... Grieving families often want revenge
BERTHLYN PLUMMER of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) talked about the numbness that takes over a community in grief.
“When there is a violent incident the community is numb. In most cases, they are held to ransom in the community because of fear. Some people will actually move out of the community ... . Then there is that cry for blood.”
Recognising the need to bring professional help to these shattered communities, the PMI has developed a Counselling and Therapeutic Reprisal Prevention Team. The team comprises volunteers, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and ministers of religion. PMI offers counselling to everyone including the perpetrators of violence.
From all accounts, reprisal is never far from the minds of grieving families. Sometimes this hurt spans generations, as anthropologist Dr Herbert Gayle explains.
“It’s intergenerational,” declared Gayle, who told Fourth Floor of a 59-year gap between the time a grandfather was murdered and when his grandson killed the perpetrator.
Professor Wendel Abel, head of the Psychiatric Department at the University of the West Indies, believes reprisals, or what is termed revenge fantasy, will continue if persons are not allowed to work through their emotions and bring closure to their traumatic experience.
Fourth Floor discussions considered the idea of compensation for the surviving relatives of murder victims. Victor Hemmings, an investigator in the Office of the Public Defender, confirmed that it is possible to file a motion in court to seek redress and to get compensation for caring for dependents. Many people do not currently go this route, maybe because they are ignorant of their rights under the law. In cases where the State is adjudged to be at fault, such as the Tivoli Gardens incursion of 2010, the constituted commission allowed community members to work through their emotions to some degree to resolve their pain and at the end of the day, they were compensated. “It’s a model that works, and obviously we have to repeat that many times over to deal with the victims of police killings, “said Abel.