Hartley Neita, Contributor
I WANTED TO end this series by interviewing a girl who had either been raped at an early age, or had seen her mother shot and killed by young men who did these acts in a cold and callous manner.
Some years ago, I had met victims of these brutal acts, but when I tried to get them to talk, they clammed up.
I saw terror in their eyes as they relived those moments and I could not pursue my questioning. I tried again last week, but had the same response.
In doing so, however, I remembered my own experience some thirty years ago with four men and a teenager, who held up a group of us at the Stony Hill Hotel in St. Andrew.
ORDEAL
The teenager was 'hippity-hoppity', twiddling with his revolver as if it was a pen or pencil, and I expected him to fire a shot at any time.
The one I was really afraid of, however, was a tough, rough, gruff man, with muscles bulging in his T-shirt. He carried a shotgun.
For the 30 minutes or so of the ordeal, time seemed to crawl. It was like moving from high speed to first gear, without passing the gear lever through third and second gears.
The obvious leader of the gang, who I subsequently learned had already killed over 12 persons, tried to keep us calm.
"All we want is you' money, jewelry, car keys and you' gun."
Those, I thought, were to be last words I would hear.
The memory of that night still haunts me from time to time. So, I can well understand the reluctance of anyone talking about being raped or seeing their mother murdered. I do not have the mental scars they do.
Television brings the horrors of these incidents into our homes every night.
This past week, there were two mothers crying their appeal to whoever had taken their two 15-year-old daughters away, to return them home. The news report said the girls were seen leaving for Negril.
Fortunately - and happily, for the mothers - the girls were subsequently found walking the streets of Savanna-la-Mar in Westmoreland.
There have been many reports of girls being lured from their homes by men. It does not happen overnight.
The men see and meet the girls and woo them with words such as 'Hi, nice girl' and 'Hello, pretty girl', then follows gifts of money and perhaps a cellphone.
From then, it is easy to move to stage two, with promising lures of the high life and pretty clothes, ending with drugs and sex.
The sad things about many of these television stories is that you never hear of the happy endings of girls being reunited with their mothers. The only time the television camera points at them again is when they are found dead in a pasture.
A NEW VILLAGE
People in villages know what is taking place in their communities.
They see strange men talking to schoolgirls, but because these communities no longer operate as a unit, they do not tell the parents about what they see and hear.
Parents are sometimes angry when problems about their children are brought to their attention by neighbours, partly because they are ashamed of not observing the changed behaviour of their young ones, and partly because 'it is nobody's business but my own'.
This was not so years ago and we cannot go back to the time of the old village.
As Dr. Peter Weller said in an earlier interview, we need to realise that there is a new village responding to contemporary challenges.
Weller is of the view that there needs to be more understanding of the reality that young people now face.
They are influenced by the mass media and the millions of sources on the Internet that are programming them and we cannot prevent that. We have to learn to manage it.
"The simple answer," he continues, "is that adults need to understand them and what they are learning. We need to understand what the impact on the kids is of all the information they are now exposed to. And that is why I have always been critical of some of the advertisements that suggest you cannot party without the liquor, you cannot work or play without this alcohol or drink, and you cannot get a woman unless you are stimulated by these influences."
PUNISHMENT TO FIT MOTIVATION
Dr. Weller also says that public attitude is that punishment must fit the crime.
He thinks the punishment must fit the motivation - and the motivation and the crime are not always the same.
Many of these young men who gravitate to crime are looking for status and when they do something wrong and are caught, the response is to arrest them and lock them up where they now finds themselves with a new set of peers and there, gain more status.
Over the centuries, various forms of punishment have been tried to stem the problem of crime and violence.
In earlier times, men and women were beheaded in Jamaica and their heads placed on pikes in public places for all to see as a warning.
Men were bounded in gibbets and left to hang in sun and rain, without food and water until they shrivelled and died. Flogging and whipping have been tried. So, too, has hanging.
And Saddam punished an entire community by murdering every man, woman and child for attempting to assassinate him.
Today, most of the punishments by the state for crimes is done behind closed doors.
And Weller says that if for men whose motivation for perpetuating crimes is status in their communities, then the punishment should be to lower their status - to teach them or shame them.
