The director of the Child Protection Agency on Tuesday said publicly that Guyana is failing its children, citing systemic delays and bottlenecks in the investigation of child sexual abuse cases that have left victims and families waiting for charges, hearings, and outcomes that often never arrive. Kaieteur News reported the statement on May 12 as part of broader reporting on the country’s child-protection apparatus, including the disclosure that more than 1,200 rape cases have been reported in Guyana since 2021.
The director’s framing is consequential because it is institutional self-criticism, not opposition rhetoric. The CPA sits within the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security, and its director publicly acknowledging the delays moves the conversation past whether the bottlenecks exist and into what is being done to clear them. The cases stack up at multiple stages — initial police investigation, forensic medical examination, prosecutorial review, court scheduling, and trial — and each stage has been flagged in prior reporting as understaffed and under-resourced relative to caseload.
For diaspora families watching family members back home, the figure of 1,200 reported cases since 2021 is the visible part of a system most observers concede is significantly under-reporting. Civil society organisations and pediatric specialists have for years argued that mandatory reporting, prosecutorial timelines, and judicial capacity all need legislative reinforcement. The CPA director’s public acknowledgement now puts public pressure on a ministry that until this point has largely declined to engage the criticism directly.
Source: Kaieteur News, May 12, 2026.