Guyana has declared the week of April 24-30, 2017 as Sexual Assault Awareness Week, under the theme, “Engaging New Voices to End Sexual Violence”.
The Social Protection Ministry has stated that, along with its strategic partners, it is committed to implementing legislation and policies that focus on the prevention of rape and respond to the cries for justice of women, men and children, who have suffered through this heinous crime.
“We will work to bring all perpetrators to justice, ensure that institutions are held accountable, and the effective support systems are in place for victims,” Social Protection Minister Amna Ally stated. But some of the very institutions that are there to ‘protect and serve’ are the ones that make the system seem ineffective and the victims feel unprotected from the scourge of sexual assault and rape.
For instance, in March of this year, a former rank of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) was charged with rape and taken before the court of a city magistrate. He had been charged with raping a teenage girl, along with two others, during the latter part of January at the Army’s Camp Stephenson base at Timehri.
Winston Haynes, aptly known as “Unruly Boss” was released on 0,000 bail.
Consequent upon the rape allegation and a subsequent investigation into the matter by a GDF Board of Inquiry, it was determined that the sufficiency of evidence warranted further action. The trio was then dismissed from the Army for contravening Security Standing Orders, as well as having breached several other Standard Operating Procedures of the GDF.
They had reportedly taken the 15-year-old victim to the base camp in an army vehicle and sexually assaulted her, which a medical examination later confirmed.
Despite the assurances of army officers that “the GDF remains committed to the preservation of law and order and will deal condignly with all transgressors”, there is little trust between civilians and security services personnel. One could claim, with some degree of justification, on the basis of such occurrences – infrequent to be sure – that once is enough to damn the entire Force.
The Guyana Police Force has been similarly disgraced by errant ranks. In one instance, a 14-year-old resident of the West Bank of Demerara was reported to have contracted a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI), after allegedly having been raped by a police constable who was assigned to the Tactical Services Unit (TSU). It was revealed that the Constable had genital warts, which he apparently transmitted to the young girl when he committed the act.
In May of 2013, there was a report that Police made a teenage rape victim wait an entire day before she was taken for a medical examination.
This caused human rights activist Karen DeSouza to condemn the treatment of the 14-year-old rape victim by the officers at the Turkeyen Police Station. The girl was forced to wait for approximately eight hours before a female officer accompanied her to the hospital for a medical certificate. This was the day after the victim’s parents took the bloodied girl to report the attack, during which she had been grabbed from outside her home and taken to a lonely spot, where she was violently raped. They were sent away and told to return the next day, by which time it had become just a fruitless exercise. These actions of the officers contravene the new Sexual Offences Act, which has provisions to minimise the additional trauma that victims experience while seeking justice through the legal systems.
The mother reported that even at the hospital the Policewoman displayed utter disregard and inconsideration for the travails of the child.
A Barama rape victim had to wait nine years before she received a modicum of justice for her brutal violation at the hands of three fellow employees. The 17-year-old victim was found naked and crying on a bed at the company’s location on the East Bank of Demerara, after being raped. Two of the accused were found guilty, while the other walked free.
Paul Abrams, Claude Craig and Holston Melville were all accused of raping and sodomising the 17-year-old victim in 2007, while she was employed at that company.
Incidents of rape are hardly ever reported because confidence in the security forces has been severely compromised because of occurrences exemplified in the foregoing narrative.
Until, and unless, the Police Force takes its mandate seriously and, if not complicit, must not appear to be complicit in such occurrences, the public will never garner the confidence enough to trust the Joint Services and report more instances of rape. This will only cause the scourge of rape and sexual assaults to intensify.
