I SHALL begin our discourse with the lyrics from the song by ‘Roy C’, which states  that, “A man can get no further than a woman let him, oh no”. This is the naked truth. No man would be able to do the things he does except that woman lets him. This brings me to the key point of my letter today. Some men in Guyana have been getting away with, for lack of a better word, murder, due to the fact that the women are “allowing it”. I made use of the word allowing in lifted commas to say pointedly that no woman would like her body to be brutalised by any man; no human being in her right mind would allow this to happen but this is the telltale facts of the lot of some of our womenfolk who are thinking with their hearts or their emotions and not with their heads.

The root cause for all of this lies in the fact that most of the women in these domestic violence cases are not aware or are not knowledgeable of their rights under the law.

So with all the laws enacted to protect women, grand poster paintings and lofty speeches, the shocking barbarity continues unabated with each act more gruesome than the former. While these acts are good in themselves (the posters and talent shows) however, they lack the grit or strength to achieve the purpose for which it is intended, that is, to protect women.

What the authorities should be doing is actively engaging women in every corner of the country; at the village level; in the districts at the workplace holding workshops to address the scourge. These clinics should have qualified lawyer/s in attendance. It is vitally important to have a legal person there to heighten the awareness of domestic abuse from a legal perspective. I would be bold enough to say most of the cases we witness are  a result of the victim not  having the slightest clue as to her rights.

Take for example, that woman who was constantly violated by an abusive mate was heard saying “my man jealous me so he does beat me” What foolishness! he is not jealous of you he is simply controlling a clueless woman.

When I gave her timely advice as to the legal avenues available to her to bring an end to the abuse, her response was: “I don’t want the law to come in husband and wife story plus he warn me he not gun gee me any monee.”

And this is precisely the case. These beastly, low-life  men are good psychologists. They prey on the minds of the hapless woman that legal proceedings against them would cause the situation to get worse. That is exactly what he wants you to do: keep things quiet by keeping the law out while the violence continues.

Whereas, if that woman had heeded my advice in getting a protective order and sticking to it, she would have been alive today. Not knowing one’s legal rights under the law is the main reason for an upsurge in domestic violence in Guyana today. A woman who is empowered knowing her rights would put an end to this present crisis.

Finally, I will close today’s discourse with a story related to me by a friend living in one of these upscale areas.

She told me she was forced to call the police over to the house where an ongoing domestic violence incident was taking place. The police promptly responded by turning up at my friend’s door. So when she enquired of their presence at her door, she was rudely informed by the lawmen that they were in receipt of a desperate call for help from a distraught woman; her live-in boyfriend was beating the crap out of her and they were there to arrest him.

My friend’s response was she has no live-in boyfriend and was not abused in any way. However, she was able to direct the lawmen over to the residence of the one who everyone knew was suffering from the violence.

Now, when the police contacted that woman, she loudly responded that this was all a mistake, she never called them and her boyfriend only threatened her, though there were visible marks of violence on her body.

She told the lawmen that everything is okay with them now to the point that when the police arrived there, the two were in bed. The story did not end there. When the woman recognised that my friend was the one who called the police, my friend became the object of verbal abuse of the worst kind, which caused her to make a solemn promise never to intervene in other women’s business.
Now, could you imagine what the end of that abused woman was? Well, she became another statistic in that long list of abused cases. She was another victim of those women who mistakenly take slaps, cuffs and stabbings as “strong loving”.
Women, domestic abuse is not something to play with; get help and get it right now. An abusive partner will not change, you need to change that passive stance and become proactive. This is the only way we could talk about zero tolerance for violence against women.