MANY OF THE region’s children are engaging in sexual intercourse from as early as ten years old and, in half of the cases, it is forced upon them.
And, said the author of a report on A Legal Gap Analysis Of Adolescent Sexual And Reproduction Health And Rights In The OECS, unless the laws across the region are changed, then that vulnerable group will remain at risk.
Law lecturer at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies and deputy dean of post graduate research, Westmin James, was speaking to the SATURDAY SUN after making a presentation to staff of the Ministry of International Business at Baobab Towers yesterday.
“The Caribbean has, after Sub-Saharan Africa, the earliest ages of initiation into sexual intercourse and, of those statistics in relation to early childhood sexual intercourse, half of it is forced initiation,” James said, referring to his report which revealed that over 60 per cent of respondents to a survey reported that their age of sexual initiation was 12 years or under,” he said.
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