SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

A Rio Claro woman is now speak­ing out about her al­leged phys­i­cal abuse at the hands of a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for the up­com­ing Au­gust 20 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, say­ing she fears for her life if the al­le­ga­tions re­main pri­vate.

Cur­rline Coop­er told Guardian Me­dia she was in a two-year re­la­tion­ship with Moru­ga/Table­land can­di­date Win­ston ‘Gyp­sy’ Pe­ters, which be­gan when she was 29 years.

Coop­er, who is now 32, al­leged that the re­la­tion­ship be­gan while she was deal­ing with the deaths of close fam­i­ly mem­bers and a close friend in March 2018. It end­ed in March 2020.

On Ju­ly 2, Coop­er was grant­ed an in­ter­im pro­tec­tion or­der against Pe­ters, pre­vent­ing him from be­ing with­in 200 me­tres of her or con­tact­ing her - among oth­er stip­u­la­tions. The in­ter­im or­der was grant­ed in Pe­ters’ ab­sence, as Coop­er said po­lice of­fi­cers said they were not able to serve Pe­ters a sum­mons to at­tend court for the hear­ing.

That or­der will ex­pire on Ju­ly 23, when Coop­er and Pe­ters are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court for a de­ter­mi­na­tion on the mat­ter.

Coop­er doc­u­ment­ed the re­la­tion­ship and al­leged abuse in a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on May 20. Coop­er said af­ter she re­ceived no re­sponse to her ini­tial email, she sent the email again on June 17.

Coop­er sent a pho­to of the or­der and a copy of the emailed let­ter, in­clud­ing pho­to ev­i­dence she pro­vid­ed to sup­port her claims of abuse dur­ing the re­la­tion­ship, to Guardian Me­dia.

Coop­er al­so pro­vid­ed a let­ter from a Port-of-Spain med­ical cen­tre which stat­ed she had been treat­ed for emo­tion­al dis­tress and had “ev­i­dence of phys­i­cal trau­ma sec­ondary to an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship.” That re­port was dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 20, 2020.

Coop­er said she spoke to of­fi­cers in the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in Feb­ru­ary and asked the of­fi­cers warn Pe­ters not to make any con­tact her. She said she asked that Pe­ters not be charged with an of­fence as she hoped he would have abid­ed by the po­lice warn­ing and the mat­ter would go away qui­et­ly. How­ev­er, Coop­er al­leges Pe­ters did not fol­low the po­lice warn­ing.

Currline Cooper’s medical report

Coop­er said she al­so had a con­ver­sa­tion with Laven­tille West MP Fitzger­ald Hinds ex­press­ing her con­cerns about the re­la­tion­ship in Feb­ru­ary as well. She said Hinds told her “No one is above the law” and ad­vised her to write to Row­ley with her con­cerns.

Coop­er said she sent the email to Row­ley on May 20, 2020, af­ter learn­ing that Pe­ters was be­ing con­sid­ered as the can­di­date for Moru­ga/Table­land. Four days lat­er, on May 25, Pe­ters, a for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP for Ma­yaro and a Min­is­ter of Cul­ture un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, was se­lect­ed by the PNM.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Coop­er said she felt she now had to tell her sto­ry.

“I ba­si­cal­ly de­cid­ed to speak out be­cause of fear for my life. I shared my sto­ry so in case any­thing, God for­bid, hap­pens to me,” Coop­er said.

She said cas­es of women mur­dered in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es in re­cent times has left her con­cerned.

“It’s damn if I do, damn if I don’t ... Yes, it’s be­fore the court and they are see­ing about but I’m still scared. So at least and I hope I don’t be­come a sta­tis­tic, the pub­lic will be aware of my sto­ry,” Coop­er said.

Coop­er said up un­til March she lived in an apart­ment in Mt Lam­bert but has moved back to her par­ents’ house in Rio Claro.

She said she was em­ployed at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) but af­ter she filed for the pro­tec­tion or­der she was told her six-month con­tract would not be re­newed.

Coop­er de­nied there was po­lit­i­cal mo­ti­va­tion or in her speak­ing out weeks be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“It has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics. If I want­ed to be po­lit­i­cal I could have gone to the UNC with my sto­ry.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Pe­ters for a com­ment on the al­le­ga­tions by Coop­er.

Dur­ing a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, Pe­ters was told Guardian Me­dia had a copy of the in­ter­im pro­tec­tion or­der filed by Coop­er and he im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed, “I am not go­ing to talk about that.”

He then end­ed the call.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Laven­tille West MP Hinds seek­ing to con­firm whether Coop­er had spo­ken to him about the mat­ter.

Hinds in­ter­ject­ed dur­ing the ques­tion­ing to say he has spo­ken to many con­stituents as an MP and he found it ‘un­eth­i­cal’ that he would be con­tact­ed about a con­ver­sa­tion with one of his con­stituents. Hinds then end­ed the call.

Calls to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s cell­phone went unan­swered and mes­sages sent via What­sapp were marked as ‘Read’ but up un­til press time there was no re­sponse to the ques­tions.