Jane Doe deserves a fresh start

THE EDITOR: Many, if not most of us celebrated Mother’s Day happily with family and friends paying special tribute to the mothers in our lives. But there are some in our society who would have spent it without their children for one reason or the other, the experience bringing with it sadness and pain. One such mother would have been “Jane Doe,” who has spent the last four years of her life in jail. Her story was carried in a recent newspaper article.

Jane is due to be released at the end of this year. She was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of men in her family from her early childhood. Her mother was in denial about it even in the face of medical evidence. She eventually met a man, twenty-one years her senior who showed her kindness, which she took for love and began an eight-year relationship with him bearing him two children. After two years of relative happiness he started to drink and impotency began to affect him. Then the abuse began. There was verbal, psychological, physical and sexual abuse. He would beat her until she could no longer stand. She was hogtied to a bed and he would insert vegetables into her. He accused her of being with other men and called her degrading names. He also began to beat the children. She tried to leave many times, but he would find her, say how sorry he was and she would go back and try to make things work. Each time the abuse would begin all over again.

Several times she reported the matter to the police, but this did not result in the help required to stop the violence. She made several attempts to get a restraining order but the system again failed her. Four years ago on a fateful weekend her husband was sharpening his cutlass, while singing “Goodbye My Love.” It is reported that he had tried to be intimate with her and failed. The following day she went to church and upon her return had begun to prepare lunch when he attacked her with a cutlass. He said he was going to kill her. As she had done many times before she pleaded with him to stop, but to no avail. During the course of the struggle she hit him with a chicken in self-defence. A life and death struggle ensued while their two children cowered in a room upstairs. Somehow she managed to get hold of the cutlass and she hit him to stop him. All that she remembers is the first two chops and after that everything is a blur. An autopsy revealed that he was chopped several times. The Judge said, in handing down sentence, that her husband was a brutal animal who had inflicted eight years of “indignity and terror” on her. Nevertheless he could not let the extreme violence go unpunished. She therefore continues to languish in jail and her children are without their mother.

My question, posed to the relevant authorities the Government, Judiciary, Gender Affairs Social Welfare Ministries and all right-thinking people is, “Why is this woman still in jail” She defended her life. She has already served about four years. No good purpose is being served by incarcerating her any further and her two innocent children are motherless. This woman should be pardoned now and given counseling and the help she needs to make a fresh start. Society in general has failed her and evil will continue to flourish as long as good people do nothing. As a people we must consider what kind of message we are sending to all the abused people out there in TT. Is it going to be that if you are abused there is no hope for you? The Coalition Against Domestic Violence has said that they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of domestic violence cases. Let us help these people by raising our voices and doing what we can to stop this horrendous scourge.  If you are reading this, whoever you are, please do something! Speak out! Write a letter. Give hope to those abused people, in need of your voice. Help ‘Jane Doe’ and other victims of domestic violence today. Tomorrow may be too late.

DIONYSE FERNANDES
St James