Bingo was a contributing factor to teenage pregnancy in American Samoa says Samoa’s Associate Minister of Health Salausa Dr. John Ah Ching.
This was his observation after more than 20 years at the OBGyn Department of the LBJ Hospital and active membership on the Community Coalition Against Teenage Pregnancy,
At the second day of the 7th Annual Bilateral Health Summit between the two Samoa yesterday Representative Vui Florence Saulo commented on contributing factors to domestic violence and child abuse in the territory.
Associate Minister Salausa said the Coalition emphasized the role and circumstances of the immediate family and for parents to make it their business to know where they children are at all times.
He reported that most of the cases of sexual assault and abuse they dealt with occurred when parents, and he put emphasis on mothers, were at bingo.
In several incidents, parents left the children by themselves at home giving opportunity to perpetrators to take advantage of their children.
In other cases, said Salausa, mothers taking their daughters with them to bingo would leave them outside as children are not allowed in, and while they play bingo inside, their daughters would be victimized outside.
The former LBJ gynecologist also told of a case where a worried grandmother brought her teenage granddaughter to the hospital to be checked for a swollen stomach.
Salausa said when he informed the grandmother that the girl was pregnant, the grandmother wouldn’t stop wailing.
She claimed that she never lets her granddaughter out of her sight.
The granddaughter let on that while her grandmother is playing bingo, she stays home with her blind grandfather and that’s when the male who got her pregnant would catch her.
