Children deserve to grow away from molesters

Jun 08, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Many years ago when I was born, everyone in the village came to celebrate with my mother. At the time she lived with her mother in that beautiful village named Beterverwagting. They reciprocated with a christening that saw all who came eating and doing what people do at christenings—hold the baby and say how pretty it was.
Today, I am not much to look at, but regardless what a baby looks like, once it has everything intact the people would simply shower praise on it. As I grew, the village participated in my upbringing. I was not allowed to walk with my hands in my pocket nor was I allowed to whistle on the streets. To this day I am no whistler.
It was the same with every other child. When I moved to West Demerara it was the same. Such were things that when I passed the Common Entrance, Den Amstel celebrated. Every adult claimed a share of me because, indeed, they did help to raise me.
I am a grown man with children and grandchildren, but whenever I go to either Beterverwagting or Den Amstel, the people never fail to let me realize that whatever I have become I owe it to them. I believe them and I am grateful.
However, many children are not as fortunate as I was. Many are being molested; some are left to their own devices.  Take the case of the 14-year-old girl. At 14, she should have been firmly in her parents’ care because that is the way it is with children. This girl was however, living the life of an adult.
She had gone beyond a child having a crush. She was in a full blown relationship with a 23-year-old man. Then she started to do what children do. They develop mentally and emotionally. The word is that this girl had outgrown the relationship she had, so she opted to move on. She is now dead and the man who killed her hanged himself.
The village of Sisters, East Bank Berbice came out to see the outcome of this relationship. They all saw a little child dead on the ground. She had been stabbed at least ten times. I have fathered three daughters and suffice it to say that none of them was allowed to go down that road. They are all alive. Two of them now have children of their own.
They too were helped by the village. One daughter grew up in three locations—Bartica, New Amsterdam and Tucville. The others grew up in Plaisance and Kitty. They all were not allowed to do adult things before their time, because the villages were keeping a steady eye on them.
This same week, I happened to see a report on the happenings at an orphanage. The word is that the parents in one case were found to be unfit to raise the children. They were not sending the children to school and were allowing them to roam the village.
At the orphanage they should have been offered the love that they were denied at home. One man decided to give the boys the kind of love they would have been happy without. He sodomised them and even threatened them.  This man is now engaging the attention of the police while the boys must try as best as they could to pick up their lives and move on with horrible memories that would surely scar them for life.
This is not the first time that something like this has happened. There have been other cases at orphanages and even at the state-owned facility to control errant children. It has been reported that some of the girls have become pregnant. It must be that the protectors need protection themselves. In the case of the New Opportunity Corps there is an investigation.
And while all this was going on the policewomen decided to look at another children institution. They took cheer to these children with a view to making them feel loved and wanted. Then I learnt that some of the children were abandoned and I almost cried.
The children did not ask to be here, but once they came we owe it to them to ensure that they enjoy everything that life has to offer. However, some of them have been abandoned, and I know that when they are old enough to fend for themselves they are going to wonder about the identity of their parents.
Just last week there was this girl in the United States whose mother, at birth, abandoned her in the snow, near to a tree. A man went to look for the child because a phone call came in to the fire station. He did find the child and a family took over for 18 years.
On the occasion of her graduation the family sent out a notice and found the man who rescued the child. This girl did not know him but she knew the story. The man met her and told her that they had met before on her birthday. The girl said that she doubted it very much.
“I don’t believe that you would have remembered anything on that birthday,” the man said. And then it clicked. The girl cried as did the man. She feels that she owes him a lot and she is grateful. The children in the orphanages would like to be grateful too. There is a reporter who is.

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