The laws that separate chaos from order

IN THE study of human culture, especially tribal culture, one finds similarities across continents in what the individual can be executed for, exiled for, or sold into bondage as an outcast. Human beings over tens of thousands of years were guided by seers and prophets to laws that established stability. Violations in the shadows of sexuality are of a tremendously volatile nature. Such transgressions have launched wars, and have always merited the most serious of attention and judgement from man and the forces of nature. Today is no different. Some accusations, even if proven innocent, cast a shroud of doubt and unleash the earth-bound spirits of gossip into rabid outpourings. The law and its guardians are the only balance between “chaos and order” and when due process is sidestepped for porous familiarity, there will be repercussions.
During the recent local government elections campaign, objections to a specific candidate were voiced loud and clear, the accusations were vile and struck that chord of collective resentment. “Sexual child abuser” echoed, the politicians responded, and it went further to the call for the removal of the incumbent Minister. I know this Minister and the accuser, but from a particular experience I had I decided to follow this incident and explore its elements.
The accused was indeed charged in the past for similar offences, but was never convicted. We have emerged with the philosophy of spiritual redemption, that people reform themselves. This man’s excellent community performance was enough to win the sympathy of his community, tipping the scales in his favour, that the Minister retracted her reservation, when faced with the difficult choice of the moral right against the applause of the constituency, is understood, not that it was right.
Convictions of private knowledge which may be legitimate enough for a public outcry are not enough for a legal cause; was there not medical proof that could withstand the absence of human testimony? I wish to share two similar experiences that I was involved in some years ago, to emphasise the dire importance of why all elements of due process have to be adhered to, especially with this kind of transgression.
Some years ago a friend of mine who owned a mini-bus and conducts business in a popular downtown street seemed to fit the description of a sexual predator that also travelled in a mini-bus. There was a certain character that my friend had an alteration with who would accelerate this matter. It appeared that the Ministry of Education back then had deployed a welfare department on truancy, and had heard of this predator. With a hunch from this “certain character,” my friend and a specific youth who too many times was missing school due to domestic issues, as he would be at his mother’s stand during school hours, were drawn into that tragic drama. Recently, at a substance-abuse meet hosted by the Ministry of Education, where the Ministry’s welfare personnel were present, I looked for that particular overzealous welfare person, but had to conclude that she may have retired. My friend was arrested. Nothing he had said, or that the child and his mother also said seemed to mean anything, they were all in denial. I was assured and that explanation was not absurd. My friend was detained at the East La Penitence police station pending court the following day. I will name the only person necessary to be named in that saga; I sat down with detective Gravesande then stationed at the East La Penitence station and he entertained my concerns on the aspect of my friend’s detention. He explained the course of the medical procedure that should really be applied, which he discussed with his officer and it was done. The medical procedure resulted that no such horrid experience was endured by this child; my friend was vindicated. What if the procedure had been ignored? I never knew if that predator was arrested. Then there was the case of a close relative of mine working with a young lady at a “Phone Shop.”
His crime was to know the young lady’s boyfriend, because, when she was engaged in a parallel relationship and her boyfriend discovered it, my relative was targeted as the snitch. Usually there were neighbourhood children who hung around the P-S and the young woman retaliated by starting a scandal of the most perverse kind, pitching my relative in a sick alteration with a particular child, that took me to the lawyer’s office, overseas phone calls to the child’s father who worked in Barbados, and finding money for the medical test. The matter didn’t meet the police station, as the child’s mother knew my relative and didn’t believe it; he too was vindicated. The young lady eventually conceded the fabrication, and apologised. But a process had to be executed.
Though there are legitimate cases of such horrific violations, yet we must be cognisant that these violations carry an air of condemnation once in the public consciousness, justifiably for the guilty, but also for the innocent, which to public opinion is more damning than murder. A severe law should be enacted for conspirators of such fabrications. The steelband fraternity lost the active participation of “Patsy” James, because of one such public outcry, and after that he just dwindled away; I’m not sure of the fate of his timeline.
Everyone in the Western Hemisphere is aware of the conflict of Homer’s Iliad, which was launched when Paris the Trojan prince abducted Helen, the wife of Menelaus King of Sparta. This conflict ended with the destruction of Troy. The social banishment of the Zulu princess Nandi upon the illegal and in the circumstance, taboo intercourse with Prince Senzangakona of another clan, produced the child Shaka, born in resentment, bred as a subject of contempt he grew up to excel his tormentors with pitiless discipline and boundless drive, and in the end was assassinated by his own kin. Lastly, but not the least was the pretext that brought the Moors into Spain. The Byzantine governor Count Jullian had sent his daughter Florinda on a visit to the Visigoth King of Spain, Roderick,who betrayed the protocols of the day and sexually violated the count’s daughter. In retaliation, the count visited Musa-ibn-Nusair the Moorish Caliph and invited an African invasion of Spain which was led by the able general Tarik; the count even assisted with providing some ships. Sexual violations transcend choke-and-rob and other crimes in the matriarchal realms with the rage it unleashes. we should be guided by what went before.

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