Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

"Giv­en the preva­lence of in­cest, and that the fam­i­ly is the ba­sic unit up­on which so­ci­ety rests, imag­ine what would hap­pen if every (child) cur­rent­ly be­ing abused–and every adult who was abused but stayed silent –came out of the wood­work, in­sist­ed on jus­tice, and saw that jus­tice met­ed out. The very fab­ric of so­ci­ety would be torn."

So said Mia Fontaine (2013), in her ar­ti­cle "Amer­i­ca has an in­cest prob­lem" as she speaks of an imag­ined space and time in con­fronting the long­stand­ing crime of in­cest. I of­ten thank God for my fa­ther whom I re­mem­ber as be­ing ju­di­cious with his daugh­ters. Very ear­ly, I not­ed that my fa­ther nev­er came in­to our bed­rooms and I al­ways re­mem­ber how up­set he'd seem when we ac­ci­den­tal­ly crossed paths in tow­els–and that hap­pened be­cause we had out­door bath­rooms.

I re­call how ag­i­tat­ed he be­came with my moth­er when we wore, ac­cord­ing to him, "clothes that look like the store robbed us of fab­ric." As a child with good pow­ers of ob­ser­va­tion, I nev­er missed dad­dy's cir­cum­spec­tion. While we are six sis­ters of which I'm the youngest, we were nev­er all to­geth­er grow­ing up. Liv­ing in ab­ject pover­ty then, I've rea­soned why my par­ents felt it nec­es­sary for some of my sis­ters to live with rel­a­tives at times.

There­fore, when I speak of my fa­ther, it's my spe­cif­ic en­counter with a none-too-friend­ly man who is re­gard­ed with re­spect (and hu­mor­ous sto­ries about his ill-tem­per) by vil­lagers to this day. He was past 53 years when I was born and I al­ways say that age gap ac­count­ed for our tem­pes­tu­ous re­la­tion­ship. But that's the worst I can say about Oliv­er Rav­el­lo. And I can­not imag­ine any girl or woman should ever have any­thing worse to say about their fa­ther.

Yet I've sat next to friends/rel­a­tives who have borne their fa­ther's child when they were still chil­dren–preg­nan­cy be­ing the pub­lic ev­i­dence of his "pri­vate" crime–who with their com­plic­it moth­ers have "hid" those chil­dren to mask dad­dy's crim­i­nal­i­ty.

And they and their sib­lings walk around (sad­ness etched on their faces) pre­tend­ing it did not hap­pen. They for­ev­er car­ry that in­dig­ni­ty, al­ways won­der­ing if the next per­son they en­counter knew/knows that dad­dy raped their lit­tle bod­ies from as ear­ly as he de­cid­ed to yield to his crim­i­nal de­sire, above his God-giv­en du­ty to de­fend them.

That's part of the plain, sick truth of our sweet T&T that we can­not bring our­selves to ac­cept. In­cest is the most un­der­re­port­ed crime every­where and, in a so­ci­ety of pre­tences as ours, if you speak out, as ad­vo­cate or sur­vivor, you touch raw nerves and set your­self up for a ston­ing.

Just ask ac­tivist and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Ver­na St Rose-Greaves af­ter her char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly brazen piece last week drew so much ire from the very men/women she sought to pro­tect by her bold state­ments. She said, among oth­er things, that, "Sex­u­al abuse has been nor­malised in our so­ci­ety so even our lead­ers ei­ther can­not recog­nise it, or refuse to ac­cept their com­plic­i­ty in it. "If we have not ex­pe­ri­enced it per­son­al­ly," said St Rose-Greaves, "we have heard so many sto­ries."

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with St Rose-Greaves and all vic­tims/sur­vivors, I agree that "for too long we have ig­nored the ug­ly things that have been part of our dai­ly rou­tine." Sex­u­al abuse, es­pe­cial­ly in­cest, is a cringe-wor­thy sub­ject in T&T as in many oth­er coun­tries, and is a vi­o­la­tion of which lit­tle is said even though we know and sus­pect that peo­ple with­in a child's home/fam­i­ly ac­count for more cas­es of child­hood sex­u­al trau­ma.

Our ug­ly truth bears ev­i­dence in the phys­i­cal, psy­choso­cial (men­tal, emo­tion­al, so­cial, and spir­i­tu­al) in­jury it's leav­ing in its path here. The prob­lem with in­cest, as all sex­u­al abuse, is that it does not go away at some time in the fu­ture, and with­out in­ter­ven­tion, so­ci­ety is made to pay the hefty price.

Fontaine asked, "How could a whole com­mu­ni­ty be in such de­nial?" and an­swered say­ing, "one need on­ly re­alise that (we) are mir­ror­ing the long-es­tab­lished pat­terns and re­spons­es to sex­u­al abuse with­in the fam­i­ly. Which are: Deal with it in­ter­nal­ly in­stead of seek­ing le­gal jus­tice and pro­tec­tion; keep kids qui­et while adults re­main pro­tect­ed and free to abuse again.

"In­ten­tion­al­ly or not, chil­dren are pro­tect­ing adults, many for their en­tire lives," Fontaine con­tin­ues, talk­ing about fam­i­lies that con­tin­ue to so­cialise "while seat­ed at the same ta­ble as the peo­ple who vi­o­lat­ed them."

�2 Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo is a strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and me­dia prac­ti­tion­er with over 30 years of pro­fi­cien­cy. She holds an MA in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and is pur­su­ing the MSc in Pub­lic Health from the UWI. She has been liv­ing/thriv­ing with men­tal health is­sues for over 35 years.