grrlscene

Post 403.

I look back now on why I never sought to convince Ziya to believe in Santa Claus. I think I had decided that I would be a mom who always told her the truth. Also, she was always a logical child so one fanciful story would have led to several other untruths to explain how only some reindeer flew through the sky, how Santa got in past the burglar-proofing, and how come the dogs never barked at him, for pothounds are renowned barkers, even while retreating with each woof.

When my grandmother passed away, my mom told Zi that my grandmother became a star looking down at us at nights. Zi promptly asked me if all the stars were dead people. Also, if Santa could get in, so could bandits, right? She was a cautious, somewhat anxious child with a litany of questions whenever I put her to bed, and I thought honesty would always be more reassuring, and would instigate fewer unanswerable questions. So, truth and logic prevailed, perhaps sacrificing a little of the fiction that typically creates Christmas spirit.

We would still joyfully decorate a small tree, string up lights, and open presents thoughtfully chosen. Our magic became our time together and with grandparents and cousins, as we traipsed from our home to theirs, taking family pictures, sharing food, and watching the children reap a small bounty.

Now that she’s a big ten-year-old, we have been trying to think about how to continue to thread the magic through this time; how to transition her from a Christmas spirit characterised by small hands excitedly tearing open wrapping paper to one that is about giving in the way that Santa Claus does; far, wide and big-heartedly.

So, we told her a story about special knowledge that you learn as you grow up, to which all of us are one day introduced, and which she’s now old enough to learn. It’s a secret really, though it seems she had a sense of it all along. It’s true that Santa is not real, but the reason that children are taught about him is because he is a symbol of the spirit which ultimately connects us from house to house and from country to country around the world.

We told her stories of donations we had made or helped provide to those in need, without announcing it to anyone. We told her that all adults do this because they know that’s what the spirit of Christmas means. It’s something we should do all year around, but this time is a reminder to us all, just like the story of Santa is a reminder to little children of how joyful it is to be a generous person, an idea they eventually come to appreciate.

It’s only when children get big enough that the knowledge that Santa Claus is simply a symbol, who everyone knows isn’t real, is shared with them. However, your mom only wanted you to know what was truthful and what you should believe in, we told her; the spirit of thinking of others, sharing from what you have, and being giving.

That night, she pondered what she could give and the next day decided on cookies she baked, which she could package for neighbours, other children, and those to whom she wanted to say thank you. Thus followed a baking extravaganza, which we kept an eye on, but let her do on her own. Cookies rose from the oven, mixed with chocolate chips and sprinkles, and pride at her big-girl understanding. She had never believed in Santa Claus, who isn’t real and who she would outgrow anyway. Now she had a surer sense of the magic that would last a lifetime, filling her spirit again and again, perhaps not only at Christmas, but throughout the year.

These chances for wonderment go by quickly, for children grow up very fast. With each stage, parents get precious opportunities to teach truths and values, and create new memories. This year, again, we have our little pine tree, now two years old, standing taller with stronger branches. We’ve had to teach her that it’s not whether it’s big or covered in decorations or compares to others that matter. We are teaching her to cherish grandparents and cousins, and the joy of being together.

Whatever lessons you are using this time to teach your children, may their truth and magic last. However you celebrate the spirit of giving, may you have a merry Christmas.

Post 402.

Sometimes, when I’m quietly at my desk, the media calls for a statement on another murdered woman, and I haven’t yet heard the news, and my instinct is to just sit silently in shock despite demands to respond immediately. Quite often, despite having so many recommendations at my fingertips, I’m at a loss for words. It’s regret that we couldn’t do enough to save another child from abuse or another girl from disappearing or another woman from death.

Sometimes, I send the media to other advocates, from Women of Substance or the Organisation for Abused and Battered Individuals or the Coalition Against Domestic Violence or CreateFutureGood or Womantra, and I wonder if their heart will sink the way mine does when they get that call.

Sometimes, I’m just tired thinking and talking about violence. It feels never-ending, like waiting for the next story, or knowing that so much harm to women and girls is occurring in the peacefulness of each night and remaining unreported. Despite the need to be aware, there are mornings when I can’t read the news. As a nation, we are so traumatised by stories we hear. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like for victims, and the cost they pay for our slowness to change hangs heavy in my chest.

It must be like this for so many who are addressing violence in a sustained way: social workers, counsellors, service providers, police officers, shelter managers, those working in child protection, those providing victim and witness support, media workers, advocates and activists. I think about the trauma they carry, as we all do, with each story. I think about how much I have to stay abreast of interviews, opinion pieces, political leaders’ statements, and debates about violence against women and girls, and it makes me very tired. Sometimes, I close my eyes and wish it was easy to not care.

Violence doesn’t only traumatise victims and families, its harm spreads wide for it also brings feelings of fear and powerlessness, injustice and sadness. People want more guns. I want more social workers. More of those healing rather than harming communities everywhere.

Sometimes, I think I’m not very good for my family, for I’m hardly present enough, and I often miss the chance to take a walk with Ziya or have breakfast together or spend time with her while she falls asleep at night. There are costs to this commitment; costs to time, energy, and mental and physical health. I wonder if I’m failing to make memories with her, for I seem to always be working, in some way, to make a difference. I wonder how much women have to give before they burn out. I wonder how everyone else does it. I dream of a month where there are no reports of abuse so I could spend more time with my family, set aside advocacy, and pretend injustice doesn’t exist.

I didn’t want to leave this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence without thinking of all those giving as much as they can to end violence in families and against children, to help victims secure justice and find healing, and to improve state response. I know they are tired. They were tired when young Shannon Banfield was killed in December four years ago. In the wake of Ashanti Riley’s killing, they are even more tired today.

We think about victims and families, and distressed communities, but we don’t often understand the impact on those responding, the care and understanding they need from their partners, and the exhaustion they carry. Sometimes, I know that they return home at the end of the day as emptied individuals with nothing more to give even to those they love.

To those that are doing this work, I wish you rejuvenation. I wish you time with loved ones. I wish you a sea bath to wash away the pain you encounter daily. I know you have dedicated your life to a better world. I know weariness will not stop your commitment. In my last words on violence for this year, I honour your contribution and impact, however incremental. I write to thank you for the work that you do.

Post 401.

When will it be safe to travel by taxi? When will no one get raped in church? When will fathers not rape daughters in a security booth? When will a ten-year-old girl never again have to survive being smothered while molested repeatedly by a man the family trusted? When will we be safe in our bedrooms?

When will killers stop stuffing women into a barrel or leaving them dead on a river bank or beaten bloody on a forest floor or beheaded in front of their families? When will women never again be bludgeoned outside their work or set on fire in their home or stabbed to death outside of a school?

When will men no longer drug girls and drag them home claiming they are their daughters? When will adolescent girls no longer disappear at rates higher than any other group in our society? When will migrant girls stop being the most vulnerable to trafficking and sexual exploitation?

When will the threat and fear of sexual violence not define the lives of girls and women from birth to death? When will a baby always be free from rape and incest? When will there be sufficient safe houses? When will perpetrators be put out by police so that families can be safe in their homes?

When will male partners, husbands, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, cousins, police officers, church elders, teachers, taxi drivers, bandits, businessmen and traffickers stop sexually violating, raping and beating women, girls and boys?

When will we acknowledge how many pregnancies result from unwanted sex, forced sex, and rape? When will we acknowledge how many miscarriages result from women being beaten while pregnant? When will we be honest that women are raped by their partners in front of their children because making children witness violence is a known and common practice to instill silence, compliance and fear?

When will the media not describe a man’s sexual assault of a mother with the headline that she was smoking ganja as if that was an invitation to rape, when he pointed a gun at her head and at her baby? When will we no longer say a woman was raped or beaten or killed and instead report that another man beat, raped and killed, putting attention and responsibility on those committing acts of violence?

When will state officials stop speaking as if women choose violence by wearing a skirt, going to lime, agreeing to a relationship, playing mas, or wanting to keep their job?

When will more men hold their bredren accountable for their violence? When will they stop men from preying on young girls as happens every day? When will the majority of men stop staying silent? When will they only show boys to obey women and girls’ right to be free and safe? When will someone always intervene?

When will we realise women stay because they can’t financially afford to leave, they fear the licks they’ll get if they do or they believe they or their children will be murdered if they go? Don’t we see that women are at greatest risk of being murdered when they try to leave? How can we blame women when perpetrators leave a trail of victims as they go from relationship to relationship?

When will churches and mosques and temples acknowledge that women are deathly afraid and may have nowhere to turn because families send them back and religious leaders advise women to stay, to keep trying, to be forgiving and to be more submissive? When will religious leaders stop telling men that their rightful role is to lead women when these very beliefs are the root cause of so many women’s vulnerability?

When will mothers never again be complicit in the abuse and prostitution of their children? For no children should be sacrificed by adults, regardless of their own fear and trauma or need to survive.

When will every perpetrator be named by those who know them? When will there be programmes targeted at perpetrators?

When will we stop being asked for solutions after repeating the solutions again and again year after year amidst political lip service, state under-resourcing, and leaders’ misguided admonitions of women? When will one little girl or boy be too many? When will one more woman killed be considered a reason for a national emergency? When will Ashanti Riley’s horrific murder become a wake-up call for action and measurable results that create transformation? When will we finally do enough?

If not today, if not now, when? When?

Post 400.

Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis has provoked local debate about what constitutes humane state and social policy toward refugees and migrants. It was inhumane to put human beings, including children, to sea in a pirogue. It’s inhumane to deport those who are in the process of resolving refugee claims. It’s inhumane to separate children from parents.

However, the nitty-gritty of a human rights approach across state agencies, the labour market and our communities is much more complex and propels us, a migrant society, to reckon with the contradictory mix of stereotypes, exploitation and sexual violence as well as compassion and opportunity that Venezuelan and other migrants encounter here.

Venezuelans were already migrating to and from Trinidad when First Peoples still called the island Kairi. Indeed, we are a broken fragment from the Venezuelan mainland. We also have a long and embedded history of Spanish-speaking communities.

It’s clear that contemporary capital and elites move across borders with an ease and invisibility that the most poor and vulnerable are inequitably and visibly denied, whether because of their nationality, race, gender, sexuality or disability, or limited formal schooling. Yet, migrants always contribute to economies and societies, particularly when there are legal options for them to integrate, and should never be maligned simply as burden or criminal threat.

There has been and will always be migration, within and across national borders. It is increasing as a result of growing economic inequality and climate change, both of which are linked to political instability. The question is how we choose to understand and manage it. And, we should keep in mind, we may be in the same position one day.

There is Minister Young’s commitment to upholding immigration law combined with the porous reality of our borders, which makes such commitment operate through highly unsystematic policing, often accompanied by an extra-legal male threat, extortion and violence to those entering under the shadows of state oversight.

There is an informal economy that can absorb both documented and undocumented migrants because they can be paid lower wages and their labour can be more greatly exploited, particularly women working in feminised roles as domestics, carers, low-waged employees in supermarkets and factories, and in service jobs in restaurants and bars.

Unclear policy direction has also meant that Venezuelan migrants, especially women and girls, are vulnerable to violence of various kinds, from partners, employers, landlords, immigration officials, and traffickers, and are at risk of deportation if they report any of these crimes. Children of parents without asylum or citizenship status also become stateless, living in countries in which they have no right to education, livelihoods and health. This will certainly become a challenge. Given the numbers of migrant children out of school, it already is.

I’ve been listening a lot. Hearing both heart and help from so many on the ground, and also fear and condemnation, not only of Venezuelans, but migrants overall. As young migration scholar Tivia Collins wrote in her letter to the editor of August 28, “Despite our personal opinions on the circumstances of Venezuelans’ arrival to Trinidad and Tobago, or on the ways we think they live, we have a right to be kind and show empathy to others in need” In their article documenting interviews with Venezuelan migrant women, Collins and Richie Ann Daly recommend that “the Government of Trinidad and Tobago implement a migration policy that guarantees the rights of migrants in vulnerable situations within the country.” They call for “local legislation on asylum seekers and refugees, which would provide a formal system for Venezuelan migrants to legally live and work in Trinidad and Tobago.” Third, they emphasise training for immigration officers and public education to promote empathy.

R4V (Response for Venezuelans), a co-ordination platform for refugees and migrants from Venezuela, additionally calls on Caribbean states to ensure that “returns to Venezuela are not forced.” In its own words, “It is important to note that returning to one’s home country is a human right, and often the most desirable durable solution for many refugees. However…the current conditions in Venezuela remain problematic and not conducive for a dignified and safe return. At this point, returns should continue to be only for those who truly wish to voluntarily return and are not forced…since this would amount to…a serious human right violation”.

Such discrimination and violation are happening here, with tragic impunity. I reflect on this reading the newspapers, reminding myself about justice and kindness, and a nation of migrants yet again struggling to recognise our common humanity.

Post 399.

Last week, Dr Hazel Da Breo of the Sweetwater Foundation in Grenada alerted us to her work on understanding and preventing sexual abuse of minors under five years old. Da Breo, a psychotherapist and child protection specialist, was speaking at a network meeting of the Break the Silence Campaign, initiated by the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, UWI, St Augustine Campus, and now in its 12th year. So far, it is the only long-standing national campaign to raise public awareness about child sexual abuse and incest, and to try to prevent sexual violence against children through research and social norm change. 

To understand this vulnerability better, I returned to the Children’s Authority of TT 2018 Annual Report. Children under one year old are three per cent of clients with those between one and three years old, rising to ten per cent of clients, and those between four and six years old comprising 14 per cent of clients. The majority of cases are for neglect and, second, physical abuse, but these numbers speak to overall vulnerability to sexual abuse. Among one-three-year-olds, 5.5 per cent of reports were related to sexual abuse. Among children four-six years old, 10.9 per cent of reports resulted from sexual abuse. Keep in mind that sexual abuse and incest are under-reported crimes. 

I realised that I had not given sufficient attention to the specific vulnerabilities of children, and particularly girls, under five years old. Their experience of sexual violence is so unimaginable and yet so real. This group is least able to identify and describe sexual abuse. They are least able to protect themselves. Although these numbers are lower than for older children, their real risk speaks to the necessity of age-appropriate education for pre-school teachers and children as well as health workers and others that come into contact with the youngest among us. 

Drawing on those adults who have spoken about their childhood abuse, Dr Da Breo emphasised the importance of bystanders, those who knew and did nothing, in breaking silences. Survivors commonly highlighted that “somebody always knew.” This stark injustice has stayed with me since. 

There’s always an adult who suspects or has been told. There are often children who witness or hear, and are terrified themselves, yet can also be empowered to speak out or call a hotline, as children are increasingly doing. Adults must establish a family context where children are listened to and believed as well as paid attention to for signs of harm and trauma that can be mistakenly punished as “bad behaviour.” Prevention takes a village. We are all responsible for the world that vulnerable children encounter. 

We must be honest that our homes and families are unsafe for thousands of children who report child abuse each year. We have to be real about the fact that the greatest threat of sexual abuse to children comes from those who have access to them, are trusted, and are relatives. It comes from those they are dependent on, who we least suspect and whose denial we would most believe. Predators can be adults or children, but they rely on their violence remaining a secret because of young children’s confusion and fear. 

Those most invested in championing the sacrosanct family should be at the forefront of this work. Currently preservation of the family takes priority over the safety of children. Yet, as Dr Da Breo put it, where there is violence to and violation of its most vulnerable, the family is broken. Religious groups which reach deep into family life therefore have an important role. Protection and prevention should therefore be considered as important as scripture and prayer. 

I’ve been thinking since about how the Break the Silence Campaign can produce messaging that challenges complacency and complicity, and gathers allies across both state agencies and civil society to work through what bystander responsibility means. 

Finally, Dr Da Breo called for restorative justice approaches that complement legal prosecution and create possibilities for children to hold perpetrators and complicit bystanders accountable, and to secure recognition and repair. 

Her project will collect stories from adult survivors of under-five child sexual abuse and incest, and produce standardised psychological interventions to help victims of sexual trauma across the region, as well as train service providers in law, medicine, psychological care, education, daycares, recreation and church groups, women’s organisations, and transgender agencies. It will include Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize and Suriname. These are efforts to which we can contribute and about which we should all be aware.