Two-hundred and twenty reports of cases of child abuse; that's how many cases Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna says are reported each week in Jamaica. I can bet that a great number of them are cases of sexual abuse because of how we are, how we've always been, it seems.

Minister Hanna highlighted last week sometime that many young boys and girls were being sexually abused by both men and women. When those revelations were made except for a few comments from the relevant agencies and individuals, there was a deafening silence from the wider community.

What I want to know is why?

I remember a couple years ago, a man killed an 18-year-old girl in St Elizabeth. He had been having a relationship with her years, maybe from as early as when she was 15 years old. People in the community knew of this relationship with a girl under the age of consent and yet they said and did nothing. They certainly did not report it to the police, who would have then been legally bound to arrest him. However, nothing happened until he allegedly killed her, and only then did they seek to take action.

Similar scenarios are being played out across this country every day, in every community, across every socio-economic background, and we all know it. For many of us, it is easier to blame the girls. We say they are loose, yet hardly any blame is placed in the men who prey on them. I can't remember the last time I heard of some 'gray-back' man being prosecuted for sleeping with an underage girl. This is why the age of consent thing for me is a waste of time, because if you raise it to 21, nobody seems to care and the authorities seem reluctant to enforce the law.

So, we end up with more than 200 reported cases of child abuse many of which are of a sexual nature.

This is something that unfortunately seems to be ingrained within our culture. It's in our DNA, and that is why we are afraid to call it what it truly is - paedophilia. We do not have it in law and we don't do it in general conversation, because to do so, it would put the blame where it truly belongs, the perpetrators and the society that allows it to happen.

Taking responsibility is not something we do very well in Jamaica. We don't do it, our politicians certainly don't, and the people in law enforcement barely take the time to track down these cases, primarily because the numbers are so overwhelming and the relevant agencies are undermanned and under-resourced. It makes you wonder though, if this is not all deliberate.

With adequate resources the police could investigate and jail a lot more paedophiles - male and female - and make this country safer for our kids and the vulnerable among us. And that's the last we want to do, because then, we would have to face the reality of how ugly we truly are. I know this, and so do you. So, what are we going to do about it.

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