Get-of-out-jail-free card for rapists in Caribbean

Two recent cases reported in regional media demonstrate the extent of the injustice which girls who survive sexual assault face.

In the Cayman Islands a judge did not award a custodial sentence for a man who plead guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl because, “he had a wife and two children to support.” This along with the provisions for alternative sentencing, time spent on remand, his difficult childhood and psychological problems were offered up as reasons why a custodial sentence was not ordered.

The judge is reported as saying that “the most important thing was to create the circumstance where the defendant would never commit such an offence in the future.” He, however, failed to describe what exactly that would entail. It would certainly be useful to have practical and concrete advice on how we can collectively create the circumstances where no one ever commits sexual assault.  I’m not sure that deflecting responsibility from the persons who do is likely to be of much use.

All in all it seemed like a gross injustice and a suggestion that the rapist’s freedom and his patriarchal responsibilities were more important that the young girl’s life and right to bodily integrity. It really says a lot about our relative valuing of children and adults, girls and men.  Unpacking this decision also reveals the way in which heterosexual sex, even when criminal and coerced, is viewed as normal and inevitable.  Collectively we seem more moved towards safeguarding the future of the rapists than that of girls. We worry more about how an accusation of rape can ruin a man’s life and bury our heads in the sand about what the experience of rape does to a girl’s life. (Read Velika Lawrence’s story in the St. Lucia star. She is co-founder of PROSAF, an organisation which fights against child sexual abuse & incest).

In Antigua, a former principal and lay preacher escaped a custodial sentence after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.  It was reported that the girls mother made a “stirring plea for forgiveness”, saying that she and her daughter had forgiven the sexual predator and he was a family friend.

In addition, the forgiving mother  also used the fact that the former principal was the sole breadwinner of his family to argue for a non-custodial sentence.

In examining why domestic violence complainants vanish from Caribbean courts, anthropologist Mindie Lazarus-Black argues that a culture of reconciliation operates in the Caribbean:

I coined the term cultures of reconciliation to identify local norms and practices separate and apart from law, but that influence profoundly the decisions people make about what to do about violence in their lives. The concept is useful both: 1) as an analytical framework to capture how local ideas and practices coalesce into structural patterns that operate
against the institutionalized forces of law; and 2) as a research tool for cross-cultural investigation and analysis. More specifically, cultures of reconciliation reflect norms and practices intrinsic to “family,” “gender,” and “work” that intersect to keep men and women out of legal processes. Such norms and practices are learned, mostly early in life. (Source: VANISHING COMPLAINANTS: THE PLACE OF VIOLENCE IN FAMILY, GENDER, WORK, AND LAW).

Perhaps it is this same culture of reconciliation with its gendered and hierarchical valuing of women and men which operates as a barrier to justice for girls who survive sexual assault. Rapists in the region have a perpetual get-out-of-jail-free card and these are the ones who actually have to stand before the courts.  Our culture of silence means most rapes and cases of incest goes unreported, ignored, invisible or resolved outside the law.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Edited to add:

Another recent story in Caribbean news reflects the sympathy offered up to men who abuse girls in the region.  In the Bahamas,  the overwhelming majority of the members of the Pilgrim Full Baptist Temple voted to retain their disgraced Bishop as head of the church despite the fact that he is currently serving three years in jail for having sex with a  dependent.  One of his colleagues suggested that the Bishop has neither admitted his sins nor asked forgiveness for them and should seek professional help.  Nonetheless, it is clear he has the support of the majority of church members. I suspect that the rush to forgive comes from the church members understanding of the 16-year-old girl as having been a temptress and the Bishop as unable to help himself.  It’s the message that’s repeated over and over when we tell women what to wear and how to act in order to avoid rape: that women are responsible for tempting men into sexual violence against them.

Leave a comment with any similar cases in regional news.

Police Brutality Case in the Bahamas

Readers, have you been following the case of Edena Farah who was beaten by police in the Bahamas.

A petition has been started which alleges that

She was bitten and beaten by 6 police officers  in downtown Nassau, while conducting a Segway tour with tourists; a job she loved very much.  After putting 7 bogus charges on her and after going through a 2 year trial, the judge found her guilty and sentenced her to 1 year in prison!!

 

We would love to hear from our readers in the Bahamas about the public reaction to this beating and the subsequent conviction.

Can One Billion Rising End Violence Against Women?

Many Caribbean countries participated in the global One Billion Rising campaign. You can view photos from the events across the region and even add yours to the pool.

Barbados held two events:  One at the Cave Hill campus on the University of the West Indies which focused on sexual violence since three Caribbean countries are in the top 10 globally for rates of reported rape.  The other took place in the capital and featured collaboration among many women’s organisations, artists and UN WOMEN. The Bridgetown gained significant publicity in the mainstream media, particularly radio and press.  The following letter to the editor details the UWI event which was hosted by the Institute for Gender & Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit.

Barbados might be interested to know that the UWI Cave Hill Campus also held a significant One Billion Rising event that mainly targeted students, but also involved staff in the audience and as performers.

I write this letter and hope it is published because of what emerged. Female students at the campus routinely face harassment, sometimes physical, on ZR vehicles. Some also continue to face the problem of voyeurism (peeping toms) in some private residences around campus. Obviously this is unacceptable.

The Cave Hill campus administration does what it can from what I can see, including establishing protocols and addressing safety issues. In fact, the event was hosted by the university’s Institute for Gender and Development Studies – Nita Barrow Unit as a means of gathering just such data.

Students testified, a Guild of students spokesman informed that the Guild’s position was zero tolerance on campus and off, one male students spoke touchingly of the solidarity he feels his colleagues should express to prevent not only physical but also emotional abuse of young women.

Staff members and students performed poetry and sang songs relevant to the theme of rejection of violence in all its forms, and the need for the embrace of more loving, respectful and self-respecting behaviours by men and women singly and collectively. One staff member spoke of the fact young men are themselves victims of sexual violence by other men, and this underscores the evident necessity for men to strongly support the eradication of this scourge.

Violence against women is a feature of vulnerability, especially when men congregate in even temporary gangs.

It is good to see the solidarity your paper offers in highlighting these issues. I certainly ask our community of ZR drivers, conductors, owners and the owners of private residences around the campus to join you in that solidarity and put measures in place to secure the young women using their services. It is just the right thing to do.

– Margaret D. Gill

Source: This article originally appeared in the Barbados  as a letter to the editor.

Guyana also hosted a significant One Billion Rising event in which many women’s organisations participated. There were events in St. Lucia, Grenada and Antigua as well.

A recent comment on the CODE RED blog called into question the political strategies of the One Billion Rising Campaign:

I wish every Feminist initiative, everywhere around the globe, wholehearted success.

But… I have a seeeerious problem with the “Let’s All Dance!” focus for the “One Billion Rising” event. Could someone tell me WHY – and in a way that makes pellucid sense to me, WHY Women, in their seemingly chronic male-designation as Abuse Fodder, would choose the carefree, spontaneous, *celebratory* act of …dance: to (somehow?!?) symbolize the One Billion Rising initiative?

The whole things seems miscued, somehow; it appears – at least to me, like some desperate psychological “buffer” being enacted by Women globally, to try to distance themselves emotionally from what I have NO FEAR in stating as The Harsh REALITY: i.e., WOMEN’S RIGHTS IS ON A STEADILY DOWNWARD CURVE!

Consequently, to “Dance While Women’s Lives are BURNING TO HELL…smacks oddly of a SIMILAR Roman initiative. Only I think the Ancient used FIDDLES to distract themselves whilst their Home-Space INCINERATED!!!

So – as they say in Showbiz: “Break a Leg!”

 

This Huffing Post article took One Billion Rising to task for a lack of feminist consciousness, a refusal to name the causes of violence against women in favour of feel-good dancing in which everyone could participate and a false notion of sisterhood which perpetuates racist hierarchies.

What do you think? Is One Billion Rising a celebrity-driven, white-feminist-saving-the-Third-World-woman danceathon/mediafest that lacks political edge? Or were local organisers able to “creolise” the One Billion Rising to make it meaningful for their communities as part of wider and ongoing efforts to address violence against women?

A Billion Words

A Billion Words

A picture is worth a billion words! Check out these amazing images of One Billion Rising events across the Caribbean & Diaspora.  Feel free to add your photos to the pool.

Man kills 4-year-old witness of alleged rape, cue victim-blaming

Tianna Thomas posted this to our facebook wall and gave us permission to share it here. It revolves around the way in which a man who allegedly killed a four-year-old boy is absolved from blame by some members of the public who choose to focus instead, on accusing the boy’s 17-year-old aunt of making a false accusation of rape. (The young woman has since reported that she too feared for her life and was raped by the assailant). As if an assumed false rape claim should either overshadow or justify the murder of a 4-year-old. Why is the young woman, who had nothing to do with murdering an infant, on trial here? What does it mean when some of us are able to completely bypass the murder of a child and focus instead on calling the young woman a liar as if to suggest that not only is she culpable in the boy’s death but that she is MORE culpable than the man that killed him and raped her!

I was just reading a story on the Demarara Waves Facebook site about a man who stabbed a 4 year old boy to death after allegedly raping the child’s 17 year old aunt. In the comments, there was this remark left by a female commenter:

“This is so damn sad and that’s a wicked aunt, she is now claiming “rape” because that child walked in on them, he was 4 years omg by next week he would have forgot that already, I’m sure he didn’t even understand what was going on, they could have make up so damn lie and tell him, now she being a wicked aunt ran away and look what she has to live with now, the man she was just sexing Murdered her nephew, she wouldn’t want to see a next Penis for the rest of her wicked life. How could he look at that child and stab him for being cause in his wicked dead, sexing his sis in law omg, she should kill her damn self”.

Needless to say, I was horrified by the commenter’s words. It brings to light a bigger problem within the myriad of other issues with society’s response to victims of sexual assault. It’s something I have noticed while living in Guyana. There always seems to be someone placing some degree of blame on the victim. Mind you, the article said NOTHING about the aunt bearing false witness against the person accused of the murder. Whether the allegations of rape are true or not is not clear at the moment (the girl has been taken to the hospital for a medical screening), but it is sickening to see that even though she herself may be a victim in the case, instead of being met with the appropriate care that victims of sexual assault need, she is met with blame. This woman goes as far to ask the alleged victim to “kill herself”. THIS is the reason why so many sexual assaults go unreported. THIS is the reason why many assault victims would rather take monetary compensation than go through the often degrading process of trial. THIS is why may victims commit suicide. Blame is placed only on the victim and not with the attacker, where it belongs. I don’t know if the alleged victim is being truthful, but who am I or who is anyone else to say that she is lying? Especially since the investigation has just commenced? Ugh. I apologize again for the lengthy post. This has been on my heart since I read the story and I just needed someplace to rant.

Guyanese activist Sherlina Nageer also pointed out, “in addition to the individual condemnation of this young woman, there’s also the institutional disregard that makes this even worse. when she ran to the police station seeking help, they told her that she was ‘hostile’, “and that I shouldn’t be making noise in the station.”