Carolyn Cooper, Contributor
"A wonda whe Sandra deh?"- Teacher, you just don't understand, the girl don't come home.
- You mean she did not go home last night?
- No, teacher, is a week now since a don't see her.
- Well, teacher is really a long story but, well, it really go like this. You see the gentleman I am along with is not fi-Sandra father, in fact him is not any of the pickney-dem father, although this one a carrying here is fi-him own. Well, Sandra is the biggest one and when she go home in the evening she have to cook and clean for I do ..., well really ... I is a domestic and I don't get off of work early ..., and really most days I stop in because I can't afford the bus fare. Well, Sandra she ..., mi tell you seh de lickle gal lie you see, she seh that Rupert, that is my ... gentleman, that in the night when the lickle one dem gone to bed that Rupert beg her.
- Beg her?
- Yes man, she sey him beg her and him tell her if she tell me him going kill her. Well, a tell yu mam, when de lille gal tell me dat, a bax her down pon de groun, and a sit down pon her head, and tell her seh a gwine learn her fi no tell lie pon big people.
Ah de same Rupert have fi drag mi off a her. Ah was going kill her dead. Well when him wouldn't let me go mek a bruk de lille Jezebel neck a tell her fi come out a mi yard for if she old enough fi a look man she must go out a door and look man fi herself fi look after her, like Rupert look after me, and leave mi man alone.
A sorry teacher, is just dat everytime a tink bout it, it mek mi blood bwile. Well, di facey gal no lef and from dat night mi no see har.
Mi thought she gone a her granny a Waterworks but when mi check she no di de an him granny seh him never come de at all. Well even dough de gal so forward she a still mi pickney and mi wouldn't like fi know seh nutting happen to her so a it mek mi check ya today to see if she still a come to school or whe she de.
Mi naw tell yu no lie, mi no really want her back whe mi de but a would a like fi know that whe she is she is quite alright. Ah ten pickney me ha, dis one eena di belly meck eleven and Rupert kind and good to me, an mi naw meck no one, not even me owna kin box di bread out a mi mout.
Well, thank yu then mam. Ah sorry to give yu so much trouble ...
Mrs. Kay Anderson, multi-talented artist, writer and teacher, wrote that haunting account of the impact of male sexual violence on both Sandra - the primary victim - and the unnamed mother of this abused girl. What is so disturbing about this tale is Mrs. Anderson's subtle portrayal of the complexity of the mother's response to her abused child. The mother simply refuses to believe her daughter.
And you can understand why. The enormity of the implications of believing the child is just too much. The mother would have to confront her partner. And the dolly house would mash up. So the mother buries her head in the sand. And tries to bear the burden of guilt. What if the child is not lying?
This woman is a domestic servant. But child abuse knows no class barriers. Mrs. Anderson told me about a girl who used to take the bus with her to go to school. She came from a nice middle-class family. 'High colour,' as we used to say is less enlightened times. Mrs. Anderson says, 'she used to play Mary in the school play so you must know what she looked like.' The girl committed suicide. She, too, was a victim of sexual abuse. How should we treat men who perpetrate this kind of violence? I once wrote a newspaper column for the Observer with the inflammatory headline: 'Man's penis cut off in carnal abuse case'.
As I said in the column, I wished that it was a bona fide headline. It wasn't. What the headline on the front page of The Gleaner actually said was 'Carnal abuser: I'm sorry'. It's really a sorry state of affairs. Our legal system that is. I must confess that I understand why some people take the law into their own hands. Lynch justice does have a basic appeal. It's the old 'eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' logic of Old Testament fame. Of course, if we followed that principle to the letter, we'd end up with nothing but a whole set of blind-eye, mash-mout people.
Many Jamaicans firmly believe that we can't look to our legal system for justice. There is often no correlation between crime and punishment. If you have friends in high places, if you have the money to pay for a ruthless lawyer, strings can be pulled and compromises arranged. Our collective lack of confidence in our legal system has deadly consequences. That's why thieves are instantly executed in many rural districts in Jamaica. Dead men can't get bail. They certainly don't live to say 'I'm sorry.' Or come back to steal the product of your hard labour. I'm not justifying lynching. I understand its appeal.
No Justice
I have to thank my friend Colette Garrrick for bringing to my attention the macabre story of the thirty-three-year-old man who had been abusing his 13-year-old step-daughter since she was 10 years old. Colette was so distressed that she'd been trying to mobilise women to speak out on the issue. She'd got the poet, Lorna Goodison, to help her write a letter of protest.
When I read the newspaper report I, myself, got angry. I had to say something. It really is a bizarre story. The man pleads guilty to the charges. In a surprising turn of events, the accused is given a three-year suspended sentence! Most alarming to me is the following section of The Gleaner report:
"Mr. Justice Langrin, in sentencing the man, said he deserved to go to prison, but he took into consideration that he had two younger children to support, that he was penitent, that he is married to the child's mother and that the accused said he would give anything to rehabilitate the abused child."
Incidentally, The Gleaner was the only newspaper to have carried this story as far as I can tell. Does it mean that the other media houses don't recognise the volatile nature of this issue of child abuse? It would have been most illuminating for us to have seen how this inflammatory court case might have been otherwise observed and heralded. Pun intended. But, perhaps, the silence is telling enough.
Kitchin talk
What kind of 'extenuating' circumstances are these that Mr. Justice Langrin outlines? And how is the role of the victim's mother in this nasty affair to be properly assessed? At least three times in the newspaper report the point is made that the mother knew what was going on. Her knowledge is presented as some kind of justification, or, at least, an excuse, for the man's abusive actions.
When I picked up this 'don't blame the criminal' line, I telephoned Arthur Kitchin, the attorney who defended the abuser, to get a better sense of what had happened. He kept making the point that the woman is largely to blame. Had she sounded the alarm earlier, things wouldn't have gone so far.
Perhaps. But could she have stood up to this abusive man? That's the real problem which dependent women have to deal with. They don't dare box the bread out of their own mouth, or their children's. So they have to be prepared to sacrifice their female children on the altar of male impotence. It's an old, old story.
I wonder if the other two children left in the house are girls. How soon will they be called upon to take up the duties of their victimised sister?
And then I noticed that the accused 'would give anything to rehabilitate the abused child.' I wonder if he's willing to give up his penis - the blunt instrument of abuse. Somehow, I don't think his penitence goes quite that far!
Then, as we talk today about violence against women, we cannot forget that women also commit acts of violence against men. As women, we cannot afford to focus on only one side of the problem of violence. We have to see the problem in all its complexity.
So let me share with you another column I wrote for the Observer in which I ask the question, 'Uman can rape man fi true'?
I've focused today on violence that is expressed in acts of sexual abuse. But, of course, violence takes on many forms. Quite recently, on the 'Nationwide' talk show, I reminded the audience of the terrible power of psychological violence. When we keep on insisting that women are not capable of providing political leadership at the highest levels in the nation, what we are doing is committing psychological violence. It can be just as destructive as physical violence. Let us, as women, nurture each other and provide the support that is so essential for our collective survival.
As women, we must unite to change the oppressive circumstances of our life. As we join hands across lines of colour, class and political affiliation even, we can create opportunities for social transformation. We must ensure that Jamaica becomes a society in which men, women and children are freed from the fear of violence - in all its destructive forms. This is the legacy we must leave for future generations.
Professor Carolyn Cooper is a senior lecturer at the UWI, Mona.
