Yesterday this newspaper reported that the Ministry of Human Services recorded more than 1,000 cases of child abuse in the first quarter of this year. Commenting on the depressing statistics, Jennifer Webster, Minister of Human Services and Social Security, suggested that greater involvement by local communities was one way to interrupt the depressing cycle of neglect, ill-treatment, and abuse.
Anyone familiar with the work of the St John Bosco orphanage in Plaisance will have an idea of what such engagement might look like. (The orphanage itself is named after a nineteenth century Italian priest who pioneered the education of street children and other delinquents.) For many years dozens of children, many with traumatic pasts and in poor health, have received a second chance at a reasonably normal life thanks to a small but dedicated staff. With little more than commitment, determination and the financial support of private donors, the institution has helped disadvantaged children overcome some of the deprivations that result from a childhood of neglect and abandonment. Similar institutions – often supported by religious charities ‒ have made equally vital contributions elsewhere.
It is an utterly humbling experience to meet with some of the Plaisance orphans when they have grown up. Despite having had next to nothing for most of their lives, many have learned how to deal with their psychological baggage and have created full and satisfying lives. Modest educations are offset by personal discipline and good manners that put most of their middle-class counterparts to shame. Perhaps what is most remarkable of all is their cheerfulness and optimism, born of a determination to prevent the past from dictating their future. That these quiet triumphs have been achieved in a developing country with the usual economic fluctuations and political uncertainties makes the orphanage’s work, and those of similar facilities, little short of miraculous.
Any news that involves the suffering of children offers a temptation to despair, but there is evidence that a modicum of kindness and loving attention can salvage something from even the bleakest childhoods. The American author Andrew Solomon recently published a moving account of what happens to children who are born with conditions or abilities that make them strikingly different to their parents. In Far From the Tree he describes the lives of atypical children ‒ deaf children, schizophrenic and autistic children, dwarves, Down’s Syndrome children, those who are the product of rape, and other isolating conditions (including genius) ‒ with a novelist’s eye for details.
In his opening chapter Solomon recalls doing “back to back interviews with a wealthy white woman who had a low-functioning autistic son, and an impoverished African-American woman whose autistic son had many of the same symptoms. The more privileged woman had spent years futilely trying to make her son better. The less advantaged woman never thought she could make her son better because she’d never been able to make her own life better, and she was not afflicted with feelings of failure.” Solomon observes that despite this the second mother “had a relatively happy life with her son” – noticeably more so than the first.
Repeatedly Solomon observes that whatever the difficulty faced by children, early interventions are crucial. While discussing delinquency and crime he notes that “[e]xtremely good results have been shown for relatively inexpensive graduation incentives that keep kids in school. [The Perry Preschool Project (1962-67) which offered quality preschool education to three- and four-year-old African-American children living in poverty] with children under five in the United States may cost us as much as $400 billion.” While that figure is too large to translate into the economic realities of a small country like Guyana, it should make us wonder about the wider costs – in addition to the moral and social damage – that we are willing to put up with when the routine abuse and mistreatment of hundreds of children is allowed to continue without an urgent response.
