piece on sexuality. Some even say that what children need is morals education. No! They say, let’s send them out into the world blindly! Well, this article proves that that is not enough. We really need to update HFLE to Social and emotional learning, get serious on law enforcement when big dirty men and women abuse, harass or violate children and adolescents and we need to stop being two faced. We pretend that children wake up one day and adopt behaviour that attracts these filthy creatures. Not at all. What actually happens is that positive parenting is lacking, the society that influences their behaviour is itself sick and there is no protection online or offline from predators. Trinidad and Tobago has a lot to do to create the conditions for child safety and well-being. Don’t blame children.