Finger-rape claim untrue

BY CHRIS GOLLOP | SUN, MARCH 27, 2011 - 12:03 AM

THERE IS NO TRUTH to a report by a Jamaican woman who claimed she was finger-searched before being denied entry into Barbados last week.

Government is however planning a high-level meeting with the Jamaican High Commissioner to Trinidad to try to prevent any major fallout between the two countries as a result of the media hype surrounding the incident.

At a Press conference yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator Maxine McClean made it “absolutely clear that a thorough investigation had been carried out by the Immigration and Customs departments into a report that had been carried in the Jamaican Press suggesting that Shanique Samantha Myrie had been finger-raped by Immigration officers after she arrived on Barbadian soil on March 14”.

The story made headlines in Jamaica, and McClean confirmed to reporters attending the briefing at Government Headquarters that Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ken Baugh had written to her seeking an urgent investigation into the matter.

After three days of investigations, however, McClean told reporters:“There is absolutely no truth to a story carried in a Jamaican newspaper on Thursday, March 24, that a female citizen of that country was body-searched by Immigration officers on arrival at the Grantley Adams International Airport.”

In a prepared statement, she added: “Chief Immigration Officer Ms Erine Griffith has refuted this allegation made in the Jamaica Observer. She has confirmed that her department and Customs ‘have carried out extensive investigations and the claims were baseless’.”

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