The saddest thing of all

May 07, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- In a small place, where lives are thinly built and tragedy is thick, the death of a child—one who is a mere 11 years old—has become more than a matter of loss. It has become a kind of theatre, and more dangerously, a kind of religion. A new orthodoxy, built not on reason or inquiry, but on suspicion and emotion.

The child died, and long before a pathologist touched the body, a verdict had already been delivered by the court of the street: it was murder. And as in all things born of the irrational, no amount of evidence, no authority or expert, no skill of science could shake the crowd loose from its belief.

This is not new. The rejection of reason is not a modern development, but in our time, it has become more garish. The facts—when they come—arrive not as welcome clarity, but as intrusions upon a beloved narrative. The autopsy, when it was finally done, spoke of drowning. The pathologists, men trained in the discipline of truth, delivered their findings. It made no difference. The masses had found their villain, their story, and they would not be moved. The script was already written.

This is the curse of the boxed mind. People commit themselves not to discovering the truth, but to defending the position they first occupied. It is a kind of intellectual squatters’ right—they believe something, and therefore it must be true. To admit otherwise is to admit a kind of defeat, and defeat is intolerable in these fragile societies where the self is defined not by facts, but by how loudly one insists upon them.

There is something medieval in it—something primitive. A death becomes a catalyst not for mourning, but for performance. People shout murder not because they have evidence, but because the sound of the word justifies everything that follows: rage, protest, condemnation, even destruction. Private property is torn apart, reputations are smudged with blood, and when all is done, there is no accountability for those who stirred the pot. They vanish into the mob, sanctified by the righteousness of their falsehoods.

This is not unique to the case of the child. It is a pattern—seen in politics, in religion, in ordinary life. People pick a side and stay there, not because it is right, but because it is theirs. To switch sides, to say, “I was wrong,” is to suffer a kind of death. And so, they defend error as if it were an inheritance.

Reason is slow, painstaking, and often inconclusive. Narratives are quick. They give purpose, drama, and an illusion of clarity. In the age of social media, the narrative moves faster than the facts. A rumour becomes a headline, a suspicion becomes a verdict. The autopsy, the science, the cool discipline of logic—these are relics of another time. What matters now is what feels right, and in a society long trained to privilege feeling over thought, that is the end of reason.

And yet, what a fragile power it is. The narrative comforts, but it cannot resolve. The questions remain. What really happened to the child? We may never know. But to pretend certainty where none exists is a form of intellectual cowardice. It is also a violence, done not only to those accused but to the idea of truth itself.

There are those who cling to the narrative because it serves them. The accusation of murder is a weapon, and like all weapons, it needs no justification—only direction. Others cling to it because they have already destroyed, already accused, and to recant would be to acknowledge guilt of a different kind. Their belief justifies their behaviour. The damage, once done, becomes irreversible.

It is the way of weak societies—where truth is not a shared commitment but a battlefield, where the loudest voice wins and the calmest is silenced. There is no arbiter, no final authority to say, “Here is the fact, here is the end.” Everything becomes opinion, and opinion becomes gospel.

In such a world, the child does not matter. Only the myth of the child matters—the version that each faction constructs, the morality tale they wish to tell. The dead become props. The living become caricatures. The pathologist, the doctor, the scientist—he becomes a villain too, because his truth is inconvenient.

We pretend that justice matters, that truth matters. But what we really crave is confirmation. And so, we box ourselves in—not to protect the truth, but to protect our pride. The death of a child becomes the death of reason, and still we shout. Not for justice, but for victory. Not for truth, but for vindication. And that is the saddest thing of all.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)   

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