The Tribune

AFTER conducting a recent fact-finding mission at the Willamae Pratt Centre, FNM Deputy leader Loretta Butler-Turner said she has been advised that there has been an increase in attempted suicides at the facility.

Calling on the government to increase its attention on this and the Simpson Penn facility, Mrs Butler-Turner said the government needs to turn its attention from constantly criticising her and place their focus on improving the conditions at both centres.

“There is no surveillance at both centres. While I was at the boys centres a representative from the Royal Bahamas Police Force Technology Department came to look at surveillance, so I know they were scrambling to say that things were in place. It was very clear to me that they had done a lot to make it seem as if things were clean. The grass had been freshly mowed. So they were trying to get things cleaned up – that is my impression,” she said.

However, for the substantive matters, relative to the treatment of staff, Mrs Butler-Turner said the staff are completely demoralized.

“When we visited yesterday all the things they said they were addressing have not been addressed. All of the senior and junior girls are under the supervision of one person.

“The staff is always on their best, and they don’t allow you to interact with them. They always send their senior staff so you don’t have a chance to interact with them, but there has been, from the information I have gathered, an attrition. The majority of the individuals who work there are from the work programme. I think they need to employ more staff members because it would be very difficult to monitor that number of children with such a small number of staff,” she said.

At present, 17 supervisors are employed at the Willamae Pratt Centre for Girls. However, of those 17 only four are on permanent staff, the others are referred to as “programme workers” and get no permanent staff benefits. Some of these programme workers have been on staff for about 14 to 15 years.

The Tribune understands that although the centre is understaffed, no matter what the programme workers do they cannot get permanent staff status. If for sickness or any other reason they are not back before the seventh day of their absence they are taken off the payroll until they return to work and they often complain that they are poorly paid with long hours, no benefits, and have to work in high risk areas.

A source close to the matter said, “The area in which we work is a very hostile environment – they are unruly girls. Some of these girls are hardened criminals.”

If they were older, The Tribune was told, they would qualify for prison. “Some of them are more serious criminals than those in prison. We are terribly understaffed – sometimes there are only two staff working with 20 girls.”

While corporal punishment has been removed, there are no real consequences for their actions and so some of these girls take it “overboard.”

They are punished by “lock down”, which only means that while the others are outside they are in their rooms.

Staff are not allowed to report these girls to the police. Recently - it was a Sunday – a 14-year-old girl threw a tantrum, The Tribune was told. “She started to fight two of the staff. One of the staff was out for a week. The same girl later injured two other staff. She stabbed one of them five times with a pen and bruised the arm of the second one.

“While the injured staff member was in the Supervisor’s office seeking medical attention from her, the Supervisor walked past her office to the area where the girl was giving trouble. Cleaned the girl up and sent her to hospital to get a tetanus shot, claiming that one of the staff had bitten her.”

Reportedly, one staff member asked the supervisor for an industrial form. “For what?” barked the supervisor. “They just have no regard for you or your safety,” said the staff member. “It’s low pay, high risk and 24 hours a day. We always have to be on high alert.”