Sexual Crimes in the Bahamas

by Craig Butler

It has been reported that police are investigating a relationship between a female teacher and a 12th grade male student.

As I thought about this I was truly upset, but then I was instantly taken back to my school days and a different perspective overcame me. Honestly at that time this was every schoolboy's dream, especially those whose thoughts were influenced by movies such as the Summer of '42 or the Graduate.

During my days in school there were particular teachers who the boys would openly discuss. At that time we were walking vessels of testosterone, and sex overwhelmed our every thought.

This made me think - and then it hit me like a Mack truck. When I was in school there had been persistent rumours of various inappropriate relationships as between faculty and students. In fact, I can recall a teacher that left mid-year under mysterious circumstances.

Truth be told, there was no mystery as we all knew that he was sleeping with a student. In retrospect there should have been a prosecution, but I went to the elite private school and the matter was dealt with otherwise.

Fantasies aside, this type of behaviour is to be abhorred. But why would it take this investigation to make our skins crawl? Look at what occurs here on a daily basis. Grown men pull up to the schools and collect young girls - often for immoral purposes. Yet we all turn a blind eye, which begs the question that since most of this involves the public schools are those students less important or deserving of our protection?

I say that because many of the teachers know what is taking place as they hear the girls talking, they see them with money or the other trinkets that have been used to lure these young impressionable creatures into lurid affairs. Yet they fail to report it or do anything.

And of course all you have to do is listen to the girls themselves as they tell their tales. Some of what escapes from their mouths would make a grown woman blush. If you think that it’s just the girls, though, you would be greatly mistaken. The predators out there have sunk their fangs into the boys as well, most of the time in homosexual dalliances.

The stories of the jitney drivers who prey on our youth are legendary. I can remember a public service announcement that used to appear on ZNS TV highlighting the dangers of riding the bus. Yet despite all this, it is only now that we are becoming distressed. Where have we been for the past 20 years?

Sex is prevalent among our youth and the instances of adults having sex with minors is more frequent than we would care to acknowledge. What about the prostitution rings that are being run out of the schools - not by the teachers, but by the students. Remember the young girls who were commonly referred to as the ‘peanut butter crew’ as they used to attend to a particular fetish of a now deceased drug dealer. These events are not a recent creation but are of vintage stock.

Is our moral fibre so eroded that we don’t care, or has it yet to hit home. I ask myself what can make a grown man look at a young girl or boy and say ‘I’ve got to have me some of that.’ It may sound comical but it’s not meant to be.

Mind you if you look at some of these children, and let's not forget that is what they are, they are just as developed as the adults. The clothes they wear leave nothing to the imagination and they take your breath away by their boldness, as in many instances they will proposition you if you drive a fancy car or appear as though you can give them money.

No, what has taken place does not surprise me and neither should it surprise you. It should make you want a solution to this dilemma before we lose this generation entirely. The church or the government can’t bury their heads in the sand as if this is not a problem.

And please, let's have no more of those lame solutions calling for our youth to abstain from sex because it’s against God’s will. That message clearly does not resonate. And how can we say such a thing when in fact it is us, the adults, who are the purveyors of this illicit activity? And lest we forget there are many members of the clergy who have had their names associated with sex with both minor girls and boys.