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A recent event triggered an avalanche of blocked memories. One dates back to more than 50 years ago.
A man of the fields had six daughters and a son right in the middle. He worked hard but when he earned some money it went to alcohol. He was violent then.
His wife fled, leaving him with these seven children. As each of his daughters entered puberty, he tried to force himself on them. I don’t know if he was successful. I know the second one pulled a knife for him.
One of them must have been about 11 when her turn came. Her body had developed earlier than her sisters. He molested her. Her grandfather did too. The neighbour did as well. All of these men are long dead.
But this defenceless little girl was left in the hands of nasty old men. Not only was she and her siblings exposed to regular, brutal beatings with a belt, their childhood years were spent taking full responsibility for domestic duties: cooking, cleaning, washing.
Schooling was incidental and short. They attended when they could. And there was the sexual abuse. People knew, and muttered about it, but no one acted. Instead, she was treated like she was to blame.
One day, some incident occurred, maybe it was when the knife was pulled, but their mother came and took them all away.
The father soon picked up with another woman, who had three children, two girls and a boy. I believe he molested the eldest girl as well.
He and the mother, who seemed to drink as heavily as he did, fought often. Sometimes she would run out into the street, naked and screaming. Her son, a quiet, brooding child, was a witness.
I had no idea what had become of them. Over the years, I had heard of deaths. Three or four of the first set of siblings had passed. I asked someone who knew about it whether it was appropriate for me to relate their experience.
I was told that the one who had been repeatedly molested had turned to a life of crime, and that the son from her father’s second partnership was in cahoots with her. My heart sank.
(Copyright Jamaica Empire.)
What chance did they have? What kind of life could they possibly have had?
I was a child, could scarcely understand what was going on, but it filled me with terror, being a distant witness to these regular acts of violence in all forms.
Maybe 30 years later, at the other end of that same street, a woman with daughters, left to raise them on her own, allowed an elderly man with some means to help look after them in exchange for sexual offerings.
Maybe it was just from the oldest one, who was a child. But this grimy old man took advantage of that family. The eldest eventually took off with a flashy man, who was reputed to be a gangster.
What chance did she have?
I know of so many instances of young girls, barely into puberty, who have been pounced upon by sleazy men who see them as objects to satisfy their lust.
I was 12 when a relative of my stepmother’s grabbed me and kissed me. Fifteen, when two men at a place where I was working lunged and groped on separate occasions. Each time, there was nothing to suggest what was coming. Each time, I was terrified to say anything.
I bet you anything that the majority of girls in this world have experienced some degree of sexual molestation as they entered their teens. Boys too. It warps their notion of sexuality, sullies it.
These things are not new at all. It isn’t a behaviour that is purely a result of “pornography, alcohol and drug addiction in the country, combined with lack of parental responsibility, along with mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, etc” as the Prime Minister has suggested.
Photo: Office of the Parliament 2025.
Although those are elements which contribute to the proclivity, to me, it is more closely connected to conditioning that men are superior beings, entitled to treat women as commodities, existing to satisfy their desires—about ownership and control.
The Prime Minister had also made the astonishing declaration that some teenagers “want to act like adults, but as soon as the law intervenes, revert to being a child,” as she threatened that should they misbehave they would be treated like adults by the law.
It is the kind of sentiment one hears from folks who have personally experienced deviant behaviour from minors. Maybe it is a traumatised response.
Many parents are struggling to cope with their teenagers. But before we walk down that abusive road we should consider the lives that children are forced into.
(via iStockphoto.)
The casual cruelties, the sordid exposure, the treatment that makes them feel they are unworthy of care. If they are force-ripe as has been suggested, who forced them into that unhealthy state?
There is absolutely nothing nurturing in referring to children as if they are rotten eggs to be discarded, without regard for the circumstances that pitched them into trauma at impressionable ages.
They are still children, at a vulnerable stage. Humans who arrive into adulthood carrying these scars and open wounds need help to carry on living.
When we mistreat them, we rob them of a fair chance to live and that is on us, not them.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
