…but never followed through
Kathleen Mo-A-Lin made numerous reports to the Kitty Police Station about her abusive husband Alfred Etwaroo, who murdered her and killed himself on Saturday, relatives said yesterday, but she never had charges instituted against the man.
“He was a cruel man and he gave her [Mo-A-Lin] a cruel death…she didn’t deserve to go like that,” a close relative told Stabroek News. “If she’d died a natural death we would’ve been able to accept it. But this, we can’t get over this.”
The couple, who had recently moved to their unfinished home in Parfait Harmonie, West Bank Demerara, had been together for about 14 years. Those years, Mo-A-Lin’s relative said, were not “a bed of roses” for her. They were full of physical, verbal and psychological abuse. During their common law union Etwaroo, the relative said, stamped “terrible fear” into his reputed wife.
Mo-A-Lin, 30, was found with a gaping wound at the back of her head and her lips sealed with some heavy-duty glue.
She was discovered lying just under the hanging body of her 39-year-old reputed husband in their home at Onderneeming, Parfait Harmonie. The couple had reportedly been arguing on Friday night. Relatives yesterday said that the can of paste used by Etwaroo was still lying on the floor and there was evidence of the woman’s struggle.
“A neighbour told us that they saw him [Etwaroo] about 5 o’clock that morning [Saturday],” the relative reported. “We believe he kill she hours before that and like he was confused and didn’t know what to do and after the place start to get bright he decide to hang himself.”
Neighbours had said the couple hardly said anything to anyone except to extend the usual courtesies since they moved into Parfait Hamonie. Relatives on the other hand, remember the two as having had issues almost from the day they were married. Mo-A-Lin’s relative explained yesterday that since they [the dead woman’s relatives] met Etwaroo he was a quiet man who kept to himself and later forced his reputed wife to do the same.
“He [Etwaroo] never used to talk much with us or even interact with us,” the relative recalled. “He used to keep mostly to himself and watched television. In fact he de never really want her [Mo-A-Lin] to mix with her family.”
A grieving relative, present at the Parfait Hamonie scene on Saturday morning, had turned her rage on a police officer standing nearby demanding to know why the police refused to intervene in abusive relationships. Mo-A-Lin, the enraged relative said that morning, had gone to “the welfare” before for her abusive, reputed husband who had threatened on many occasions to end his own life and hers as well as their three children’s.
Mo-A-Lin’s relative who spoke to Stabroek News yesterday explained that Etwaroo had attempted to hang himself twice before. The man, the relative said, seemed to have “a sort of psychological disorder” and despite the fact that he isolated Mo-A-Lin from everyone he continuously accused her of extramarital affairs.
“She loved him and wanted to make it work…”
Before moving to Parfait Harmonie, the relative explained, the couple and their children lived in Kitty, Georgetown. It was there that Mo-A-Lin endured most of the abuse.
Relatives described Mo-A-Lin as the “suffering in silence type” who kept all her problems to herself. The woman, according to them, was a very quiet person who continuously tried to make things work with her husband.
“She never used to come running to us to complain about the problems in her marriage,” Mo-A-Lin’s relative said. “She used to take how much she could and only when it get overbearing did she start saying something to us.”
Relatives had tried to dissuade the woman from moving to the unfinished Parfait Harmonie home but she had told them she was comfortable and wanted to go. Etwaroo, they believed, was waiting to get the woman in a lonely spot like that where he could further isolate her and “make good on his threat”.
During the years the couple lived in Kitty, relatives said, they were forced to intervene on Mo-A-Lin’s behalf when her reputed husband began his bouts of abuse. Relatives said that they and Mo-A-Lin made numerous reports to the Kitty Police Station but the woman would never return for police to institute charges against Etwaroo.
“When we [relatives] went to the station to make reports the police would tell us that they couldn’t intervene in domestic matters and could do nothing unless she [Mo-A-Lin came to the station herself,” the relatives said. “She never did follow through with having him charged. She loved him and she wanted to make it work…She was always loyal to him but for some reason he could never see it.”
There are several incidents between Mo-A-Lin and Etwaroo that will remain foremost in their minds, relatives said. Etwaroo, they said, was the sort of person who always wanted to have his way. When Mo-A-Lin did something to upset him, relatives said, Etwaroo would become “very violent”.
“I remember one time we were all over at her house in Kitty,” the relative recalled, “and she did something he didn’t like and he pick up a cutlass and started chop up the fridge and stove and so on. While we were there he would never physically attack her but after we left she told us that he would hold the cutlass to her neck and push her around.”
Mo-A-Lin’s story, relatives said, is one that they know happens countrywide and there are Guyanese women going through the same thing presently. They expressed hoped that Mo-A-Lin’s tragic end can act as an “eye opener” for those who need to get out of abusive relationships and for the authorities who should be dealing with such issues.
“She [Mo-A-Lin] might not have been able to get justice here on earth but God will definitely see that she get her justice wherever she is,” the woman’s relative said. “It has been very traumatic for her children and they will never be able to forget it but as her family we will take care of her children and do our best to help them get through this.”
