The day I encountered many sex predators and rapists

Feb 01, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

This past week I undertook an investigation into child molestation and what I found was most disturbing. It is not that I was unaware that children are molested or that close relatives are for the greater part, the culprits; it was not that I failed to grasp the fact that there are sick people in every society and that Guyana has its fair share; it is just that for the first time I had a look at legal records to ascertain the extent of sexual predators.

Such acts of molestation are not confined to any geographic location or to any particular ethnic group. From the Rupununi to the coast I encountered cases, and here I must compliment the police for taking action that would help put these sick people in jail.

I failed to find any case of women being involved, but this is merely because I called a halt to my investigation.

Late last year, after editing numerous stories of child molestation and statutory rape, I decided to take a closer look at this sick aspect of the society. The first case involved an 11-year-old girl from the North West District. She lived in Port Kaituma with her mother and other relatives.

Her father is a provision vendor who was hardly home because of the nature of his business. Her mother was also not idle so this girl, when she was not at school, would be at home with her elder sister and a cousin.

One day in November last year, this child was found hanging in an outdoor bathroom. The police investigated and ruled the hanging a suicide. They questioned a few people and learnt that the girl was not troubled or showed any sign of unhappiness.

It took the post mortem to reveal that the girl had been sexually active for about a month prior to her demise. The post mortem also found that a sexual attempt had been made the same day the girl was found hanging.

To her credit, the Director of Public Prosecutions refused to accept the finding of suicide and has ordered a further investigation that would involve questioning people who might have been close friends of the girl as well as males who would have been in her company.

The DPP concluded that the man who sexually assaulted her could have been the person who hanged her. I am constrained to say more about this particular case as I am with some of the other cases I investigated.

All told, I examined 15 cases and found that some of the victims were as young as six and except for one case in which the victim was described as being retarded and 26 years old, all the others were below the age of 16.

Take the case of the six-year-old. The girl was at home with her mother and a male whom the family described as a ‘family friend’. The mother, after performing all her chores, decided to take a nap before she prepared her husband’s meals.

Something must have caused the mother to awaken because she caught this family friend with the young child on his lap attempting to penetrate her. That this young man is alive is testimony to the simple nature of the mother. However, the matter is heading for the High Court as all of the others that I will mention.

There was the other case at Herstelling in which the man used a knife on a 13-year-old. The girl was clad in tights and underwear. This man used a knife to cut off the child’s underwear then proceeded to rape her. She was not sexually active and her testimony in the magistrates’ court made for sordid hearing.

Of course, the girl’s father later dealt the predator a beating and the police actually moved to charge the father. Fortunately, the charge went nowhere.

What sickened me was that the man, after raping the girl, left only to return to push a $20 bill under the door and to request that the girl say nothing.

Later, his parents, who for the love of God must really like their son, met the parents with an offer of a $25,000 compensation which they later upped to $50,000.

As I read this bit of bull I said to myself that it is perhaps a good thing that I have no young daughters. I do have two grand daughters, one 10 and the other seven. One of them is in New Jersey. I publicly state that anyone who rapes or attempts to rape them may not live to stand trial and I would make the front pages of the very newspaper for which I work.

There was then the case of a man who had a relationship with the mother of his victim and had been sharing this relationship for two years. At the same time this woman had her husband who worked as a seaman.

It appeared that this ‘sweet man’ would beat the mother from time to time. On this particular day, he turns up to the home and tries to batter down the door. Not finding the mother, he takes the 14-year-old with him to some dam and rapes her. She too was a virgin.

There are others including a man who sodomised a seven-year-old and got caught by the mother.
Of course not all of them involved forceful sex. One precocious 12-year-old engaged in sex with a grown male then proceeds to tell the magistrate that she was not a virgin at the time, that she had had sex with another male whom she claimed that she loved.

Suffice to say that they are all going to have trials in the High Court. I only hope that justice prevails.
Space does not permit me to tell all that I have found, but we do have some really sick people in the society.