If the mother who executed vigilante justice on the PH taxi driver who had made advances on her 11- year-old daughter had depended on the police to take action, she would still be waiting, says social activist Diana Mahabir-Wyatt who yesterday hailed the woman as a hero.
“I am not quite sure who in Trinidad—certainly not any parent—would have criticised her for what she did. In a case like that, what is a mother supposed to do to protect her daughter and other children?” Mahabir-Wyatt asked.
The woman, whose identity is being withheld by this newspaper, said she did not intend to take part in vigilante justice to capture the man but his quick actions last Thursday night left her with no choice.
Last Thursday, her daughter got into the man’s taxi after school. When the vehicle’s other passengers dropped off, the man asked the child for her phone number. She became frightened as she was with him alone in the car and gave the number to him, but reported the incident to her mother as soon as she got home.
The man sent WhatsApp messages to the child’s phone. The mother responded, pretending to be the child. When he visited their home, he was captured and beaten by the woman and her relatives, then handed over to police.
Mahabir-Wyatt said over the years there have been cases of young girls going with taxi drivers, “I myself have looked after two 14-year-olds who ended up pregnant and got no help at all from the fathers who just went on to do it to several other people,” she said. “In a practical sense, I really do not understand anyone who is a mother objecting to what the woman did. I think she is a hero.”
Mahabir-Wyatt said the problem exists not just locally, but internationally, of children being lured away by perpetrators via social media.
“In other countries they get arrested. Here we know the police are understaffed and overburdened and they never have vehicles when you need them,” she said. The mother said while she did not regret capturing the man, she would have preferred if the police were there before he arrived.
Mahabir-Wyatt said it was dangerous for the mother to assume the place of the child by sending text messages to the man as this could result in further harm.
“Very often the people who do this kind of thing intend to commit a crime against a child. If they find a mother present instead of the child there is nothing to stop them from becoming violent with the mother. In our society, that kind of violence is not very often punished,” she said.
On whether a child sex offenders registry ought to be made public, Mahabir-Wyatt said that was not as easy as it seemed.
“Where are you going to post this? In the community centre? Not all that many people go to a community centre, even if there is one. The next problem is the abuser and 99.9 per cent of the time it’s a man and he can move somewhere else. The police do not have enough staff to keep following up these people to find out where they actually are,” she said.
Child rights activist Verna St Rose Greaves, when contacted yesterday, said she had no comment on the matter.