“Is this where she was killed?” We were walk­ing around the Sa­van­nah, my journo friend and I, our shapes re­flect­ed in elon­gat­ed shad­ows, like the trees in warm gold light, when abrupt dark­ness de­scend­ed. No, it’s fur­ther up. Here? Maybe be­yond that crick­et pitch? Our thoughts min­gled.

That Japan­ese pan play­er Asa­mi Na­gakiya was stran­gled some­where in the sa­van­nah grass dur­ing Car­ni­val 2016 haunts women. Strange how de­spite all the big talk of pro­tect­ing women, the in­ter­na­tion­al out­rage, af­ter Asa­mi Na­gakiyas’ mur­der, noth­ing changed (the po­lice claimed her per­pe­tra­tor was shot dead on an­oth­er crime scene) and the rape and stran­gling of Gabriel­la Raphael of Diego Mar­tin, a 24-year-old moth­er of five, a few weeks back, has bare­ly reg­is­tered.

Our woman Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, by rat­ing her own per­for­mance as “ex­cel­lent” days af­ter Gabriel­la Raphael’s mur­der, shows that, like the rest of us, she is numb; the po­lice are numb. Frozen. Wouldn’t you be if you were in­formed of 600 mur­ders in 2022? There is on­ly so much butch­ery any­one can process.

The CoP did say last year that the “on­ly way to stop surg­ing mur­ders and crime was to hit gang lead­ers in their pock­ets by dis­man­tling their fi­nan­cial em­pires.” You and I know no­body is “in­ves­ti­gat­ing” gang lead­ers who have moles in the po­lice ser­vice for fear of a bul­let in the head. On­ly God (as the CoP im­plied) and in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion can stop our cur­rent sac­ri­fice of young men (1.6 mur­dered dai­ly).

But in­no­cent women. Why are they be­ing raped, stran­gled at home and in pub­lic spaces?

Dr Isht­la Singh, a Trinidad-born psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic/psy­chother­a­pist (mem­ber of the Cam­bridge So­ci­ety for Psy­chother­a­py), re­vealed that numb­ness is “a symp­tom of de­layed trau­ma”. Oth­er symp­toms of trau­ma in­clude de­tach­ment; anx­i­ety, fear, sur­vivors’ guilt, anger, sad­ness, help­less­ness, dis­ori­en­ta­tion, de­nial, nau­sea, mus­cle tremors, el­e­vat­ed heart­beat, and raised blood pres­sure. Cit­i­zens of T&T, put your hand up if you haven’t felt any of this.

We have not “turned” in­to a vi­o­lent so­ci­ety but are in­her­i­tors of it. Cit­ing find­ings by Grena­di­an psy­chol­o­gist Lennox Thomas, Dr Singh says the vi­o­lence and trau­ma Caribbean peo­ple dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ence was built on the colo­nial sys­tems of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship.

“It’s not sur­pris­ing that the so­cial mod­el is repli­cat­ed in the home … whip, punch, kick, stran­gle that’s how it worked with the over­seer on the plan­ta­tion,” (who took out his own frus­tra­tion, im­po­tence) “with moth­er, wife, sis­ter, daugh­ter which fed back in­to the macro lev­el, so we live in a con­stant loop of re­in­forc­ing vi­o­lence.”

Dr Singh says women are “fair game” to per­pe­tra­tors.

“Women’s bod­ies are seen as pub­lic prop­er­ty. Peo­ple think they can com­ment on how thin or fat you are, whether your skirt is too short, choose to get mar­ried or not, en­joy sex or not, have chil­dren or not.”

The fe­male body is seen as a pub­lic space. As a re­sult, Dr Singh says, “Men feel free to flash women in a park, vi­o­late and kill with im­puni­ty. Women can be con­trolled and pun­ished for be­ing too much or too lit­tle. What­ev­er we see at the mi­cro and macro lev­els mir­rors one an­oth­er.”

The Cam­bridge, King’s Col­lege, UWI-ed­u­cat­ed aca­d­e­m­ic Dr Singh says, “In­ter­sec­tions are worse if you’re poor, sin­gle, or de­pen­dent. Gabriel­la Raphael was a sin­gle moth­er, pos­si­bly at the low­er end of the in­come scale or in­flu­ence, which can ac­count for the lack of in­ter­est in bring­ing her per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice.”

Dr Singh says one of the first steps to heal­ing is to ac­cept we have turned numb to the pain of our fel­low cit­i­zens, nor­malised bru­tal­i­ty. This is not nor­mal.

The so­lu­tion be­gins, she says, by cre­at­ing phys­i­cal spaces where all women can feel safe and sup­port­ed by coun­cil­lors, ther­a­pists, and me­di­a­tors who help process grief.

That’s just stop-gap mea­sures. Dr Singh says we need a gov­ern­ment that buys in­to so­cial and ed­u­ca­tion­al re­form and “in­vest­ment in pre­ven­ta­tive and cu­ra­tive ser­vices to help peo­ple re­cal­i­brate how they think.” Next time a woman is blamed for be­ing at­tacked based on how she is dressed, we must re­mem­ber she is a hu­man whose body is au­tonomous. Why can’t she wear her shorts? Why can’t a woman’s body be hers?

Af­ter tak­ing part in the civ­il rights move­ment in the US, the leg­endary singer Ni­na Si­mone crooned with pal­pa­ble pain in her beau­ti­ful voice not just on be­half of the ac­tivists fight­ing against sys­temic racial dis­crim­i­na­tion but women, who seem to be the low­est on every peck­ing or­der, “Oh, how I wish I knew how it feels to be free.” To­day it is the piteous lament of women through­out T&T.

This is some­thing we all hope the CoP keeps in mind when vi­o­lence is per­pe­trat­ed against a woman. As a woman CoP, does she have the courage not to be cor­ralled by un­equal male pow­er dy­nam­ics, and the em­pa­thy to dare to ask on be­half of every woman un­der her care, “Why can’t her body be hers?”

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023.