Behaving like that?’

“He had a very, very rough life with his stepfather. So all of that trauma came into our family. He never dealt with it. He blamed his real father for not protecting him and not coming back for him. Every kind of abuse you can think about, my father had,” she says.

She also learnt the reason he never lifted a finger to her mother despite thrashing her and her sister on countless occasions.

“He didn’t beat my mother because he saw his stepfather beat his mother and he said he would never do that. The more I started understanding his story, the more I started understanding the way he was and why he did what he did and I started healing,” the young woman, who is a replica of her father, tells the Sunday Observer.

“When he started explaining his trauma that’s when I started understanding. I started understanding why he wasn’t able to love us. It was because he hated himself why he was angry every day. He couldn’t give to us what he never got,” she points out.

Two years before he died, her father lost his voice but he continued trying to mend the heart he had broken, she says.

“He would Whatsapp me a lot of times and tell me how he felt and he would cry and say he deserved it because of what he did to his family, but I know God is not spiteful,” she says firmly.

Now, armed with the answers from the past, she is determined to make sense of her future, though still aching.

“The trauma I went through, I struggle as an adult now to build relationships, to talk to people, I am constantly angry, I shy away, I don’t talk to people. I go to church, I go to the supermarket, I come in and I close my door, that’s it,” she shares.

“When children go through trauma it doesn’t just change them mentally, it changes their entire life; everywhere they go it follows them. Everybody in my family suffers; when you go through trauma like that, it breaks you. Trauma is so deadly. If you look at most of these murderers or some of these women who carry themselves loosely on the road and go back in their past, they are going to tell you they went through some trauma and it is now playing out in their adult life,” she opines.

Part of her journey to healing has been enrolling in the very same institution she credits with being the turning point in her father’s life.

“I want to pursue studies in psychology [ultimately]. I don’t want any child to go through what I went through. I want to work with children 12 to 18 years old,” the young woman shares.

In January the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) revealed that there were 1,226 reports of child abuse recorded by the National Children’s Registry (NCR) in that month alone. Of that number, 338 were reports of sexual abuse, 301 were of physical abuse, and 476 related to neglect. The majority of reports, 208, were recorded in Kingston and St Andrew; followed by St Catherine, 183; and St Ann with 130. While the numbers indicate a decline compared to the 1,540 reports made during the same period last year, Lesia Bhagwandatvassell, deputy registrar of the NCR, says the agency remains concerned that the number of reports are too high.

Consultant Psychiatrist Dr Aggrey Irons at the time, in explaining the various impact that abuse can have on a child at different stages of their development, noted that the ramifications extend far beyond individual trauma.

“The first job that a parent or an adult or anybody in the life of a child, the first thing we have to do is to help our infants achieve a sense of trust — trust that people will be kind to them, somebody will feed them, somebody will clothe them, somebody will look after them until they can start looking after themselves,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“This trust is very important, because if you are abused so early, and if your life is set up in a way that you are a child who distrusts just about everything and everybody, you’re getting set for a very miserable existence,” he added.

Dr Irons pointed out that when a child is abused at the autonomy stage — ages two to three — this interferes with the development of their identity, self-worth, and independence, while abuse at the initiative stage — ages three to five — can lead to feelings of guilt and self-doubt.

“And even when that continues, the feelings of selfdoubt and shame and guilt, especially as it attaches to sexual behaviour, it’s really tragic, and it can have a terrible outcome later on when they get to a higher level,” said Dr Irons.

He noted that children who have been abused at the high school level develop a sense of inferiority and often act out in schools. They may also become promiscuous if they are sexually abused and develop abusive traits themselves.

“Now, this incomplete and troubled person, we expect them to get into the world and be generative and productive, but it is very difficult to do that, and what is interesting is that when persons — boys or girls — have been abused, it drives a lot of negative feelings internally, and they become very troubled and ripe for violence and manipulation later on,” he explained.

Dr Irons noted that Jamaica, like many other countries, is plagued with a lot of social issues that possibly stem from a long-standing issue of abuse that continues to impact the behaviour of its citizens in their adult years and result in the development of various societal issues.

Reports of child abuse can be made using the 24-hour child abuse reporting hotline 211, or via Whatsapp/text at (876)8782882, e-mail report@childprotection.gov.jm, or by visiting any CPFSA parish office. The CPFSA social media pages (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) @cpfsajm are also available for citizens to make reports.