Carisa Lee

Af­ter Ellen Mo­hammed’s mur­der in Guayagua­yare on Wednes­day, rel­a­tives blamed the po­lice for their lack of re­sponse to her re­ports of abuse.

These claims were re­fut­ed by the po­lice but two women who made do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports to the St Joseph and Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tions said yes­ter­day that they had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences.

Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tim Aretha Clarke said she made her first re­port in Jan­u­ary 2014 but the tri­al start­ed two years lat­er.

“I was pushed, I was slapped about the face, fol­lowed at my work­place, fol­lowed at my home, so ba­si­cal­ly stalk­ing,” Clarke said.

She said dur­ing that pe­ri­od (Jan­u­ary 2014-De­cem­ber 2015), her abuser con­tin­ued phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly and ver­bal­ly abus­ing her and re­ports to the Scar­bor­ough po­lice were no help.

“When mak­ing re­ports, of­ten you’re be­ing told ‘well the mat­ter be­fore the court, when you go to court tell the mag­is­trate’,” she said.

Clarke said the po­lice al­so mocked her.

“What you com­ing to re­port the man for? When you and him were hav­ing al­lyuh re­la­tion­ship and al­lyuh sex it wasn’t bit­ter, it was sweet. When it sweet al­lyuh don’t come here,” she said of­fi­cers told her.

Even af­ter the pro­tec­tion or­der was grant­ed, Clarke said the po­lice did not fol­low up or check up on her and her abuser con­tin­ued. He al­so breached the or­der.

“I said you shouldn’t be here…I was as­sault­ed again…and when I made a re­port the po­lice of­fi­cers told me why I’m com­ing here to make a re­port against the per­pe­tra­tor and they nev­er took the re­port,” she said.

Con­tact­ed on the com­plaint yes­ter­day, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Ju­nior Ben­jamin, of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, said he will talk to his of­fi­cers.

Ben­jamin said he will not sup­port such acts by of­fi­cers un­der his watch and ad­vised vic­tims to ask for the in­ves­ti­ga­tor or a se­nior of­fi­cer at the sta­tion if their re­ports are ig­nored.

On yes­ter­day’s The Morn­ing Brew on CNC3, a caller dur­ing the open fo­rum seg­ment re­vealed that she made a re­port of a vi­o­lent fam­i­ly mem­ber to the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion on May 2 but no one re­spond­ed.

“To­day is the 12th. My sis­ter, my broth­er made three re­ports and my sis­ter made three oth­er re­ports, so that’s about sev­en re­ports there and they told us that they will send a squad car to speak with the gen­tle­men. We called again be­cause things are hap­pen­ing there…that has not been done and it’s been ten days so I call­ing this morn­ing again and ask them if they wait­ing for some­one to die and then you would see a van load of po­lice,” she said.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) said since 2019, 25 women who ei­ther had or were in the process of get­ting pro­tec­tion of­fi­cers were killed by their abusers.

Among the women mur­dered were Naiee Singh, Ve­ra Go­la­bie, Tri­cia Ram­saran, Lisa Mata­goolam, Al­isa Ali, Crys­tal To­bias, Neisha Sankar, Shar­lene So­mai, Ter­isha Heer­alal, Tahi­la St Clair, Aman­da Leid and most re­cent­ly Abi­o­la Cud­joe.

Head of the TTPS Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit Clair Guy-Al­leyne yes­ter­day said they do fol­low-up and wel­fare checks. She said they keep in con­tact with vic­tims and in some in­stances the per­pe­tra­tor.

“Dur­ing the process of a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­port, you are to abide by all the ad­vice giv­en by the po­lice au­thor­i­ty, the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit. You must abide be­cause that is for your safe­ty…do not ever think that you can change a hu­man be­ing. If some­one tells you that they are go­ing to harm you or kill you, be­lieve them,” she said.

She said un­der the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act, po­lice of­fi­cers are man­dat­ed to re­spond to every re­port and en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to re­port er­rant po­lice of­fi­cers at oth­er po­lice sta­tions.

“Evil con­tin­ues when good peo­ple sit around and do noth­ing…it’s a lit­tle bit oner­ous for a vic­tim to be at a po­lice sta­tion try­ing to make a re­port and it’s not be­ing at­tend­ed to,” she said.

Guy-Al­leyne said the GB­VU, along with Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) Spot­light Ini­tia­tive and oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs), had de­vel­oped a mod­ule for the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my on gen­der-re­spon­sive polic­ing.

“Our po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing equipped and trained…We are re­al­ly try­ing our best with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion to change the nar­ra­tive, to change mind­sets and to be able to pro­vide that qual­i­ty ser­vice when it comes to gen­der-re­spon­sive polic­ing,” she said.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob added that a pro­gramme was al­so de­vel­oped to train of­fi­cers on how to re­spond to re­ports of land dis­putes and oth­er al­ter­ca­tions.

SEE MORE:

Po­lice: ‘We helped Tr­is­hana when re­ports were made’

‘Six times we called po­lice, now she's dead they've come’

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