Yvonne Ba­boolal

Ed­i­tor-in-Chief of the T&T Guardian Judy Ray­mond says Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds is out of place to im­ply that the me­dia were vul­tures. Hinds, ac­cord­ing to a news­pa­per re­port yes­ter­day, said it was "vul­tur­is­tic be­hav­iour" for the me­dia to "hound" Cheryl Miller, who was re­leased from the St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal last Fri­day.

She was grant­ed a week's leave from the hos­pi­tal by the High Court af­ter lawyers rep­re­sent­ing her ar­gued on her be­half. Miller was re­moved from her desk at Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment 16 days ago and de­tained at Ann's af­ter a con­fronta­tion with a se­nior em­ploy­ee.

The me­dia, last Sat­ur­day, ac­cord­ing to Hinds, en­camped them­selves un­der a tree near Miller's St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, Bel­mont home, wait­ing to in­ter­view her. He said Miller and her sis­ter Doreen, who are Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tists, were wait­ing to go church on Sat­ur­day, their sab­bath day, and could not do so be­cause they were afraid to en­counter the me­dia.

Hinds, ac­cord­ing to the news­pa­per re­port, lat­er apol­o­gised for his out­burst, say­ing Miller was trau­ma­tised and need­ed rest and some space from the me­dia. On a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, he again of­fered what seemed like an apol­o­gy, say­ing he would nev­er call any­one a vul­ture.

He said he may have said the me­dia dis­played a cer­tain type of be­hav­iour. Ray­mond said Hinds was "wrong-head­ed and out of place to call the me­dia vul­tures. "He's been in pub­lic life long enough to know bet­ter. "If it weren't for the me­dia, Ms Miller would al­most cer­tain­ly still be at St Ann's with no idea when or how she might get out.

"If it weren't for the me­dia, there would not have been the mas­sive pub­lic out­cry that led to moves to have her re­leased and the process by which she end­ed up at the hos­pi­tal would nev­er have been queried. "We were seek­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est."

Ray­mond said the me­dia want­ed to in­ter­view Miller af­ter she went home be­cause there was wide­spread pub­lic con­cern about her and peo­ple nat­u­ral­ly want­ed to know how she was feel­ing af­ter her or­deal and her re­ac­tion to be­ing re­leased from the hos­pi­tal.

She not­ed that no one had forced Miller to give any in­ter­views and she seemed hap­py to do so. "I am sure she ap­pre­ci­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­cate in that way with every­one who was trou­bled by what had hap­pened to her: her col­leagues at the min­istry, her fel­low mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion and the pop­u­la­tion at large.

"The me­dia are hap­py to step in and help peo­ple bring these in­ci­dents to light. "That's part of our job. We are an im­por­tant chan­nel for mak­ing known all sorts of in­jus­tices, scan­dals, and ques­tion­able events. "But we are in­de­pen­dent. So peo­ple like Hinds can't sim­ply use the me­dia and switch them on and off like a light when­ev­er they choose," Ray­mond said.

Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor and psy­chol­o­gist Phillip Reid said the Miller af­fair had be­come a na­tion­al con­cern and it is the me­dia's job to cov­er those things. "That's their job. The me­dia will want to be in every­thing," he said, when asked for a com­ment on Hinds' "vul­tures" re­mark.

Reid said the re­moval of Miller from her work­place and her de­ten­tion was "quite a shock­ing de­vel­op­ment." He said the on­ly thing that would have jus­ti­fied tak­ing her to the hos­pi­tal like that was if she was a dan­ger to her­self and oth­ers. He said sub­ject­ing her to that pub­licly would af­fect her self-es­teem be­cause of the stig­ma one suf­fers af­ter at­tend­ing the men­tal hos­pi­tal.

Fur­ther, the drugs she re­ceived there as treat­ment can have se­ri­ous side-ef­fects, Reid said. He is the au­thor of a book, The Love Ther­a­py, which dis­cour­ages the use of drugs in the treat­ment of peo­ple with men­tal-health is­sues.