The Government Industrial School (GIS) has responded to a parent’s allegations over the treatment of her teenage daughter published in yesterday’s Weekend Nation.
Through a Barbados Government Information Service release, it described the charges in the story headlined GIS Torture Claims as inaccurate, misleading and onesided.
GIS management said it categorically rejects the claims and criticised the newspaper for failing to contact the school’s principal before publication. This was despite the article carrying a lengthy response from new chairman of the GIS, Bishop Ezra Parris, who has been in the position since April.
Verbal request
According to the institution, the parent had made a verbal request to the principal seeking her daughter’s release, citing her own health difficulties. It added she was told any release would have to go through the courts.
GIS said the resident had been receiving care through the Child Guidance Clinic prior to her admission, and that the school had maintained continuity of that treatment. The statement said the girl was referred twice to the Assessment Unit over a two-week span, once after becoming withdrawn following a conversation with her mother, and again after a disagreement with another resident left her refusing food and medication.
Both referrals, GIS said, were precautionary and in line with standard safeguarding protocol. In both instances, the resident reportedly returned to the institution and reintegrated normally with her peers, it added.
The school denied the claim that staff had contacted the parent three times to report the girl attempted or threatened selfharm. “This claim is unequivocally false,” GIS said, adding that no such communication was ever made and that the resident never expressed any intention to harm herself.
The state-run facility also addressed a series of other allegations point by point. It denied the girl had ever been placed in a cell as punishment, that staff were required to sign secrecy agreements, and called claims that a staff member was transferred over alleged abuse “unsubstantiated”.
On the possibility of the resident being sent to Dodds Prison in St Philip, the school said such a move would require criminal charges and a court appearance, calling the suggestion “misleading and speculative”. It further denied that two residents named in the article had escaped from GIS, saying both were housed at other institutions at the time.
The article had quoted chairman Parris acknowledging that a boy and a girl had absconded and remained at large, with him stressing that these incidents “do not necessarily indicate the institution is failing”.
Successes
Beyond disputing the allegations, the school used the statement to highlight what it called overlooked successes among its residents, including nine who recently passed CSEC examinations, among them a 14-year-old who obtained four subject passes.
The resident at the centre of the controversy was also cited for academic progress and personal growth during her time at the institution.
GIS pointed to existing familyengagement measures, including regular visits, phone contact, family days, the most recent held August 29, and a mentorship programme run in partnership with the University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill Campus.
The school said it did not consider itself “a perfect institution” but remained committed to resident welfare.
(BA/PR)
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