Busy Signal has been named global ambassador for Tape Deck, a new music streaming platform built around direct sales to fans and an 80/20 revenue split in the artist’s favor.[#item_full_content]
Four decades into a career that helped carry dancehall around the world, Beenie Man has released a new album, Eminence, and he is not shy about where he believes it belongs.[#item_full_content]
News Americas, NY, NY, Fri. Oct. 9, 2026: Somewhere in the Caribbean, a girl is pregnant, and the adults around her are saying that she is “having a baby.” They may call her a young mother, whisper about family shame, remove her from school, or send her to live with relatives. To be clear, this isn’t an isolation problem that occurs onlyin the Caribbean. This remains an international problem that needs broader conversations. Yet there is one question too many people avoid asking: Who had sexual contact with this child, and was she legally or developmentally capable of consenting?
When a girl is below the legal age of consent, she cannot legally consent to sexual activity. Even when she is above that threshold, force, threats, grooming, manipulation, exploitation of dependency, or abuse of authority may mean that any apparent agreement was not freely given. In either circumstance, we must stop hiding the violation behind the language of pregnancy. She did not merely “get pregnant.” She may have survived a sexual offence, and when the evidence establishes rape, we must call it rape.
Words matter. “A child is having a baby” directs attention toward the child and what her body is doing. “A child was raped” redirects attention toward the act, the offender, and the people and institutions responsible for protecting her. One description invites gossip. The other demands accountability.
UNICEF estimates that across Latin America and the Caribbean, approximately 45 million girls and women, or 18 percent, experienced rape or sexual assault before turning 18. Although comparable regional data on boys remain limited, UNICEF recognizes that boys are also affected and frequently undercounted. This is not an isolated Jamaican problem. Sexual violence against children exists in homes, schools, churches, and communities across the Caribbean.
Girls carry an additional burden because pregnancy can become visible evidence of what happened while the perpetrator remains unnamed. The girl’s stomach becomes public knowledge, but the man’s identity becomes a family secret. Society asks why she was there, accepted money, or remained silent. We should ask how old the person who impregnated her was, what power he held, who knew, whether the abuse was reported, and what protection and care the child received.
A very young girl cannot consent to sex. Her pregnancy should never be presented as evidence that she matured early. It is evidence that somebody violated a child and that the safeguarding system must respond. Adolescence requires careful but honest language. Not every pregnancy involving someone under 18 automatically proves rape under every Caribbean country’s law. Ages of consent and legal definitions differ, and some adolescents have relationships with peers close to their age. We should not erase adolescent agency or make unsupported accusations.
However, legal caution must not become cultural cowardice. Every adolescent pregnancy should prompt trained professionals to assess age differences, coercion, grooming, threats, exploitation, and abuse of authority. A girl may call an older man her “boyfriend” because grooming taught her to interpret control as affection. She may defend him because her family depends on his money. Silence is not proof that the relationship was safe.
Some mothers and grandmothers were also abused when young and survived by burying what happened. A daughter’s disclosure may reopen the violence hidden in an adult woman’s past. This does not excuse protecting an offender. It shows why families need trauma informed care, economic assistance, safe housing, and trustworthy reporting systems. A mother should never have to choose between protecting her child and feeding the household.
Protecting children is not women’s work. Men must challenge those who sexualize schoolgirls, excuse large age differences, purchase silence, and use money to access vulnerable children. A man who knows another man is abusing a child and remains silent helps the abuse continue. Communities must stop protecting reputation before children. Too often, the family name, church, school, business, or respected man is defended while the child is called fast, troublesome, or promiscuous. That is how shame is transferred from the person who caused the harm to the person who survived it.
Compassion must include privacy, safety, healthcare, counselling, and educational continuity. Naming rape does not require publicly naming the child. Accountability and confidentiality can coexist. Boys must not be erased. Boys may be told that an encounter with an older woman made them men, or that abuse by a man diminishes their masculinity. A violated boy is not lucky or weak. He is a child who deserves protection.
Changing the narrative requires action. Journalists must stop calling grooming an “affair.” Pregnancy involving a girl below the age of consent should trigger coordinated medical care, investigation, counselling, educational support, and protection. Schools must teach bodily autonomy, consent, grooming, online exploitation, and how to seek help. Governments must publish clearer data about victims, alleged offenders, case outcomes, and services. Families must also understand their duty to act. Jamaica’s Child Care and Protection Act for example requires the reporting of known or suspected child abuse, and the National Children’s Registry receives such reports. Reporting is protection, not betrayal.
Across the Caribbean, laws differ, but familiar patterns remain. Respectability outranks truth. Family loyalty shields offenders. Poverty is exploited. Girls are blamed for attracting grown men while those men escape public judgment.
We can change that culture, but first we must change what we are willing to name. The child is not the scandal. The rape is. The child is not the offender. The person who violated her is. The child should not carry the shame. We must carry the responsibility to protect her, believe her, support her, and pursue justice.
It is time for Jamaica and the wider Caribbean to stop softening the language of sexual violence. When a child has been raped, say that she was raped. Then ensure that she is not abandoned after the truth is spoken.
News Americas Now, NY, NY, Fri. Oct. 9, 2026: The U.S. State Department’s 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report has identified a troubling thread running through multiple Caribbean nations: parents, guardians, and other family members named as facilitators in Child Sex Trafficking. The finding appears independently across at least six countries in this year’s report, suggesting a regional pattern rather than isolated cases.
In Belize, the report states plainly that “family members facilitate the sex trafficking of Belizean women and girls,” describing a pattern in which older men pay families for sexual access to young relatives. “There were reports of family members facilitating the sex trafficking of Belizean women and girls, including through arrangements where a wealthy older man will offer payment or gifts to a family in exchange for sex with a young, usually female, family member,” the report stated.
In Jamaica, the report found that approximately 55 percent of identified trafficking offenders are parents, close family members, or guardians, with girls between 12 and 17 years old making up more than 80 percent of identified victims. The report also flagged a rising trend of female parents and guardians specifically acting as offenders, and noted that forced child domestic servitude remains the most prevalent form of child trafficking identified in the country.
Trafficking remains predominantly domestic, with Jamaican nationals trafficked by Jamaican perpetrators within the country, the 2026 report said. Girls aged 12 to 17 comprised more than 80 percent of identified victims, consistent with previous years. Forced child labor, including domestic servitude, is the most prevalent form of child trafficking in Jamaica. Researchers found boys reported experiencing exploitation in forced child labor outside the home and exploitation in forced criminal activity by gangs at higher rates. Girls and boys report similar rates of exploitation in domestic servitude.
Communities vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor include children and young adults from poor households; child survivors of sexual abuse; runaway children; adults engaged in commercial sex; homeless persons; youth more vulnerable to trafficking based on their sexual orientation or identity; residents of Jamaica’s poverty-stricken areas effectively controlled by criminal “dons;” migrant workers; and workers in the informal sector, particularly on family farms and in markets and shops. Young people in state care are highly vulnerable to trafficking, particularly as they age out of the welfare system. Incarcerated individuals are at heightened risk of trafficking. Individuals displaced or unemployed as a result of Hurricane Melissa have a heightened vulnerability to human trafficking.
Men remain the primary perpetrators, but women are increasingly involved in recruitment, orientation, and operational management. Approximately 55 percent of offenders are parents, close family members, or guardians, with a noted increase in cases involving female parents or guardians. Girls, sometimes coerced by family members, are subjected to sex trafficking by men who provide monetary or material payment to the girls or their families in exchange for sex acts; local observers report this form of child sex trafficking is widespread in some communities. Children from rural Jamaica, and possibly from other Caribbean countries, who are sent to live with more affluent family members or acquaintances sometimes become exploited in forced labor in private households, markets, or shops. Many children are reported missing in Jamaica; traffickers exploit some of these children through forced labor or sex trafficking.
Saint Lucia’s report similarly found that children – especially from economically disadvantaged families – are “at risk of child sex trafficking, sometimes encouraged or forced by parents and caretakers in exchange for goods or services.”
“Government officials, civil society, and educators reported Saint Lucian children, especially from economically disadvantaged families, are at risk of child sex trafficking, sometimes encouraged or forced by parents and caretakers in exchange for goods or services,” the report stated.
Suriname’s narrative states that “parents and other family members sometimes facilitate the exploitation of Surinamese children in sex trafficking,” while Saint Vincent and the Grenadines reports that “adults, including parents, may exploit children in sex trafficking to generate income.”
Haiti’s report – categorized this year as a “Special Case” due to the collapse of state authority amid gang violence – documents a related practice: the “bride-buying” of girls as young as 14, in which men pay families directly for young girls. The same report describes Haiti’s widespread restavek system, in which children are placed into domestic servitude, often within extended family or community networks, and are frequently physically abused, unpaid, and kept out of school. Observers reported 30 percent of children aged one to five years old were not registered at birth and were are particularly vulnerable to trafficking.
The report also separately flagged the Dominican Republic as a destination for child sex tourism by perpetrators from North America and Europe, and noted that traffickers there have used the dark web to sell child sexual abuse material – a related but distinct threat involving outside offenders rather than family members.
The family-facilitated pattern cuts across tier rankings. It appears in countries making real anti-trafficking progress, such as Jamaica, as well as in countries in deep institutional crisis, such as Haiti – suggesting the vulnerability is tied less to government capacity than to poverty and economic precarity within families themselves. Several of the narratives explicitly describe exploitation occurring “in exchange for goods or services,” pointing to economic hardship as a recurring driver.
Meanwhile, in Guyana, the report saidChildren face risks of exploitation in forced criminality by criminal organizations and gangs. While both sex trafficking and labor trafficking occur in remote interior mining communities, in some cases connected to organized crime networks associated with illegal mines, limited government presence in the country’s interior renders the full extent of trafficking there unknown. Chinese nationals working on Chinese state-affiliated projects through the Belt and Road Initiative as well as mining sites owned by China-based companies, face conditions indicative of forced labor.
It said traffickers exploit victims in forced labor in mining, agriculture, forestry, construction, domestic service, and in shops. Traffickers use digital platforms, including social media, messaging applications, and online job advertisements, to recruit victims, including those exploited in mines, as janitors, or as wait staff in bars or hotels.
Migrants, women, and young people from rural and minority communities, as well as children, are among the most at risk for human trafficking. Traffickers exploit women and children from Guyana and other countries in South and Central America, including Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, in sex trafficking in mining communities in the interior and urban areas of the country.
Children working in construction, farms, and mechanic shops may be vulnerable to forced labor, the report said. An increase in gang-related crime in the country, including among youth, exacerbates vulnerabilities to forced criminality. Sex trafficking, including of girls and especially of Guyanese and Jamaican women, occurs in bars, taverns, and brothels. Traffickers are increasingly exploiting emerging technologies to facilitate trafficking in persons, including the recruitment of victims.
The report said human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Aruba. Traffickers, including families and business owners, exploit foreign women in sex trafficking and foreign men and women in forced labor in the construction, domestic work, retail, and tourism industries. Officials reported instances of forced criminality, in which traffickers compel victims to commit unlawful acts, such as robberies and drug-related crimes.
Women in regulated and unregulated commercial sex – including those on adult entertainment visas, domestic workers and in-home caregivers, and employees of small retail shops are vulnerable to trafficking. Foreign workers are vulnerable to labor trafficking, especially those who overstay their visa or enter the country illegally. Caribbean and South American migrants — including those from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela — are particularly vulnerable to trafficking in Aruba. Traffickers also subject Chinese nationals to forced labor in grocery stores and Indian men to forced labor in retail and domestic service.
Traffickers use social media and messaging apps to recruit foreign victims to Aruba with false promises of legitimate work, housing, and immigration assistance and to monitor and control victims once they are in Aruba. Authorities report traffickers increasingly manipulate and control victims using sextortion, threatening to share sexual images or recordings. Bar owners often rent lodging to women on adult entertainment visas at rates disproportionate to their earnings, increasing their vulnerability to exploitation through debt bondage.
The picture is almost the same in Barbados, the report said. Human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Barbados, and traffickers exploit victims from Barbados abroad. Documented and illegal migrants are at high risk for trafficking. Individuals entering Barbados with tourist visas, including from Venezuela, Colombia, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic, to engage in commercial sex are at high risk of trafficking and some face sex trafficking indicators such as confiscation of passports. NGOs previously reported young foreign women go missing in disproportionately higher numbers and police do not investigate the disappearances as they frequently are not reported to the authorities; these situations may sometimes amount to human trafficking.
An increase in gang-related crime in the country, including among youth, exacerbates vulnerabilities to forced criminality. Authorities have previously noted an increase in the use of social media by traffickers to recruit victims. Observers reported a widespread lack of awareness among Barbadians about human trafficking and its extent in the country, with both the general public and potential victims, particularly those involved in commercial sex, often unaware of vulnerabilities.
Traffickers exploit women and girls from Curaçao, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, among other countries, in sex trafficking, the report stated. Women and girls working in Curacao’s “snack bars” are vulnerable to sex trafficking; bar owners recruit victims with offers for work as waitresses or “trago girls” and subsequently exploit them in commercial sex. Traffickers exploit migrant workers from other Caribbean countries, South America, China, and India in domestic servitude, as well as in forced labor in construction, landscaping, the maritime industry, minimarkets, retail, and restaurants. Research indicates traffickers in Curaçao exploit Curagaoan victims and male victims. Traffickers use social media and messaging apps to recruit foreign victims to Curaçao with false promises of legitimate work. Migrants in Curaçao, especially the substantial population of Venezuelan nationals, are vulnerable to both sex and labor trafficking.
Sex trafficking victims are women and girls as young as 13, primarily from Venezuela, the report said. Unaccompanied or separated Venezuelan children are at increased risk for sex trafficking. Although the island of Trinidad remains the primary hub for most sexual exploitation in Trinidad and Tobago, traffickers move some victims to the island of Tobago during the tourist season. Individuals working in domestic work, bars, nightclubs, and informal construction sectors are at risk of labor trafficking. The government previously reported an increase in male Venezuelan labor trafficking victims, but no cases were reported during the reporting period. Informal recruitment networks increasingly facilitate the exploitation of foreign victims in debt-based or other forms of coercion.
Traffickers use social media platforms to advertise fraudulent job opportunities. Traffickers utilize cryptocurrency payments to facilitate their operations and avoid traceable transactions. Traffickers often offer to either pay for or share the cost of transit with the victims, which is later included as part of debt bondage imposed upon them. Traffickers increasingly use the dark web to advertise sexual services.
Female migrants are particularly at risk in the Bahamas, the report said, with observers noting that some female foreign victims seeking employment opportunities are well-educated yet unaware of trafficking risks. Employers of migrant workers sometimes withhold workers’ passports and wages. Haitians, stateless Bahamians of Haitian descent, and displaced Bahamians, previously residing in shantytowns destroyed by the government, were at increased risk of trafficking.
Children who are homeless and Haitian children are at higher risk of being exploited in forced labor, including forced criminality. Traffickers exploit elderly individuals and persons with disabilities in forced begging. Traffickers exploit foreign trafficking victims, especially from Haiti, Colombia, China, other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America, and Asia in the Dominican Republic. Colombian women are the most predominant nationality of foreign sex trafficking victims. Traffickers recruit victims through deception linked to alleged job offers in the Dominican Republic; once in the country, traffickers retain their passports and charge them a supposed debt as a condition for the return of their documents. Migrant smugglers contribute to human trafficking by smuggling Haitian children into the Dominican Republic to board flights to a third country to reunify with their families; some children become unaccompanied in the Dominican Republic.
The Dominican Republic is a destination for perpetrators of extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation, primarily from North America and Europe. Traffickers frequently exploit teenage girls in child sex trafficking in streets, in parks, and on beaches. Traffickers use social media to recruit victims, including through fake job postings, online romantic relationships, and obtainment of personal information to extort victims. The Dominican government reported traffickers use the dark web, including chatrooms, to sell child sexual abuse material. Dominican officials and NGOs have documented cases of traffickers forcing children into domestic service, street vending, begging, agricultural work, construction, robbery gangs, and moving illicit narcotics. Traffickers also exploit people in several key sectors including coffee, sugar, construction, and services. Haitian women report that smugglers often engage in sex trafficking along the border.
The finding arrives alongside a second sobering pattern in this year’s report: several of the same countries have little to no history of securing convictions in trafficking cases of any kind. Saint Lucia has never convicted a trafficker since its counter-trafficking law took effect. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has never convicted a trafficker and has not prosecuted a single case since 2015. Haiti reported zero investigations, prosecutions, or convictions for a second consecutive year.
The State Department’s annual report ranks governments on a four-tier system based on their anti-trafficking efforts and is used as one benchmark in U.S. foreign relations decisions. This year’s findings on family-facilitated exploitation did not emerge from any new policy response in the countries named; the report describes the pattern as an ongoing, longstanding vulnerability rather than a recent development.
News Americas Now, NY, NY, Fri. Oct. 9, 2026: A federal immigration agent shot and wounded a Dominican immigrant in the Marble Hill section of New York City on Thursday afternoon, in an incident that drew immediate condemnation from Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani and has reignited scrutiny of ICE’s escalating enforcement tactics under the Trump administration.
According to The New York Times and ABC News, the shooting occurred around 4 p.m. as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents attempted to arrest Oscar Belgal, 28, while he sat in a car with his 5-year-old son in the back seat. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said a preliminary investigation found that at least one ICE agent fired seven rounds at the vehicle, striking Belgal in the neck below his left ear. The child was not physically injured and was later placed in a family member’s care.
The Department of Homeland Security said the shooting happened as agents tried to arrest an undocumented immigrant with a criminal record, but did not explain why the agent opened fire or whether he was aware a child was in the car. DHS said Belgal, who is from the Dominican Republic, has a grand larceny conviction and a pending drug case, and claimed he had previously been arrested in New York in December 2023 but released due to the city’s sanctuary policies.
Protesters gather near the scene where a man was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer during an operation in the Bronx borough of New York on October 8, 2026, according to local media and police. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images)
Mayor Mamdani, visibly angered at a news conference near the scene, called the shooting “an outrage” and said a traumatized 5-year-old was left wondering, along with “millions of our neighbors,” whether they would be safe in their own city. The mayor said he spent two hours on the phone with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin attempting to negotiate Belgal’s release from custody – without success. ICE agents ultimately placed Belgal, who was taken to a nearby hospital, into an unmarked vehicle and removed him from the scene.
Gov. Hochul said she, too, spoke directly with Trump and Mullin, telling reporters she “expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers” and urged a halt to ICE enforcement operations in the city. She has requested the release of any body-camera footage from the shooting.
The incident is part of a sharp escalation in ICE activity across New York State, where arrests climbed from 927 in May to 1,193 in June and 1,567 in July, according to federal data compiled by the Deportation Data Project. Nationally, at least two dozen people have been shot at by federal immigration agents since Trump returned to office in January 2025, with six killed, including three U.S. citizens, the Times reported.
Witnesses described chaotic scenes in the aftermath. Bystander Viely Herrera told the Times she saw the vehicle crash into a concrete barrier and a crying child in the back seat, and said officers would not allow a woman at the scene to take the boy. By evening, protesters had gathered both at the shooting site and outside NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, chanting against ICE’s presence in the city; at least one person was taken into custody after scuffles with police.
The shooting is believed to be the first by ICE within New York City since 2020.