A WOMAN claiming police harassment was slapped with seven charges when she tried to gain entry into her own home.

The Guyana Chronicle reported that 27-year-old, Odessa Seenanan of 8th Street, Diamond Housing Scheme, East Bank Demerara has accused police ranks at the Diamond/Grove Police Station of harassment, reportedly being instigated by her husband.
Having since fled her home, moving to Berbice following an abusive relationship, she told the Guyana Chronicle that she is being subjected to the ordeal, all because her husband of five years has been seeing another woman.
In an interview with this newspaper, Seenanan recalled being placed before the courts to face seven charges; but according to one police source, the woman has another charge coming her way, and this one is for damage to property.
She related that her husband has been physically abusing her, and the police at the station in the area do not respond to her complaints; but whenever her husband needs the police, they are at his beck and call.
She showed this publication some photographs of lacerations she had received at the hands of the man she had been living with for the past five years, and she said her children had witnessed the assaults. According to her, there are two houses on a plot of land, one which is owned by her husband, and the other which they both built during their union. She said the man was given a restraining order to stay one hundred feet away from her, but he has been breaching that restriction.
The mother of two said that, last week Tuesday, she travelled from Berbice to the home in Diamond, but was not able to enter, since there was someone else with a child in the house. Although she was not able to see the other person, she was convinced that the woman was the new person in the man’s life.
She said she asked the woman to open the door, but the woman refused, and while she was trying to open one of the louvre windows, it broke. Shortly after, the police arrived in the company of her husband, and she was promptly arrested and taken to the East La Penitence Police Station, where she was charged and locked up.
She said the entire episode had been caught on a phone recording which the police took possession of. According to Odessa, she was, and remains concerned that when the police arrived to arrest her, they came without a female officer, hence, she had refused to allow the male police ranks to arrest her.
A senior police officer, who is close to the investigation, informed the Guyana Chronicle that there was a development involving the woman and her behaviour at a home in Diamond. The police source, who is not authorised to speak with the media, informed that the police had not been ignoring the woman’s complaints, as she suggested, and that there is no evidence at this time to show that the police were being paid by the man to harass the woman.
This publication was told that the man the woman calls husband visited the police station and made a report concerning the development at his home, where the woman visited and broke windows of the house, while behaving in a disorderly manner. The source also stated that at the time of the entire episode, she was under the influence of alcohol.
The police source said the woman was not harassed by police officers who showed up to effect the arrest…
Odessa Seenanan was charged with four counts of assault. One alleges that she had bitten a peace officer; another alleges disorderly behaviour; and yet another alleges threatening behaviour. The last one alleges resisting arrest. She is still to be slapped with a charge of damage to property.
Now, could anyone see something wrong here? Or many things? Where are the watchdogs of women’s rights, and the GHRA? The reality is that the poor, powerless and vulnerable seemingly have no rights.
This is an abused woman who was trying to enter her own home, from which she had been forced to flee because the very police who arrested her, reportedly refused to protect her from an abusive husband, with whom she had co-habited, built a home; and for whom she bore children during five years, after which he found another woman and wanted her out of the home, abusing her with the probable hope that she would run away in fear from her own home.
However, she sought the help of the Court, which ordered the husband to keep away from her through a restraining order, which certainly meant the home in which she lived. Surely, that Order did not mean that she was confined to that home, and was not free to visit her mother without losing her home?
But despite the Court Order, the husband did not desist and, despite her repeated pleas, the police offered her no protection. So she fled to her mother for sanctuary.
Every woman with children needs her home and personal possessions, as do her children. So, she returned to her home, only to find ‘the other woman’ comfortably ensconced therein. And that woman felt free to deny Seenanan entry to her own home, so she reportedly tried to open a window and one of the louvers broke in the process; and everyone knows how fragile and easily breakable these windows are.
There is hardly any woman in the world who would graciously concede her home, built most likely with hard work and sacrifice, to another woman while she remains homeless; so, indeed, Seenanan must have created a scene, which was exactly what the husband, his girlfriend, and his police friends were waiting for.
Police, who did not respond to the woman’s plea for help — seemingly in collusion with the husband, causing her to flee her home for fear of her life — promptly arrived with said husband to arrest the woman, who had merely been trying to gain access to her own home. For that, she was charged with disorderly behaviour and threatening behaviour. Obviously, she would have tried to protect herself from the male police manhandling her; and those who have experienced police brutality know how vicious they can be. And for that she was charged with four counts of assault (Imagine a puny woman assaulting four hefty male police ranks!) And the last one alleges resisting arrest.
Of course she would resist arrest, because of the rank injustice! What was she being arrested for? For trespassing in her own home, when someone else was the guilty party of trespassing in Seenanan’s home. She accidentally broke a window trying to gain access into her home; her own property. And for that the police report that she is still to be slapped with a charge of damage to property. How ludicrous is that? And all of the foregoing begs the question: Whom are the police protecting and serving?