Human Service Official Describes Efforts To Improve Sex Abuse Reporting in Public Schools

Carla Benjamin, the government official responsible for protecting V.I. children from abuse and neglect, recently discussed steps underway to address problems in the public school system, highlighted in the 2023 report “A Systems Approach to Understanding Child Abuse Reporting within the Virgin Islands Public School System,” produced by the John Praed Foundation.

Commissioned by the Departments of Education and Human Services, the study sought to find out why sex abuse occurring on school campuses went largely unreported. Report author Michael Cull said the pattern became apparent after “an allegation of chronic and largely unreported sexual abuse of students by a school official.”

In an interview given to the Source on Thursday, Benjamin, the assistant Human Services Commissioner, said the study did not seek “to reinvestigate what happened but to look at what the root cause was of the apparent failure in this situation to recognize that something was wrong — earlier.”

As the head of Child Protective Services, Benjamin says she works with a coalition of public and private-sector agencies, including police, health workers, social workers, and nonprofit advocates, to identify abuse and address it. In an interview with the V.I. Source, she denied that the Praed report dealt with any specific incident.