Is there a curse on SVG?

It is hard not to believe that a curse has been put on this once blessed country of ours. There is a bizarre sickness that appears to be spreading and calls for careful diagnosis and urgent attention. News in recent weeks of sexual abuse, molestation, call it what you will, of girls of tender ages, sent shivers down my spine; then to crown it all, a new trend is developing with communities administering their own justice.

Talking about sickness, news of these incidents is enough to get you sick but when you see the video of what transpired at the Chauncey cemetery on Sunday you might be tempted to conclude that there is little hope for us. It was sheer brutality and chaos and a virtual free for all, despite the intervention of a few brave women.

Why would any normal man want to sexually molest five and ten-year-old girls, in the case of the five- year old, really a baby? What satisfaction can they get? This is not normal, and it might be that their testicles have fitted into the space vacated by their brains. How do parents of young girls who are not yet teenagers feel about sending them anywhere, even to school? What kind of treatment do we provide for these girls of such tender ages?

This is of absolute necessity and urgency. As for the evildoers, is it enough simply to send them to gaol? Are they subjected to psychiatric treatment, for imprisonment by itself is no remedy? A ten-year-old found in a remote area in North Leeward at 9 p.m.! How can this youngster cope psychologically with it? What has gone through the mind of that five-year-old having to encounter what is sheer insanity? What has gone wrong? But we must be forewarned for it might be becoming infectious and if left alone can assume epidemic proportions.

Then as we try to come to grips with such outrageous and obscene behaviour, we find another emerging trend, people in communities administering vigilante justice. In the past anyone who brought shame on his community by defiling its norms became the subject of a ‘Mock hanging’. The community got its satisfaction and the culprit was shamed and became the object of scorn, treated almost like an outcast. As we pushed our way into modern times and methods we have thrown out with the bath water these well tested remedies that our fore-parents used. We have instead become copycats.

There were aspects of the Chauncey lunacy that reminded me of that video that was circulated via social media, claiming falsely that it was from Petit Bordel where there was also community action but apparently tame compared to the brutality shown on the other one.

Is it that people have lost faith in the police and the justice system? What was particularly alarming about the Chauncey episode was that while the husband was being accused of killing his wife, the autopsy suggested that the young lady died from heart failure. This of course introduces another serious matter. The victim has a four-month-old baby but apparently had a serious heart condition that led to her demise. Why was that not picked up during her pregnancy, or was it?

We have already developed a reputation of being a rape centre and ours is described as a rape culture. Such incidents could only worsen and confirm that image. When will all of this lunacy stop? Who is diagnosing the sickness that has taken root? Dis is wha we come to! Vigilante justice! I continue to cry for my country! What next? A rescue mission?
Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian