WOMEN NOT PROPERTY

This was the warning given by Chief Magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar yesterday at a service at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-of-Spain held to commemorate International Women’s Day. “Our brothers have to understand we are not property and I think that’s the thinking, even in 2017, from a lot of men. Women are not property and if you’re in a relationship and that relationship for whatever reason is not going the way you would like it to be, then we need to be mature and step away from that relationship,” she said.

Ayers-Caesar was responding to questions from reporters on recent acts of violence against women after she addressed the service. “We need to come together as adults to do what is best in the interest of our children, because at the end of the day it makes no sense, a mother or father who cannot get along and then one kills the other and inevitably commits suicide.

“This is trend we have been seeing and we leave these children as orphans.

A lot of parents do not realise how they interfere with the psyche of their children,” she said.

Ayers-Caesar said parents should start having these kind of discussions with their daughters and sons.

“We need to have the discussion from within our homes and not have our men grow up and try to deal with emotional issues when they get older. We need to start that discussion when they are very young, with our boys and our young girls,” she said. She advised women that the court is there to help them.

“You may not want to come to the court at the first instance because in a lot of situations, the women have children. For us women, the thought of moving out of your home, leaving those children behind or sometimes running with your children deters a lot of women from seeking protection.

You want the women to know there is help out there, there are NGOs, there are groups that you can approach to talk to. Coming to the court does not mean that that is the end of your family but it may be a means of saving your life,” she said.

Ayers-Caesar said once a woman seeks a protection order from the court its enforcement lies with the police. “If it is that someone goes to the police station because an order has been breached, the thinking cannot be ‘go back home and try to fix it’ or ‘go to a JP (justice of the peace) and file a complaint’. The police have a role to play at that point in time and once that is done and a perpetrator is brought before the court then the court will deal with that breach because the legislation empowers us to deal with it,” she said.

Asked if she felt not enough was being done she said, “I don’t want to say that not enough is being done, but more can be done and I think there must be some sort of sensitisation of police officers so that they understand that this is important. It comes down to a matter of life and death in most situations and they need to act and act quickly.” Ayers-Caesar also expressed her concern about the overall crime situation in the country and advised young men involved in crime to put down the gun and take up their respective holy books.