Learning from St Lucia

This newspaper carried a report last week about a mother in St Lucia, who was jailed for one year for failing to do anything when she was told that her daughter was being sexually abused by her grandfather. M.Y. Bacchus, in a letter to this newspaper, published yesterday, applauded the magistrate and recommended her for a national award. He also said he would like to see Magistrate Anne Marie Smith’s action emulated in Guyana.

According to the report in the St Lucia Star newspaper, the mother was sentenced to a year in prison for wilful neglect of a minor. The magistrate reportedly said: “This kind of behaviour from parents especially mothers, will no longer be tolerated. I am making an example of you. You had a duty to protect your daughter and you did absolutely nothing.”

Disturbingly, Dr Bacchus also made reference to the countless cases of abuse of young girls, which he saw on a regular basis. He mentioned that the perpetrators were often named to the mothers of these girls in his presence and they were usually men who were close to the violated girls: their stepfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins and other male relatives, neighbours or friends. He said nothing was usually done to these men. Unfortunately, Dr Bacchus is not in a position to do anything without breaching doctor/patient confidentiality.

In the case in St Lucia, the abuse was reported to the police by a social worker; a category of worker whose job it is to notice such cases, probe them, and, once armed with the evidence, report it to the police. The St Lucian social worker also deserves commendation for doing her job, as does the younger brother of the violated child, who had witnessed the rape and reported it to his mother, and who also testified in court leading to a successful prosecution. Clearly in St Lucia, or as far as Magistrate Anne Marie Smith is concerned, children are valued.

A report in another section of the media yesterday, referred to a 20-year-old mother of three, who has been “married” for seven years and whose oldest child was six years old.

Last week also, this newspaper carried an interview with Evette Burke Douglas, a lecturer at the University of Guyana, who noted that culture contributed to the continuing sexual violation of women and girls, along with social factors such as poverty and ignorance. Burke Douglas spoke of her anger when listening every year to females in her class who had been violated sexually, but who seem to do nothing because of “the powerlessness they feel due to the scant possibility of a guilty verdict against the violator”. Burke Douglas was speaking not of the young teen and pre-teen girls who would be taken to gynaecologists by their mothers to check for an intact hymen. Her class would include females who would have completed high school and therefore would be between the ages of perhaps 18 years old and maybe as old as 40-something.

She referred to the presumption by some men that they are the rightful owners and controllers of women’s sexuality and the fact that the culture and the law makes it easy for this state of affairs to continue.

Last Friday, Minister of Human Services and Social Security Priya Manickchand called for continuing national conversations on sexual violence, given the outpouring that has taken place since her ministry began its ‘Stamp it Out’ consultations on the issue two weeks ago. She is right. These are necessary, particularly in rural communities where the tradition of marrying children off is entrenched. The more we talk about it; the more we condemn it the harder it will be for people to keep on doing it.

Whether it is as a result of the ministry’s white paper; activism by the Guyana Human Rights Association and other organizations and individuals, like Vidyaratha Kissoon or a combination of these, it seems like the tide is turning. It is important to take cognizance of this and to work to keep the momentum going. To stop now could possibly result in much of what has been done becoming undone as people return to the status quo.

The message that everyone must be made to grasp is that children must be protected at all costs; that there is no circumstance under which a female should be raped or otherwise violated and that it will take the continued efforts of all of us the ensure that perpetrators of this are punished in such a way as to deter others from trying.