The Health Services Authority is hiring a part-time child psychologist to deal with the growing cases of child abuse being seen at the Cayman Islands Hospital, the authority’s medical director Greg Hoeksema announced Thursday.

Using a $50,000 grant given to it by Hedge Funds Care Cayman, the Hospital Services Authority has begun the process of hiring the psychologist.

The hospital currently has only one child psychologist, Antonia Hawkins, to deal with the workload, which hospital officials say has increased dramatically in the past five years.

Head of Paediatrics at the Cayman Islands Hospital, Dr. Marilyn McIntyre, said for the past few years, she has been “trying desperately to get some additional support, particularly for child abuse cases,” adding that the current workload of dealing with such cases was too much for one person.

She said the abuse of one child did not just affect that child, it affected future generations. “It is well known that abused children oftentimes go on to be abusive parents.”

She added that abused children, whether victims of sexual, physical or emotional abuse or neglect, were also more likely to be preyed upon by bullies and gangs and were more likely to become juvenile offenders.

The grant is part of $230,000 that Hedge Fund Cares Cayman has donated to six organisations in Cayman to help identify and treat children who have been sexually, physically or mentally abused.

Dr. Hoeksema said he hoped the new psychologist would be able to come on board within the next four weeks.

“We know a couple of people on the Island who we believe are interested in the position,” he said.

He said it had been “painful” for hospital staff to see that there had not been enough resources available to adequately deal with victims of sexual and emotional abuse who sought help at the hospital.

The new psychologist will help identify children who have been victims of abuse and will interview and evaluate them for the courts and the police’s Family Service Unit - a service in which there is major gaps at the moment, Dr. Hawkins said at a press conference to announce the new hire.

The prevalence of child abuse in Cayman is not known, health officials said. Dr. McIntyre said she did not have overall statistics, but that she was seeing an average of three cases a month.

She said that she did not believe child sex abuse had been a problem in Cayman for many years. “Within the past five years, it has been starting to increase. When I came here first of all, it was almost non-existent,” she said. She joined the hospital in 1978.

The abuse being seen by hospital staff is not just that carried out by an adult caregiver – a parent, relative, or guardian – but also by men who were approaching girls aged 12 and 13, for instance, outside the cinema, and by teens pressuring their peers into sexual behaviour, Dr. Hawkins said.

“Five or eight years ago, these men were targeting 15 and 16 year olds, now it’s 12 and 13 year olds. They come to the movies with their friends and are being approached by adults making sexual suggestions to them. That’s a type of sexual harassment... they find overwhelming and dramatic and they don’t know how to deal with it.”

Victims who come to the hospital, often to Accident and Emergency, are referred to police or social services by medical staff, Dr. Hoeksema said.

But getting cases to court can be difficult, especially as Cayman has no full-time forensic interviewer who can evaluate children and testify in court about what the victim is alleging. The psychologists can do this, but this is one of the areas in which the Health Services Authority admits there are gaps.

Dr. Hawkins said: “I know that there are many kids coming to me whose cases do not go to court for various reasons.”

Geoff Ruddick, co-chair of Hedge Funds Care Cayman, said his organisation would be happy to fund a forensic interviewer if a public or private entity put forward a proposal to hire one. “A forensic interviewer is something we would love to see in Cayman and would dearly love to support,” he said.