DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The trag­ic sui­cide of 15-year-old St Stephen’s Col­lege stu­dent Jay­den Lalchan has drawn a heart­felt re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day’s Bud­get de­bate, PM Row­ley paused to ex­tend his con­do­lences to Jay­den’s griev­ing fam­i­ly, high­light­ing the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of bul­ly­ing that led to the boy’s un­time­ly death.

As a fa­ther him­self, Row­ley spoke with pal­pa­ble emo­tion, stat­ing, “I want to ex­press my sin­cer­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of that young school­boy, his name is Jay­den, who took his own life be­cause of how he was be­ing per­se­cut­ed in the school. No par­ent should have to bury a child but to have to bury one un­der those cir­cum­stances is par­tic­u­lar­ly pun­ish­ing.”

While the Prime Min­is­ter re­frained from an­nounc­ing spe­cif­ic an­ti-bul­ly­ing leg­is­la­tion yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar seized the mo­ment at Jay­den’s fu­ner­al on Tues­day, pledg­ing to in­tro­duce a pro­posed Jay­den Bill to com­bat bul­ly­ing com­pre­hen­sive­ly dur­ing an in­ter­view with the me­dia. She called for jus­tice al­though she ad­vo­cat­ed for for­give­ness.

Yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said he had had lit­tle time to process the sor­row sur­round­ing Jay­den’s death when he was con­front­ed by an­oth­er hor­ri­fy­ing in­ci­dent: the mur­der of Tara “Gee­ta” Ram­sa­roop and her one-year-old daugh­ter Ja­da Mooti­lal.

Rel­a­tives claimed Ram­sa­roop en­dured near­ly sev­en years of abuse at the hands of her al­leged killer.

De­scrib­ing the crime as “hor­ren­dous,” Row­ley said he strug­gled to com­pre­hend re­ports that the sus­pect, now in cus­tody, had plans to tar­get an­oth­er mi­nor.

“For God’s sake, sup­pose he had got to that school and had killed that sec­ond child in and among the oth­er school­child­ren? What is go­ing on in our so­ci­ety? And we have no con­trol over the thought of crim­i­nal con­duct. We can on­ly re­spond to them af­ter they’ve done it,” he said.

De­spite his out­rage, the Prime Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged the sen­ti­ment ex­pressed by a mem­ber of the pub­lic who, when asked by a re­porter to com­ment on the Bar­rack­pore dou­ble mur­der, said “Trinidad is a very messed up coun­try” and added that things might im­prove if Row­ley were to re­sign.

He recog­nised that many share this per­spec­tive but firm­ly dis­missed it.

“What does that hor­ren­dous act have to do with the as­sign­ment of the prime min­is­ter?” he chal­lenged.

Fur­ther ad­dress­ing the pub­lic’s con­cern, he com­ment­ed on As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar’s de­fence of law en­force­ment in the wake of the Bar­rack­pore in­ci­dent. Rel­a­tives of the vic­tims al­leged that po­lice had ig­nored mul­ti­ple re­ports of abuse. In re­sponse, ACP Mys­tar in­sist­ed that prop­er pro­to­cols were fol­lowed and ad­vised vic­tims to dis­tance them­selves from their abusers if pro­tec­tion or­ders were in place.

Row­ley re­flect­ed on the par­al­lels be­tween Mys­tar’s state­ments and his own ad­vice in 2017, when he urged women to choose their part­ners wise­ly amid a rise in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

“Ma­ma yo! They near­ly skew­er me for giv­ing the ad­vice that I give to my two daugh­ters; be care­ful with how you go about your life and with whom you as­so­ciate. To­day (yes­ter­day), I see of­fi­cer Mys­tar say­ing the same thing in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions.”

Au­top­sies re­vealed the in­fant sus­tained a chop wound to her neck, while Ram­sa­roop en­dured mul­ti­ple fa­tal in­juries.