DR MARGARET NAKHID-CHATOOR
THE WORD family, instead of domestic, is used to highlight the gruesome fact that many individuals all over this nation are subject to family abuse, relationships are being destroyed, and in some incidents lives are lost.
Domestic or family violence can be easy for people to ignore as it often happens without any witnesses and other people may doubt the veracity of the offence, sanitising the criminal act and hiding the ugly truths by using words such as 'discipline' when physical abuse is carried out, or portraying the perpetrator as 'a good man; he never raise his hand before; kind mentor.'
Do 'good and kind men' beat and subjugate others? Anyone who threatens, intimidates and beats you does not love you. Get that in your head - mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend, partner, spouse. In their fits of rage, wanting to show how powerful they are and how sorry you should be to have crossed them or gotten them angry, they whip out their tools - belt/cutlass/fists/wood and vent their anger. Weak men. Powerless women and children. Unfortunate, orphaned children left behind with a legacy filled with bitter memories. Shame!
Violence in families is not okay, and it should never be ignored. Can you imagine the last minutes before that child took her last breath, bloodied and beaten, and, like George Floyd, possibly calling out for her mother? When the back of the defenceless mother was hacked open with a cutlass and in such excruciating pain, wondering what she had done to deserve such pain, she died.
And yet people continue to shift blame and sanitise the event, casting aspersions on the dead - 'young girls difficult now, yuh know. I sure she do something bad, had a boyfriend, or run away.' Or seeking refuge at your family home, families who should be the protectors and safe havens, only to be turned away - 'Is married people business. Fix it!' Shame!
The ugly truths about family/domestic violence, and the continued use of excessive corporal punishment in homes, by both men and women behind closed doors, must be exposed. If you see it, say it! Expose those perpetrators who hide behind the cloak of silence, hoping that you will never expose them for fear of retaliation: battered women who in turn abuse their children; fathers, some of them from wealthy homes in Trinidad - doctors and businessmen - who beat their grown-up daughters still, as reported to us on the CIT (Crisis Intervention hotline). Tell someone.
Family violence is a crime. Report it. But do the police and courts take family violence as seriously as they should? Less than 40 per cent of women who experience violence seek help of any sort or report the crime, and less than ten per cent of those women go to the police.
One woman reported that her husband physically threw her out of her home at eight months pregnant and beat her in front of her three young children. The police who eventually came told her to leave the home (and go where?) and did no
