THE Guyana Police Force (GPF) has come out in full support of it’s ‘A’ Division Commander Senior Superintendent, Clifton Hicken, who on Monday advised women and girls to dress in a manner which is morally acceptable and to some extent helps prevent rape.

The commander was at the time addressing members of the media, police officers and stakeholders at the presentation of the Guyana Police Force Christmas security arrangements for 2014. At the time the statements were made Hicken was addressing the issue of rape and how the division is working to bring the number of cases under control.
“Rape seems to be on the front burner in ‘A’ Division and that is something we are paying close attention to and we are working with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Human Services and other NGOs; and we are working assiduously not to just solve [the] problem when it happens, but to prevent it from happening through lectures to school, various advisories [and] as much educational programmes that we can distribute through stakeholder and other NGOs involved,” Hicken said while speaking of rape in the division.
“We are speaking about preventing somebody from committing an offence and yet we are creating an atmosphere in terms of our society which seems to be the norm now. When we are within our partnership programmes, we advocate for the young females who seem to be vulnerable within a certain age group that is moving from around 13 to 18, 16 to 18; and we always try to embrace an attire that would be accepted morally and not to have yourself in an attire that you create this type of look, reminiscing look by the opposite gender and that is a work in progress for us and we are expanding that in terms of sharing our information and tips through NGOs of course. Yes, we have a spiral increase in September- October. We seem to be doing fine,” the commander further told the gathering.
The police in their press release said that Commander Hicken was taken out of context and that he had no intention to in any way justify sexual assault.
The force said that while males in the society ought not to interpret a female’s mode of dress to be sending a particular type of signal, the fact remains that it is happening to some degree.
Hicken has lots of experience which provides information arising out of interviews of suspects in sexual assault matters as well as intelligence coming from discussions among elements of criminal groups regarding sexual assaults they would have committed. Such information is gathered when these groups are penetrated, the GPF added.
The police went on to say that in many cases discussions would have suggested that the mode of dress of the victims might have contributed to the suspect’s selection of targets. In closing, the police said that the commander felt obligated to share that information as one of his crime-prevention strategies focusing on sexual assault.
The Guyana Police Force supports the divisional commander in his crime-prevention efforts, inclusive of sharing pertinent information, and wishes to reiterate that the commander had no intention of defining moral conduct and that the statement was aimed totally towards crime prevention, the release added.

Meanwhile, this publication was able to confirm that many groups and sections of the media which sought to lash out at the commander for his advice to women and girls either deliberately took the statements of the senior officer out of context, while others sought to miss-quote the commander, which contributed to the desired reaction of condemnation of the officer’s remarks.

It was noted that one particular media house inserted statements into a published article and attributed them to the commander, when in fact none of the words used by that news outfit in the particular line were never used by the commander during his presentation on the issue of rape.