There is anger, there is pain and there is outrage. Trinidad and Tobago and those the world over who read about the tragic case of baby Aliyah Johnson are mourning her death and asking themselves how this was allowed to happen? The airways and social networks are full of calls for retribution and same soul searching.
I fear, however, that just like Akiel Chambers, Amy Annamunthodo, Sean Luke and many others, when all the commotion dies down everyone will forget about these children and forget about soul-searching and move onto the next political bacchanal or scandal. This demonstrates the problem I alluded to last week; to a society that is broken and where people care only about themselves. To a state run by a ship of fools who are dwelling a century in the past. To a country devoid of morals, compassion, trust and hope.
The articles and columns will be published. The talking heads will come out to make their points, sadly some unscrupulous individuals will try to make political or personal mileage out of this tragedy. But who will ask the hard questions and, even more difficult, come up with the solutions? Who will acknowledge the part that society and our culture plays in perpetuating these abuses? Will it be the minister who seems to be spinning top in mud? Will it be the academics and child psychologists who studied Freud and Jung and not the culture of Trinidad and Tobago? Will it be the religious authorities who will inevitably talk about "the Devil", "Satan", "evil" and "God" as though these hollow words give any comfort or mean anything?
The evil we are supposed to be looking at is the evil of a silent society.
Where are the social services for women who are abused, raped or pregnant with unwanted pregnancies? Why do we not have in every single major area women's shelters and safe homes? Why has Trinidad and Tobago not woken up to the reality that children are people and have rights and we have responsibilities toward them?
Most people, even those who would consider themselves "good" parents, would say they made their children and they're theirs to do with as they see fit. Granted, the majority of parents will never do anything to harm their children, they still think the State and laws have no place in raising children and their homes are their realms of total control. This thinking, this sick and outdated thinking, devalues children and dehumanises them. Children, from the day they are born, have all the rights as other citizens.
We don't have proper foster care facilities. The few homes for children we have are woefully inadequate and run by religious authorities with help from the State. What concrete measures have we made to deal with children who are being abused? If a child reports she is being abused and she is believed and the case is proven, what will we do with her? What we are doing now is placing her back in the same home where she was abused and though the perpetrator may be in jail, he will not remain there long and the environment in the home goes toxic, that child is blamed by relatives for putting away their kin and the cycle of abuse may start all over again. Does this sound logical? Putting children back where they were abused? That's what we do because as a country we have not developed a robust foster care system or a culture of adoption.
Baby Aliyah had no one to cry out to, she probably only recently learnt to speak. But there are countless other children who have worked up the courage to speak out but they either have no one to speak to, they are not believed or worse they are punished.
A friend of my family was thrown into the streets at the age of 13 when she told her mother her step father was abusing her. Her own mother cast her out! How can we deal with these despicable people? What policy, what measure, what system can we develop to stop children from being abused by their own loved ones? No country on this earth has yet been able to eradicate child abuse. What can we do?
The usual response would be to strengthen legislation to deal with perpetrators, but this only works for those who are caught. We would also be advised to strengthen and increase child and social services, but how are we going to overcome the culture of shame and reluctance that plagues victims. We would be told to be vigilant as communities but how will neighbours know if a baby that cannot speak as yet is being abused in a locked room? We will be told to pray, but people have been praying going on a few thousand years now and nothing has improved so that suggestion is untenable.
I don't know what's the definitive answer, but I do know we are lacking in services and drowning in backward culture. I do know that we can't let child abuse be a seven-day wonder, I do know that there are many thousands more like baby Aliyah right now in Trinidad and Tobago and we have to act fast to save them. I do know that we cannot forget baby Aliyah and the others just like her.
• Rajiv Gopie won the President's Medal in
2006 for business/modern studies. He is an
MSc candidate in International Relations
at the London School of Economics.
—rajivgopie@hotmail.com
