The Tribune

By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS 

Tribune Staff Reporter 

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

SOCIAL Services Minister Myles Laroda said he couldn’t confirm a claim in the United States’ latest human rights reports on The Bahamas that some Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex children were remanded to juvenile correctional facilities after being deemed ‘uncontrollable’ based on their sexual orientation, gender identity.

He also said he could not confirm details of a diversity programme said to have been introduced by his ministry.

“If you are suggesting that parents are sending their kids to these correctional facilities because they identify us LGBTQ+, I cannot speak to that,” he said. “What I can speak to is that children under the care of The Bahamas government are not subjected to any form of discrimination.” 

LGBTQI+ advocate Alexus D’Marco told The Tribune that the Ministry of Social Services has introduced a diversity programme that prevents children who identify as LGBTQI+ from being sent to juvenile detention centres because of their sexuality.

She said between 2015 and 2020, there were high reports of such youth being placed in juvenile correctional facilities.

Mr Laroda, however, could not confirm nor deny that his ministry has such a programme.

Berkitt Knowles, 41, told The Tribune he was held in a correctional institution because of his sexuality while growing up as a ward of the state from the age of five.

He said as a resident of a home in the 1990s, he was remanded to Simpson Penn Centre for Boys and confined to a cell for three months.

He said he was abused because “they thought maybe it was something wrong with me”.

Mr Lardoa said yesterday: “I do not have any information to support that assertion. 

“To suggest that there are no conflicts at these institutions will be foolhardy. I am sure if you put young men or young women, different personalities, from different backgrounds together, there would be conflicts, but to suggest that the institutions themselves engage in these kinds of practices, I have no information to support that.”