In “The Surprised Silence on Rape Cases” , Rickey Singh laments the failure of national and regional women’s organisations to make statements on two current cases of rape, including the tragedy (what an inadequate description) of the gang rape of the young woman in India. Is this censure justified?
For the last twenty years, at least, women’s organisations have been making statements about the epidemic of violence against women and the impunity for perpetrators. Every year, gender justice activists accompany women victims to hospitals and courts, provide safe housing, organise trainings for the criminal justice system, launch advocacy campaigns, hold candlelight vigils, demonstrations and go on radio programmes. And this happens in every country of the Caribbean, routinely.
As a result, there is domestic violence legislation and thousands of police have and continue to receive training to ensure a more profound access to justice. In some countries specialised police units are established and mandatory reporting of child abuse is required. These are identifiable achievements because of women’s rights advocacy.
But the culture changes much more slowly and in the face of a Caribbean popular culture that promotes a model of aggressive masculinity, the challenge to reboot socialisation towards equitable and respect-based norms is enormously complicated.
Would it not be something for trade unions, sports clubs, chambers of commerce, religious organisations to join in, making the condemnatory statements, formulating campaigns, demanding of communities and states enhanced protection, justice and prevention of violence against women by men?
Ending violence against women requires that men as individuals and in their collectives, accept the responsibility for making change, not because as a man yesterday in the street said as he stepped towards the traffic to give way for me “women must be protected always”, but because women are equally entitled to safety and freedom.
Thank you for your blog and the comments of each person.
Violence against women, boys and girls in the Caribbean is fueled primarily by apathy, cruelty, and complicity. Yes. Gender plays a dominant role in its outcome. Yes. The political forces are more interested in their agendas for dominance than demonstrating change is possible even though they were elected to ensure progress.
In a recent episode of Dateline NBC a girl was seen running naked across a busy intersection, a woman stopped to help her, she got in and pointed to the man nearby, she said “that’s the man that kidnapped me.”
This man was linked to another young woman who was abducted near a university. Where did he start his violence? It was later found out that this man had attempted to rape his own sister, when he was a teen. He never succeeded but he was able to overpower other children in his family, and rape them. Police in two states, worked together to find him and arrest him, he was prosecuted, and sentenced, justice was served. He got a life sentence for rape and murder. This crime happened in America.
Recently, in Barbados a string of tourist rapes, lead to an international stage that involved the removal of the Police Comissioner. Even as he faced the cameras the comissioner spoke condescendingly about the rape victim who got her British MP involved. The comissioner was arrogant, he was hostile, he was defiant, even though every major British news entity covered the story, including the BBC. He did not shut up. His haughtiness spoke volumes to the international community so much so that there is an active effort, to educate and discourage tourist from visiting the island. Still Barbados has done nothing to improve its position on violence against women. It still behaves arrogantly. It forgets that the international community is not forgiving about violence against women. Their memories are long and wield significant economic power. No island that is dependent on tourism should ignore this. Violence starts in the home. The rapist in this serial crime in Barbados has relatives somewhere that were his first set of victims. He graduated perhaps to other targets before he settled on tourist. And just as it happened in his home, the island protected him. The island denied his existence. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
This kind of response is what advocates encounter in the Caribbean every day. They come face to face with policemen who seem immune to decency. Men who seem to be unaware that dignity is at the core of policing. They simply do not care. For those of us living outside the Caribbean who are struck by the vast differences in the responses of Police and politicians in the Caribbean and those in international territories, It is clear that the social infrastructure in the Caribbean, is severely dampened by complicity. A person has to know that it is wrong to attack another human but they don’t care because not even their families hold them accountable. The laws are not enforced. Men and women mock victims. It’s idle chatter. It’s idle laughter. It’s something to brag about. It is a weapon for shaming victims into silence. It’s a social norm.
Rape and molestation is not viewed as a crime in the Eastern Caribbean. It does not disgust the public enough. People do not care as they should. This is the problem. “Care more” should be the region’s motto.
If we want to address gender violence we must first address women and their attitudes towards victims, many do not help victims. We must train the average woman in this region to do something when their sons demonstrate violence to other family members. In my lifetime, I have met and or communicated with many rape victims from Barbados in New York City, London, and Canada. Many speak of mothers who knew they were being sexually abused and did nothing to stop it. They denied the existence of cruely and abuse. They denied their own daughters justice. Many spoke of mothers who physically and emotionally abused them. Mothers who were demanding lavish gifts from abroad, still wielding and even reinventing their abusive tactics.
Some spoke of mothers who were sexual offenders. These cases were small.
But we cannot deny that small does matter because it influences bigger deeds.
The stories of physical abuse by Caribbean mothers are heart wrenching.
I knew from my own experience these horrors were prevalent:
As a child when my mother was “frustrated” with her life, she acted out violently. By the age of seven, I had already been sexually abused by a male relative. I couldn’t tell my mother because she was violent. When I was eight she threw me against a wall and damaged my ear drum. From that day forward I suffered with migraines and ear aches. My brothers and myself were often stripped naked and beaten. She would throw salt water on one of my brothers after beating him. She would beat me with a dog hunter every Sunday as she taught me how to iron the pleats of my Primary school uniform. We were punched in the face, we were beaten with blanks of wood, by the age of fourteen, I had two growths at the back of my head. They caused pain. We were beaten in public. Did the police intervene? The consensus was that she must have had a good reason. Family members were afraid of her. No one rescued us. When I was fifteen, I attempted suicide. The abuse continued until age 21. When I was 22 I left the island. I didn’t know until years later that I had developed a brain disorder, along with depression, and chronic post traumatic stress. My brothers could not get off the island. I tried to help them but I didn’t have the financial resources and they were younger, one was 12 years younger, the other was seven years younger.
What kind of men are my brothers?
My brothers are now violent men. One disfigured a woman. When I spoke to the victim I realized that the abuse was identical to what was done to us. I cried quietly as she spoke. I apologized to her and told her I was heartbroken to learn he had turned out to be so violent. I was sickened and angry I wanted justice for her.
My brother had suffered several concussions as a child at the hands of our mother. She loved hitting you in the head. She was sadistic. She enjoyed it.
The other brother is suspected of attacking a female child. It appears he was sexually abused. I confronted her about this. Of course she denied it as well as hurting us physically. It’s what a users do.
What my brothers have done makes me sick. I am disgusted. When I spoke out against their brutality, and what my mother had done, she struck back, always the proficient manipulator, she fueled a family wide hate-attack. Relatives told me stop. I will never stop speaking out. All my life she has been the tornado that destroyed everyone around her, a master of evil ideas who never gave up her thrown. I have a larger agenda. I want justice. I want the violence to end.
If you want to engage the Eastern Caribbean about Violence Against Women, start with women. Let’s clean our own backyard. Let’s deal with the many women on the island who brutalize their children. The women who introduce their children to violence. The women who ruin their sons. The women with a legacy of violence.
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I should add that the song whole ton sweet, from a melodic and arrangement perspective. A common response is: “Yes, but it sweet bad!”
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Attillah Springer writes in the Guardian about this Rape Culture in our own backyards:
http://tillahwillah.wordpress.com/tag/rape-culture/
and touches on some of what Roberta describes as embedded in our culture, especially that “model of aggressive masculinity” that fuels it. Her (Atillah’s) mention of Carnival made me think some more about something that hasn’t stopped disturbing me since Antigua Carnival just gone. What more evidence of our deeply rooted rape culture do we want that a road march that declares, in the coded but still crystal clear language of calypso tradition, that if a woman says No, then you rape her?
Antiguan journalist Joanne Hillhouse wrote this thoughtful piece back during the season,
http://www.antiguaobserver.com/?p=78558
Svenn spoke publicly about it and Women Against Rape launched and lost a battle to oppose it. Silence from the government, except to prevent those within the government “responsible for women” from speaking out, apparently with the logic that violence has been a part of calypso music from back when. The crazier thing, though, is that most of the everyday people I talk to about it don’t really have a problem with it. One very well-meaning and usually reasonable man said to me, “Well it’s not really about rape, it’s like when a woman is sort of hesitating and you have to convince her.” By kicking in her back door??
I was at a Carnival fete jamming up a storm, and got off the floor when the song played. A male acquaintance asked me why I stopped dancing and I said, “the song promotes rape.” He was very sympathetic. “Too close to home, eh?” – to his mind, the only possible reason I could have for protesting was that I myself had been raped.
In a conversation back in August about it, someone told me that they wouldn’t worry about it getting play across the Caribbean, that the local popularity of Burning Flames is blinding us Antiguans (and making our Government wary of speaking against the song, maybe??) and that other islands would never tolerate such a thing. But I have a Trini friend here in Antigua who gets a bootleg CD of all the popular Carnival songs hitting in T&T. Guess what is on her 2013 hits CD?
For those who want to hear the horrific song that Joanne rightly calls “bone-chilling” – it starts with a woman screaming and she screams through the chorus – it’s on youtube, or google Burning Flames Back Doh and it should come up.
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I am really tired of some men identifying a problem as a “women’s problem” and then pontificating and telling women, scolding women about what they should do. If Ricky correctly identifies rape as a societal scourge, harming the lives of women and men, then address it and resist the tendency to simultaneously privatize and partition this “problem” as belonging solely to women while lecturing them on the wise use of their time. This is so disturbing because it is a recurring practice and it reveals the deep seated anxiety that all these women groups don’t know what they are about, have too much time on their hands, and worse yet are not really representing the “real” interests of women. In the past six weeks in Barbados I have been very pleased to see the heightened activism of local women’s organizations around the issue of domestic violence building on UNWOMEN’s 16 days Programme . I saw coverage of activities by NOW, the BP&W, IGDS: NBU, the Bureau and others. Apparently Ricky did not see this
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Thanks Mabels7th…I could similarly make a list of organizations and their activities in Jamaica…can somebody send all of these comments to Ricky…so that we are not talking to ourselves??
Rosina, thanks also…your comments are spot on!!
Judith
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[…] Clarke, on her Roots and Rights blog, pointed out that for the last 20 years women’s organisations have in fact been speaking out, […]
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Often I find Ricky’s commentaries on target. This one seems to reflect a blind spot that represents the biggest challenge to transforming the culture supporting violence against women in the region. Our men have to see this as much their responsibility as any one else’s. As you correctly point out , it is essential that the faith based organisations, sports groups, trades unions and private sector organisations speak out on this issue. Hopefully we have reached a turning point.
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Like Jacquie, I am too angry to speak..knowing of the valiant efforts being made by the four listed organizations (with almost no resources, and mostly volunteer work from primarily?? you guessed right – women, NOT men – to address the huge number of incidences of violence against women, especially rape.
I agree with our friends at Rootsandrights….and strongly suggest that Ricky Singh starts the campaign to get his male colleagues, beginning in the media, to take responsibility for the actions of their own male relatives, friends and colleagues and get them to take the lead in protesting against violence/rape against women…it is work..unhappy work..men must do the work as well.
Judith in Jamaica
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Thanks so very much.
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We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. I see women’s organisations in St Lucia working constantly to bring public awareness, and hopefully and end, to this shameful situation. The men usually respond “oh these women again, is wuh dey want now?”. Then a woman is murdered and everybody wants to know why women’s groups aren’t speaking out. Sometimes, like now, I’m too angry to speak.
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Thanks for this. I live in Jamaica and would love if you could tell me the names of women’s organisations that can provide interventions/assistance n the case of domestic violence.
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You can try:
Women’s Inc,
7 Denehurst Avenue–Kingston, 10
Tel: 929-9038- Fax: 926-3091
E mail: w.i.crisiscentre@cwjamaica.com
But also, JAMAICANS FOR JUSTICE
Kingston Chapter
2 Fagan Avenue, Kingston 8, Jamaica, W.I.
Tel: (876) 755-4524-6
Fax: (876) 755-4355
Email: ja.for.justice@cwjamaica.com
And the CISOCA (centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse) a unit of the Jamaica Constabulary
Also Women’s resource and Outreach Centre
Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre (WROC)
47 Beechwood Avenue
Kingston 5
Jamaica, W.I.
Phone: (876) 929-8873 or (876) 960-9067
Fax: (876) 968-9260
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