A HELLHOLE is how child advocate Shelly Ross has described the Government Industrial School (GIS), Barbados’ lone reform institution for young offenders.
For the past few months, Ross said, she had been carrying out an investigation into the girls’ section of the school at Barrow’s, St Lucy, and she concluded that very little reform was taking place.
“GIS is a hellhole,” she said. “I have interviewed several young girls recently who went there and who have left without one certificate after spending three to four years there. They have nothing to show and some of them are worse than when they went in.”
Ross said the school had no remedial programmes. In addition, she said one of the things she had discovered was that the majority of girls were displaying behavioural problems linked to sexual abuse. (MB)
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