Marshall-Harris slams collapse of 13-year civil lawsuit

Child rights advocate and United Nations expert Faith Marshall-Harris has condemned the collapse of a 13-year-old civil lawsuit over the bullying of a nine-year-old girl, a case that began when the child was in primary school and ended two weeks ago with the complainant, now 25, being told the matter may never be heard at all.

For Marshall-Harris, who chairs the National Committee On The Rights Of The Child, this was not an isolated failure but a recurring pattern playing out across Barbados.

Cases involving bullied and abused children, she said, were routinely “ignored and then eventually dismissed . . . almost as if when it happens to a child, it is no big thing and of no lasting importance”.