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Was this woman brutally raped?

Nov 05, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

 

 

My August 15 page was captioned, “Tragic death of a woman.” It related the story of a Guyanese who committed suicide by hanging in her cell in a remand centre in Trinidad. The column was not about the circumstances of her death. It focused on the way Guyanese are treated in the CARICOM nations of Trinidad and Barbados.
That was it. I moved on with other investigative reports. No one from the women’s movement community or the Guyana Government investigated the situation. Last week, I received a telephone call in which the number showed up as “private.” The voice was female. She told me the dead woman was a close relative.
She indicated that the lady was repeatedly ganged raped in the detention centre and had a sexual objected inserted into her. I requested the authenticity of her “facts” which she said came from one of the woman’s children who live in Trinidad. I was told that the woman cried to one of her children during a visit and only one visit was allowed. Days after she killed herself.
I implored of this person to let me facilitate a meeting with Adam Harris, Julia Johnson, Karen De Souza and a reporter from the Stabroek News. She refused. Pressed why, she said the woman has children that are illegal in Trinidad. She spoke to me without their permission and she doesn’t know if they want the case to be published.
Asked why, she said she doesn’t know but she thinks it has to do with the illegal status of the children. Asked what her relation to the woman was she said her aunt. No amount of persuasion could sway this woman to give me her address and telephone number.
I then tried another angle. I suggested a meeting that I will arrange with Mr. Mark Archer of APNU and Nigel Hughes and Khemraj Ramjattan of AFC. I thought the political angle might have galvanized her. I was wrong. In the end I think all she wanted to do was alert me. I believe she expected me to write about what she told me. Well I am doing so.
I asked her if she is religious and would swear on the name of God that the information she related to me was correct. She did that and she was gone. She vanished.
Was I conned? Was this a hoax? I honesty don’t know. But why would she want to pull a stunt like that on me? This is a story about a dead woman and it does not involve a living Guyanese that the caller may want to embarrass. It doesn’t involve any Guyanese at all. It doesn’t involve any powerful person in Trinidad.
There are no accusations being made against any Guyanese official. So surely, her motive cannot be to embarrass me or the newspaper. When you are an experienced media practitioner, you tend to detect a veil behind a voice; you tend to detect a conspiracy behind the words.
You somehow know by the use of words, the station of the caller. In all honesty, this person came across as someone who doesn’t even know what role the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could play in these kinds of situations.
Assuming that she did set out to trick me why would she be so sparse with her details? I just have this feeling that this caller wanted to alert me to a wrong that was committed against a Guyanese in Trinidad. What more can I do? Could this newspaper, the Stabroek News, Prime News, do further research? It would seem to me that it has to begin with the Government of Guyana. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to request details of the women’s file.
Why was she in the detention centre? Was she an illegal entry or was she illegal and committed a crime. If so, was she charged? Did she complain of rape in her cell? I can anticipate the attitude of many readers. There have been so many files like this woman’s, even worse and they just pass into oblivion with the passage of time.
Let me conclude with my belief. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will not take up an issue that emanated from this column. It will not work along with Red Thread and will ignore the private media. It will ignore an interest in this tragedy from the Opposition. The brutal reality is that try as had as you can to help the fact is that the onus is on the Ministry to ascertain the facts from Trinidad and it will not do so.

 

 

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