Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence - Empowering Victims to Speak out

Janet (name changed to protect identity) is a very strong, college-educated woman who, at the request of her husband, gave up her job to stay at home after marriage. She may not have known that being asked to do so was a form of abuse. Soon enough contacts with friends and family were restricted as was movement outside of the home. Then the beatings started. By then a child had arrived and so Janet thought that it was in the best interest of her child that a traditional family should continue to exist. Besides, her husband was a charmer when he was not a monster and she continued to see glimpses of the person she fell in love with and got married to. So she vowed to do what was necessary to keep that while hoping that her love would change the abuser. Meanwhile, the abuse increased, fueled by bouts of alcoholic haze. Then Janet found out that her husband was having an affair. When she confronted him he walked away leaving her penniless. Initially devastated, Janet was able to move on and rebuild her life becoming both financially self-sustaining and an empowerment activist helping other victims.

Beverly Gooden, an American writer who started #WhyIStayed on Twitter, writes on her site that for her, leaving an abusive situation was “a process, not an event.” She explained in a series of tweets the many reasons it took her so long to get out: she once tried to leave the house, but her abuser slept in front of the door to block her; a pastor told her that God hates divorce; her husband said he would change; she needed time to find a place to go and money to survive once she left; she thought love conquered all; she was isolated from friends and family who lived halfway across the country. Indeed victims continue to remain in abusive relationships for many reasons including financial dependence, the children, fear, religion, isolation, ‘love’, family and societal pressure and because a certain amount of abuse has been normalized to the extent that many women accept such abuse as a given in a relationships and some even still equate that abuse with love.

In fact there was the case of a woman who told her sister that her consistently abusive husband was going to kill her. Yet neither the woman nor her sister reported to the police or sought help, and the sister made this disclosure public only after the woman was murdered. And the case of the twenty-one year mother of one who summoned the courage to leave the abusive relationship and go back to her parents’ home but the family refused to go to the police, take any legal action or even accept counseling because of palpable fear driven into them by the abuser. Or the case of the abused wife of a policeman who never went to the police because her abuser told her that his police buddies would do nothing. Or even the case of a victim whose husband holds high status in society and is actually an anti-abuse ‘advocate’ so no one believes her when she shares her experiences of abuse.

As well, we have come across a number of cases on social media that were referred to the traditional media but which never published anything. Since we had no way of contacting the victims we felt that the media had the capacity to contact them, tell their story and hopefully catalyze police action to bring the abusers to justice. We also know of cases of abuse in situations where the abusers are rich and so the victims are often in denial or feel that the materially comfortable lifestyles are a worthwhile tradeoff for the abuse.

In effect, femicide and gender based abuse are reaching crisis proportions in Guyana. The media has been doing a great job of focusing attention on and advocating for action to address thus scourge. Now can the police set up a mechanism so cases can be directly referred to them? Of course, the actions of some police