Halting a pandemic

Jun 05, 2010 Editorial

There is increasing evidence that there should be a lesson in parenting. There is also need for professional counseling services. Increasingly, people are allowing children to either go astray or they brutalise these children to the point that the children simply run away.
This week there have been at least three reports of parents being hauled before the courts for physically abusing the children in their care. The previous week there was one parent who abused a young boy who had got into a fight with this man’s son at school. Needless to say, the hostile parent has been charged. The victim’s parents say that the charge resulted only when the abuse was reported in the press.
But the focus is on those parents and guardians who visit their own children with horrible abuse to warrant the hospitalisation of the victim. In one case, a mother exacted such violence on a child that the marks were evident long after the beating. These were captured by alert cameramen and made public to the rest of the society.
Investigations by the Department of Probation and Welfare found that the child had grown as they say in the Guyanese parlance, ‘hard ears’. Disobedient does not quite capture the behaviour of the child. The mother speaks of the child’s gambling habit, his delinquent behaviour, his refusal to attend school and a host of ills.
As far as the mother was concerned, the only remedy was violence so severe that the child’s skin broke. The officers found such behaviour on the part of the parent so shocking that they called the police.
Parents such as these certainly did not have much academic intelligence; they are frustrated because they are left almost single-handedly to raise children. The father has long gone, only to surface at odd times like when the child ends up in police custody and the mother reaches out to him for help.
Then there is the case of the stepmother who brutalised her stepchild by pushing her down stairways, beating her with strips of wire and wood. This woman abuses the child for just about every available perceived infraction. The police got involved and the woman is before the courts.
Something must be horribly wrong in this society because the extent of abuse keeps increasing. It is as if people have come to the conclusion that the best way to resolve the simplest of issues is by resorting to the use of force. Parents see no harm in venting their frustration on their children.
Social scientists now say that this is the start of the cycle of violence; something that is fast approaching epidemic proportions. Abused children become abusive and abused spouses, and abusive parents. They are the people who refuse to listen to the voice of reason and resort to violence at the drop of a hat.
Two days ago, a group of women took to the streets to protest violence against women, among them a woman who was beaten to the point of sustaining a badly broken arm and locked away in a house for five days, unable to seek medical attention.
Gone are the days when the entire society kept tabs on everyone. Wife beaters were challenged and even beaten in turn because the community felt that it had a responsibility for all. Errant children were not allowed to escape the notice of the elders and parents, then, supported the efforts because they knew that single-handedly they could not raise the family.
Those days are past. The society now needs modern methods to help raise families. Counseling services must abound to prevent parents and guardians taking out their frustrations on children. These are not the days when women were housewives entrusted with raising children.
Some organisations offer help, but these are so few. To make matters even more complicated, they are almost all in the city. The ubiquitous Guyana Police Force should be in a position to offer counseling services.
This must be the direction in which Guyana must move. Failing to do this, Guyana could have the highest percentage of violent people.

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