Last Thursday, Uswatie Persaud, 47, was found dead on a bed in an Eping Avenue apartment, next to Cuban Physiotherapist, Dr Guillermo Martinez, who was also dead. The woman’s body bore several knife wounds and police have said that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, they were treating the case as one of murder/suicide.
Last week Tuesday, it was Okema Todd, a 20-year-old mother of two, who scaled fences and ran with blood gushing from numerous knife wounds about her body, to a security guard at Ketley Primary School, begging to be saved. Her partner was subsequently arrested and charged with her murder.
Early in January, the body of trainee teacher Luciana Bhagwandin was found on a dam at Harlem, West Coast Demerara. The body had multiple stab wounds and days later the police issued a wanted bulletin for her partner.
About a week later Sunita August’s body was found in a koker at Nismes, West Bank Demerara. She had been beaten to death. Her former reputed husband had been seen towing her on a bicycle heading towards the koker. He reportedly ingested a poison soon after and escaped, but survived, was captured and later charged with murder. In each of these instances and the umpteen others over the years, with the exception of the Eping Avenue case, about which very little is known, there was a history of intimate partner violence and/or harassment.
In spite of (or should that be in defiance of) the passage of the Domestic Violence Act in 2006, incidents of intimate partner/gender based violence have been increasing at an alarming rate; so too are the cases where they end in death. When the dynamics of the relationships where this type of violence occurs are examined, quite often the contributory factors include the abuse of alcohol and drugs. The implication is that where previously it might have been suggested that an approach to curbing intimate partner violence (IPV) should also address these twin evils, it has now become imperative that it does.
Structured and ongoing education and awareness, not only targeted at those who endure IPV, but those whose job it is to prevent it and protect against it, are also compulsory. There are still too many victims of IPV who do not know where to go, what to do and who to turn to when they are faced with these situations. Ms Rohoman had continued to help her former partner with chores even though she insisted that she could not live with him because of the abuse she suffered. Ms Todd had repeatedly returned to an abusive relationship for the sake of her children. Ms August had reportedly gone to see her partner to collect money to provide for her children. They and countless others died because they did not know better.
There are still too many police officers who do not know, for instance, that the act allows them to file an application in the court on behalf of the victim or arrest an abuser without a warrant if he violates a court order.
The time has come for information about IPV to be taken into schools and communities just as HIV education was; knowledge can save lives. As Dr Wiltshire observed and as has been noted before, IPV’s domino effect results in a rise in child abuse, which can lead to bullying, school and gang violence. No expense should be spared in curbing this ‘cancer’ which also impedes social and economic development.
