The small team of officers at the Police Juvenile and Domestic Crime Unit deal with a wide variety of offences that occur in the Bermuda community. Reporter Karen Smith looks at what they do.

Sitting in a small room at the Juvenile and Domestic Crime Unit, you could be forgiven for thinking you were sat in a young family's living room.

Comfy sofas, curtains and an array of children's toys lay scattered about the carpeted floor creating an almost nursery-type feel to the bright and airy room.

However, far from just play goes on in this - the hub - of the unit in Reid Street. In fact, the room is there to deal with something much more sinister.

Much of the evidence in child sex and physical abuse cases is divulged in this very room where the victims are encouraged to play and talk at the same time.

Although the investigation of sexual and physical assaults on children play a major role in this department, the six officers that currently make up the unit have many duties.

Missing children is their brief, along with domestic-related incidents, some stalking and juvenile crime cases, and, surprisingly nuisance phone calls.

If a child goes "missing" from a residential home it is often this very unit that is called out.And if a jilted girlfriend is harassing her ex, or even his new love, then it is these officers that are called in to mediate and bring the peace. Acting Sgt. Barry Richards said: "We get a lot of annoying telephone call complaints, but they are rarely brought before the courts because we are mostly able to stop them simply by intervening. A lot of the time people don't want to go to court, anyway, they simply want someone to stop the calls.

"Most of the time the person is known to the victim and a lot of the calls are made by females to other females, saying `leave my man alone'.

"We had one such complaint where the calls continued solidly for three days. The person kept calling every 15 minutes."

The unit receives more complaints every week about nuisance calls than it does about any other type of crime.

Sgt. Richards said: "We try to establish why they are calling first, and in most instances it's a case of giving them suitable advice.

"We can get as little as one complaint of nuisance calls a week, and as many as ten. They are pretty consistent, and they are usually involving all adults, not really juveniles."

But Insp. Tracy Adams said although every complaint is considered important, the unit has to prioritise its report, and nuisance calls is fairly low down the scale. Obviously, serious offences against children take a much higher priority.

Insp. Adams said: "We look at the number of cases that come through and we have to prioritise them.

"I would say that a sexual assault is high on the priority list in comparison to an annoying telephone call.

"Since mandatory reporting of sexual offences against children was introduced, we have become much busier. There is always a lot going on in this department."

Surprisingly, only some juvenile crime goes through the juvenile unit as many offences are serious enough to be dealt with by other departments, and general response officers work round the clock. But physical assaults, both children on children and adults on children, are dealt with in Reid Street often. But Insp. Adams said there were actually few instances of physical assault on children by relatives, and where they do occur, it is often a case of over-correcting. He said: "A lot of times we get parents that are correcting their children and they may over-correct them. They may bruise their child and then that is picked up by the school and reported to us or family and social services.

"We have to step in. In some cases we find the injury is accidental and we have to judge each case on its merits."

Sgt. Richards said he remembered a case where a mother had hit a child 20 times with a belt. However, cases like that are rare, they said.

Insp. Adams said: "Then we have parents who don't think they are doing anything wrong. Our main objective is to try to put the child in a safe environment, and sometimes the family itself may need counselling.

"Prosecution is always the last resort. We don't want to break up families, Most of the time with these children, the family is the only family they know. They don't want to lose their family, and we have to consider the impact on children when we move them or displace them.

"Our aim is to ensure children have a safe and positive environment, and if we can do that and leave them with their family then that is a very good outcome."