Violence can take many forms. It can be physical (slaps, hits, a beating or an assault), sexual (harrassment, intimidation, molestation, rape), or emotional or psychological (verbal abuse or threats). Most violence in Guyana occurs within a domestic context. Data collection is, by definition, difficult and sporadic and the only available research is quite dated. A study by the Women’s Unit at the University of Guyana (twenty years ago) suggested that only 6 out of 100 women reported incidents of domestic violence to the police. The report also indicated that two out of every three women had been beaten at least once by their partners. Other research suggests that at least one in three of our children is beaten by a parent. Violence also prevails in the classroom: a survey of secondary school students in 2000 showed that over half had been whipped by a teacher “using branches from trees, pieces of wood, rulers, metal strips from old tables and other parts of old school furniture, or hands.” The 2007 UN/World Bank Report on crime and violence in the Caribbean noted that youth are “disproportionately represented… both as victims and perpetrators” and concluded that “youth… represent a unique window of opportunity to both prevent and reduce crime and violence in society at large.”
Violence is so widespread in our society that it is both omnipresent and invisible. Most Guyanese would not bother to report a beating, even a severe one. As we noted in the Shieldstown case, many neighbours did not see fit to intervene when a child was repeatedly starved, beaten and chained by a female relative. It is only when, as in that case, violence exceeds the norm, that it merits any attention or redress. We appear to have a high threshold for violence: we usually tolerate it. We don’t need exhaustive surveys to determine the scope of the problem. The root of the problem is this: the vast majority of us endorse violence in some shape or form. What we need is this: a collective will to change the status quo, an acceptance that we are brutalising our children and perpetuating a cycle of violence. As Camila Batmanghelidjh, the director of a children’s organisation in the UK, wrote recently: “no one is born a criminal or an abuser… we need to understand that the origins of violence towards others are nearly always a by-product of violence survived.” She warned against the traditional stereotypes of the male aggressor and the female or child victim and offered her own categories: the initiator of violence and the imitator of violence. “For the profoundly disturbed individual (the initiator), violence often begins in the family home. The child is relentlessly exposed to violations… [and] grows up so distorted by violence that s/he begins to initiate it towards others.” Ms Batmanghelidjh concluded that robust child protection systems are the only way to break the cycle of violence.
Many see the roots of our behaviour in our history: “Caribbean society was born out of brutality, destructiveness, rape… The violence of our history has been internalized. It has… seeped down into our personal lives” (Merle Hodge, The Shadow of the Whip, I am because we are: Readings in Black Philosohpy 1995). Others cite the fragmentation of the family and the dislocation caused by the migration of workers who leave their children in the care of relatives: in Jamaica, these are called the ‘barrel children.’ Undoubtedly these forces all play a part. But, in a sense, our weakness in the face of these is our strength. We are all, to some measure, in control of our world. Our world begins at home. Our world starts with our children and the children in our care. We are in control of what prevails in our homes. If we continue to brutalise our children, they will grow up in a household, on a street, in a school and in a community where physical and verbal abuse are acceptable, are the norm. And they in turn will grow up to hit and hurt, to inflict pain on others, because that is what we have taught them. And so the cycle of violence will play on.
