Editorial | A vulgar murder

Barbara Gayle was not a singular victim. Her death is a metaphor, emblematic of an encroaching nihilism and senselessness in Jamaica, manifested in the country’s high rate of murder and callousness in social relations.

So, increasingly, the villains murder even older people and women: 190, or 14 per cent of the 1,393 intentional homicides last year were of women. Forty, or 21 per cent, of the female victims were over 45; seven per cent were 60 or over.

Barbara Gayle, a reporter for this newspaper, was 77. She is now part of Jamaica’s statistics as being among the most murderous countries in the world, with a homicide rate of around 50 per 100,000.

No one deserves to be part of that statistics.

And certainly not Barbara Gayle. Not Barbara Gayle, the court reporter. Not Barbara Gayle, the human being. And in Barbara Gayle there was no sharp demarcation between either personas.

It is not known if Ms Gayle consciously set out to be that way, but the common credo of these two sides of Barbara Gayle was decency and empathy. It is hardly likely that anyone, including her murderer(s), would claim that she possessed a single evil or untoward bone in her body.

Reporters bring their individually unique strengths to their craft; the thing that marks them as special in specific circumstances, and which aware editors judiciously engage and exploit. Barbara Gayle embodied several and, critically, the most important ones. Inherently, she invited trust. And she commanded her beat.

UNPRETENTIOUSNESS

These are important assets for all journalists, but carry a special weight for a legal reporter who spent most of her time in the courts and among lawyers and judges, who tend to prize anonymity when sharing confidences – as many did with Ms Gayle.

Indeed, in her more than five decades of walking the corridors of Jamaica’s Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, poring over dusty files in dank offices or following legal arguments and manoeuvres in courtrooms, there have been very few, if any, complaints against Ms Gayle – whether from staff or lawyers and judges. Sources were secure.

Indeed, there was an unpretentiousness about her reporting, which perhaps was manifested in her demeanour: understated, but of wisdom. There was an implicit appreciation among all parties that her reporting would be fair, in pursuance of the facts and any truths they revealed. She was a purveyor, not arbiter.

If she got it wrong, which was rare, there would be no contorted explanations, or attempt to wiggle away from responsibility. The error was acknowledged and corrected.

In that personality was decency and the foundation for trust.

And in the news business where competition, the drive to be first and the search for the scoop, often elicits selfishness, Barbara Gayle was selfless. She shared.

She willingly helped reporters, even from competitive media, through the labyrinth of the court buildings and their arcane systems and their personalities. She asked nothing in return.

Which exacerbates the indecency and vulgarity of Barbara Gayle’s killing. The murder of a slight woman of 77, with a wry smile, merely over five feet tall. This woman who most colleagues and friends of over half a century struggle to recall ever raising her voice or speaking angrily.

Yet, Barbara Gayle was stabbed several times, a violation and violence as undeserved as it would be unfathomable, were it not too common in Jamaica.

LARGER JUSTICE

Instinctively, Ms Gayle’s murder fuels anger, sparking an impulse for vengeance. Get the boys – whoever the ‘boys’ are.

But unstructured rage is not the emotion that Barbara Gayle deserves, or would want. Her murderer(s) should be found and made to face the law.

But the larger justice for Barbara Gayle, and for all Jamaicans, is to ensure that there are few victims like Ms Gayle, of whatever gender or age.

That requires smart policies, an effective investigative apparatus, and an efficient criminal justice system that quickly brings to account perpetrators of crime.

That, however, is only part of it. Jamaica’s crisis insists upon a massive effort at inculcating the basic values of decency and respect, starting at all levels of the school system and in the wider society. Or, a national mobilisation for values and attitudes to help fashion a softer and gentler Jamaica.

That will demand hard and consistent effort. Declarations cannot be conflated with effective action. Which is something that Barbara Gayle appreciated.