"I want he to leave me alone" - lessons from walking with an 18 year old Indigenous survivor of gender-based violence

 

Walking with the 18 year old survivor

8pm or so, some drizzles in the night. The 18 year old tells her story. She was working with her friends. The man who is a powerful man in the village came up behind her, slapped her , took away the phone. She had ended the relationship with him. The man had started to contact her when she was under 16. He has 'spoiled other girl children'

Her friend brought her on advice of a village leader. 

The 18 year old says she will make a report, since the police cannot do anything unless a report is made. We feel that she is certain and understands the process. Even as she knows that he has paid off other persons he has attacked.

My colleagues and I go, walking with the 18 year old and her friend. Rain drizzles a bit more. For the first time, I use the umbrella I bought- swag for the commemoration of the rebuilding of the Ram Ayodhya mandir in India. Ram returning to Ayodhya, Ram is not here though in the village.

Her friend turns back at the station.. "No no.. I don't want that man to know I involved".  We try to tell her, we are together, but she says no no.

The 18 year old is calm. Her jaw is hurting.   She does not want anything to eat and smiles when she says 'I will cook when I go home" Her friend is looking after her baby'.  

Police take the report. 

I learn meanwhile, that many people are scared of the man or of getting involved in murder one way or another.

 

Indigenous

Court is every three months in the village, so any woman , any person, who needs emergency protection via the justice system will not get it. 

Probation officers and social workers are not always present in the village, visiting periodically or after cases are reported.

 In some Indigenous villages, some women volunteer or arrange their own funding to support survivors. 

Here though, the 18 year old does not seem to have any support from the village.

My colleagues and I are conscious we are outsiders and angry at how the abuser and rapist intimidates everyone.

The 18 year old makes the report. 

 My colleague checks and realises there is a problem with the way the police wrote on the statement. It takes time. 

The policeman seems to want to be helpful. He has participated in training. He knows the rapist and abuser, but nothing can be done without the report.

I learn that the man who groomed, raped an Indigenous child and then hit her when she moves on from him, the man is connected to big ones who are connected to the PPP as these things go in some Indigenous villages where National politics take precedence over village governance.

The 18 year old Indigenous girl is the  collateral damage of the nastiness in Guyana's PNC and PPP politics where there is no unified platform against gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence

The village leadership has given permission for my colleagues and I to be in the village to do work on awareness of gender-based violence. 

The awareness done by others and us might be working as people can make reports.

 What though is the point of making a report, when court only comes every three months and emergency protection orders cannot be granted? When the abusers can lurk in the village while waiting for court and anyone making a report has to wait with fear?

We go with the 18 year old girl and a police to do a medical. A nurse takes preliminary checks. The doctor does an exam. The 18 year old comes out with a tablet in her hand, says the doctor said to take it. We ask another woman, a nurse we think, about water to drink the tablet.

There is no water in the hospital for the 18 year old girl to drink the tablet. 

The police medical is done. We leave. The medical is not for the 18 year old girl we understand, but for the police. The girl gets some more tablets to take for the pain and to come back for an x-ray next day.

It is near 10pm when everything is done and the 18 year old girl goes home to her child. 

Trying to imagine if she had to do this alone.

"I want he to leave me alone" 

The next day we hear that another man connected to the rapist and abuser has contacted the friends who helped the 18 year old to go to the station. The man threatens them.. They are all scared as there is no guarantee in their village for their safety. They cannot report the threats.

They agree that the only safety is for the 18 year old girl to leave the village.

The 18 year old girl meets one of my colleagues and says that she does not want story, 'I want he to leave me alone'. She did not go back for the x-ray or to the police.

My colleagues and I go through everything we said and did, wondering if we did something wrong, did we not respect her wishes. We are concerned for their safety, we are outsiders .  

We do not judge the 18 year old girl who has to make a choice for safety. 

She lives in a village which the police, the village leadership and the Government cannot guarantee her protection. I cannot guarantee safety and protection from the rapist and abuser who has indirect connections to the PPP leadership which does not want to hold him accountable.

Lessons

The reality is that as we try to use police and court and counselling to stop domestic violence and protect survivors and punish perpetrators , that many survivors of domestic violence just want the abuse and violence to stop.  to 'leave them alone'.

And as a society and community, especially in places where  court does not work every working day like in Georgetown, we have to think about other ways to listen to survivors and  get the violence and abuse to stop.

 This is the second day in the village, and this is the second case I am aware of at the police. 

The first case  , the  man drank and wanted to chop up the woman. She contacted the police and they came. The day we met her, she brought his baby son.. he said he was sorry in the lock up, he did not remember anything. 

She and other relatives where there waiting for his release.

 I am new in the village and don't understand the dynamics. 

I feel foolish as I could see, if only a group of men from the village . sit with this guy, apparently his first time doing this (I aint know if he mix guiness and high wine ) check in with him as he goes home .. to see that he is really sorry and acting on his word.

Another woman tells us that she also reported her husband to the police, then there was some 'counselling' from a nice corporal and others and her husband no longer is abusive.

Some perpetrators might change the behaviour with nurturing interventions from others. 

Alcohol is playing a part in the violence in the communities, gender-based violence and other forms of violence.

In Guyana, alcohol use is encouraged. There are no interventions to heal from the damage caused by alcohol.

 The man who had raped and abused the 18 year old girl and his colleague who threatened her and her friends  will not get any body to heal them because they are powerful. 

We understand that the man said 'he was disrespected' , wanted the girl to be fired from her work.  His PPP friend in the village leadership has not offered any justice mechanisms.

I thought of reporting to the PPP leadership but could not think of anyone who I could tell without causing further harm to the 18 year old girl. 

The 18 year old girl gave me permission to walk with her and others to the police station and hospital . I would need her permission to tell her story to anyone

 

Accountability and healing

Some of the conversations about the violence, the fear are happening in beautiful settings. Under trees, near bamboo groves, in sight of rivers.  

Accountable and principled leadership is needed, nationally and locally to stop gender-based violence. 

And PPP, PNC or neither or both, men who do not think they are abusive have to hold other men accountable. 

As I write this, I am sitting after a woman tells me that a man who I like and gaff with a lot, who has employed me,  is 'rotten to the core' in his treatment of women. 

And I have to figure out how to hold him accountable for this rottenness. Wondering who else I could involve in this.

 The justice system at the moment is not one for healing and since it requires reports and conviction before any rehabilitation can be started, there has to be ways to give the police perhaps and communities resources to go beyond 'he say he sorry, yall go and mek up back" and then to lament that 'the woman report and drop the case.. usual story'.

The Government must allocate resources to every Indigenous community to put permanent mechanisms in place to deal with gender-based violence. 

The Government has to pay people do the work, not expect people to work voluntarily. 

But in a place where oil and gas flows and some health care workers do not have access to water to give patients who have to drink tablets, will these lessons lead to any action for change?