Critics of the island’s child protection agency should help to improve the service after a string of abuse allegations, the Attorney-General said yesterday.

However, Kathy Lynn Simmons, also Minister of Legal Affairs, which includes the Department of Child and Family Services, held little hope for concerned citizens beating a path to her office door.

Ms Simmons told the Senate: “It’s not what you say — it’s what you do,”

Ms Simmons said she gave “kudos” to The Royal Gazette for articles that detailed allegations of mistreatment of children, which included accounts from people who had been in the care of the DCFS.

She added: “Those young men who told their stories, I would like to think they were overwhelmed by support.”

Ms Simmons said that “if that has happened, and if my phone rings next week, and if people’s consciences are pricked”, then “hand on heart, I would say that The Royal Gazette has succeeded”.

She added: “But if that does not happen, and part of me knows that it will not happen, because it hasn’t happened today, then we all have failed.”

Ms Simmons was speaking during the motion to adjourn in the Upper House.

Nick Kempe, the Opposition Senate Leader, said the One Bermuda Alliance had asked “for almost one year for an independent investigation” into the DCFS so “the public can have restored faith”.

Mr Kempe added he had followed “a somewhat scary scratching below the surface of things” at the DCFS.

He said the island had seen “all sorts of allegations — some yet to be tried in the courts, some effectively tried internally through mechanisms that have not been made public”.

Mr Kempe added: “There have been challenges to the media to not ask questions, which all paints a very discouraging picture.”

Ms Simmons appealed for the Gazette to drop its questioning about vulnerable children sent to overseas institutions by successive governments over decades.

Mr Kempe said the public needed to be “honest with ourselves and look at what has gone wrong” and that there had been “a tide change in discoveries in the public realm of challenges, of allegations of abuse”.

He added: “Without an independent investigation, without being able to come to the bottom of potentially ugly incidents, I do not see how we are going to be able to make decisions to protect those that most need it.”

Ms Simmons said Mr Kempe was “absolutely correct”.

She added: “We have had a long week of adverse reporting about the Department of Child and Family Services. It’s been interesting, it’s been disturbing.

“It has focused on the negative aspects of aspects of child protection — it has painted a narrative that DCFS is not fit for purpose.

“But I would like to think that it also has led all of us who read the daily being concerned. I do not think this is a bad thing. I think it’s good.”

Ms Simmons said: “My expectation would be that my phone would be ringing off the hook, and people would be so concerned they would be lining up to meet with me to assist. Our problems are not going to be solved by legislation.”

Ms Simmons said she had “utmost confidence” in the DCFS director Alfred Maybury and his staff.

Mr Maybury was suspended in 2018 while the Government investigated abuse allegations at DCFS. He was also accused of failing to follow financial instructions.

The director was reinstated in January, after the probe found that claims against him were “not substantiated” although the report was never released.

Ms Simmons said: “There was an investigation and the results may not be as some people want it.

“But trust and believe that the civil service framework that determines such matters has effectively been implemented.”

The Attorney-General said she had been waiting for “a barrage of concerned citizens to show up” at her office.

She added: “I give kudos to The Royal Gazette because I expect that these so-called concerned citizens are not just enjoying the stories of misfortune.”

Ms Simmons added that people tended to sit on the sidelines rather than help.

She told the public: “We don’t need your money — we need you to give of yourself.”

Ms Simmons said anyone who went to the Gazette with “their woes, or to the Opposition with their woes, as scandalous, salacious and heartbreaking as they may be” could also get help at the DCFS.

She added: “That’s what those hardworking professionals do. And they will not be cowed by The Royal Gazette’s reporters who are calling all of our institutions in Utah who service our children.

“They won’t be discouraged. The facilities won’t be discouraged. That’s what we do, and they do, and will continue to do.”

Ms Simmons said: “If there are processes and procedures that need reform, that’s my job.”

But she added she was “ashamed to say that not much has been done” with the 1998 Children’s Act, while “we fuss about airports and hotels and the state of our finances”.

Ms Simmons said: “To those who intend to make this a political football, it’s not going to happen.

“To those that are distressed that we are not in the media, countering those reports, that’s not going to happen.

“We have a story to tell and that story reflects our ethos, that it is not what you say — it’s what you do.”