The savage death of six-year-old Keyana Cumberbatch has moved Magistrate Lucina Cardenas-Ragoonanan to restart the Save Our Children Foundation. Former mayor of San Fernando Ian Atherly and his wife Frances, together with Cardenas-Ragoonanan, launched the foundation after the death of four-year-old Amy Emily Annamunthodo in May 2006.
Amy was raped, sodomised, beaten and suffocated to death at her home at Union Park, Marabella. Members of the foundation educated communities throughout T&T about the law relating to domestic violence, incest, sexual abuse, and the reporting of such matters to the police. In March 2012, Justice Anthony Carmona, now President of the Republic, sentenced Amy’s stepfather Marlon King to death by hanging. Yesterday, an impassioned Cardenas-Ragoonanan spoke out:
“Today, we don’t even have the legislation properly proclaimed and enforced,” she said. “This is absolute madness. Our country is looking like some backwater place, where people’s rights are not looked after, where children are dying. We have the authority, we have the power, we have the legislation, we have the ability and we have the tools; but we are not doing anything about it.”
Atherly said he and his wife have been talking with Cardenas-Ragoonanan to restart the foundation “because something has to be done to stop the loss of innocent lives. Children are being abused, some by their biological fathers, some by stepfathers. We have to protect our children.”