As Trinidad and To­ba­go ob­serves Sex­u­al Abuse Aware­ness Month and Child Abuse Aware­ness Month, a trou­bling re­port has re­vealed that more than 11,000 chil­dren have ac­cessed helpline ser­vices over the past five years—high­light­ing what ad­vo­cates say is an ur­gent need to break the taboo sur­round­ing sex and sex­u­al­i­ty and to ex­pand sup­port sys­tems for both vic­tims and abusers.

The fig­ure comes from a tech­ni­cal re­port pub­lished last week by Child­line, which ex­plored the emo­tion­al, so­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal chal­lenges fac­ing the na­tion’s chil­dren.

The find­ings, com­piled be­tween 2020 and 2025 by Child­line’s Pro­gramme Co­or­di­na­tor Lee­vun Solomon, show a trou­bling rise in cas­es linked to sex­u­al abuse, self-harm and men­tal health strug­gles. De­scrib­ing the find­ings as “deeply un­set­tling,” Solomon, in an in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian, said the da­ta clear­ly shows that many chil­dren feel emo­tion­al­ly dis­con­nect­ed from their par­ents and care­givers.