Editor's note, and we ask you to read it before anything else: Vandana Mohit is not accused of any crime, and nothing in this article alleges that she committed one, knew of one, or covered one up. No person has been charged in this matter. The allegations described below come from a father speaking in a circulating video and have not been independently verified. What this article addresses is a narrower and entirely legitimate question: a serious allegation has been made about a constituency office, and the public has heard nothing from the Member of Parliament.
A father in central Trinidad says his son, now 15, was sexually abused by a relative for three years. He says the boy disclosed it on 28 May. He says his wife filed a police report that same day and was handed a receipt. He says a medical examination was done and the child was interviewed by officers over several days. And he says that, more than a month later, not a single representative of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service has returned to the family.
We reported his account in full here: "Why can't this child get justice?" — A father's public plea over a stalled abuse report.
One line in that video is the reason this second article exists. Asked why nothing has happened, the father does not blame incompetence. He blames a location.
This took place in our government office. In the office of our government member, our MP. Just because it took place at that location, nothing has been done.
The father, in the video
What the Video Says, and What It Does Not
We have to be precise here, because precision is the only thing that protects a story like this from being dismissed. The father does not name a Member of Parliament in the video. He does not name a constituency, and he does not name an office.He says "our MP." Everything beyond that is inference, and we will label it as such.
What can be said is this. The family describes filing their report at a police station in the Cunupia area of central Trinidad. Cunupia falls within the Chaguanas district. The sitting Member of Parliament for Chaguanas East is Vandana Mohit, and she has held that seat across the three-year period in which the abuse is alleged to have occurred. That is why her name is the one circulating, and that is why it is her office that the public is asking about.
Geography and a date range are not proof. They are a reason to ask a question. So we are asking it, publicly and plainly, and we would ask it of any Member of Parliament of any party in the same position: is this your office, and if it is, what have you done about it?
The Silence Is the Story
Here is what should have happened the moment a video began circulating in which a father alleges that a child was abused inside a constituency office. The Member of Parliament should have issued a statement within twenty-four hours. Not a denial, not an admission, simply the minimum a citizen is entitled to: I am aware. Here are the facts as I know them. Here is what I have done.
That statement has not come. And a public official's silence, unlike a private citizen's, is itself a public act. A constituency office is not private property. It is a facility funded by the public, staffed on the public's account, and opened for constituents to walk into with their problems, often bringing their children with them. When an allegation touches that space, the person who holds the seat owes the public an answer. That obligation does not depend on whether the allegation turns out to be true.
A constituency office is not private property. It is public space, publicly funded, that citizens are invited to walk into with their children. An allegation about that space demands an answer.
Trinidad and Tobago Revolutionary Socialist Party
This Is Not the First Time She Has Been Asked to Explain
There is a reason the public does not simply assume this silence is an oversight. In October 2023, this same Member of Parliament was at the centre of another national controversy, and the country watched how she answered it.
The allegations then concerned a reloadable prepaid Mastercard programme, said to carry a limit of thirty thousand dollars a day, issued through the former Ministry of the People to more than two thousand three hundred beneficiaries. Those were allegations, contested at the time, and we make no claim here about whether they were ever substantiated. What is not in dispute is how she responded. Her answer, printed on a front page, was five words: "I know nothing of what you speak."
We raise this for one reason only, and it is not to relitigate a card scheme. It is because a newspaper wrote the headline "Questions for MP to answer" about this politician three years ago, and today a father is standing in front of a camera asking her a far graver question, and the country is once again waiting. A denial of knowledge is a response. It is not accountability. And a public official who reaches for I know nothing when the subject is money invites a harder look when the subject is a child.
The Questions She Has Not Answered
Note what these questions are not. None of them ask her to confess to anything. None of them presume guilt. Each of them can be answered honestly in a single sentence, and the refusal to answer any of them is a choice.
What Must Happen Now
1. She must speak, publicly and on the record. Confirm or deny that the office in the allegation is hers. If it is not, say so and the matter is closed as far as she is concerned. If it is, tell the public what she knew and when.
2. Any employee named in the complaint must be removed from that office immediately, pending the investigation. We choose those words deliberately. No one has been charged, and summary punishment before a finding is not justice, it is the same contempt for due process we condemn when the state uses it. But child safety does not wait on a verdict. A person under active investigation for the sexual abuse of a child has no business occupying a public office that constituents and their children walk into. Suspension is not a punishment. It is a precaution, and it protects the accused as much as the public.
3. The TTPS must explain the stall. A report was filed on 28 May. A receipt was issued. The Child Protection Unit was promised within the week. The public is entitled to know what happened to that file, and if the answer is that the location of the alleged offence slowed it down, that is a scandal of its own and a far larger one.
4. If she has already acted, she should say so. It is entirely possible that this MP referred the matter, suspended someone, and cooperated fully with the police weeks ago, and simply has not said it out loud. That would be to her credit. Nobody can give her that credit while she says nothing.
Why We Are Not Going Further Than This
There is a version of this article that is far more satisfying to write and far more damaging to publish, and other outlets are already writing it. It declares the Member of Parliament a protector of a predator, convicts an unnamed man of a crime he has not been charged with, and treats a single unverified video as a proven fact.
We will not do it, and not out of deference to any politician. We will not do it because it would hurt the child. The moment this becomes a partisan lynching, the story stops being about a 15-year-old boy whose report went nowhere and becomes about a politician being smeared. Every official involved gets to retreat behind the unfairness of it. The file stays exactly where it is. We have watched that happen in this country more times than we can count.
The strongest thing we can do for that boy is refuse to give anyone an excuse to look away. So the demand is narrow, it is documented, and it is impossible to dismiss: answer the four questions, remove anyone under investigation from that office, and tell the public what happened to a police report filed on 28 May.
A child disclosed abuse. A report was filed the same day. Two months on, a family says it has heard nothing, and the elected representative whose office is named in the allegation has said nothing either. Silence is not an answer. It never was.
If You or a Child Needs Help in Trinidad and Tobago
- Police emergency: 999 or 555
- Children's Authority of Trinidad and Tobago: 996 or 800-2014
- ChildLine (support for children): 131 or 800-4321
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This article reports allegations made in a publicly circulated video and raises questions of public accountability. It does not assert that those allegations are true, and it makes no allegation of criminal conduct against Vandana Mohit or against any named person. If Ms Mohit, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, or any other party wishes to respond, this publication will carry their response in full and without edit.