FAMILY members of murdered 13-year–old Leonard Archibald will soon receive counselling, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) announced on Friday.
Senior psychologist attached to the ministry’s Mental Health Unit, Balagun Osunbiyi, said the counselling package has a number of measures including psycho-social and problem-solving skills, coping and refusal to yield to peer pressure.
Osunbiyi said mental health workers and social workers along with a psychologist have already visited the grieving East Bank Berbice family.
“As a result of the obvious trauma, the MoPH will be offering counselling for the family which will include the older children and the father Walter Archibald, who is a Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) employee and also a part-time fisherman,” Osunbiyi said
He said that counselling is among a series of key interventions needed to help the family.
The MoPH will also be undertaking sustained community-sensitisation programmes to help familiarise residents with techniques to spot both perpetrators and victims of sexual assaults, the release said.
“A profile of perpetrators of sexual violence reveals that some might have been victims themselves, and as a consequence has difficulties maintaining personal relationships with adults. They prey on others with unresolved sexual issues and are usually hooked on addictive substances,” the psychologist said.
According to the psychologist, rapid change in behaviour; unpredictable and inexplicable mood swings; expressions of violence and ‘cutting’ themselves are among the tell-tale signs of victims of sexual violence.
The body of 13-year-old Archibald of Brothers Village, East Bank Berbice, was discovered some three miles away from his home on the bank of the river in the nearby village.
His body was found less than 24 hours after two suspects had confessed to raping and dumping the unconscious child in the river behind the yard of one of the accused.
Archibald went missing on Sunday, September 17, after leaving home to accompany his three sisters from a party in a nearby village. He was last seen riding his bicycle along the Brothers Village Public Road in a pair of trousers.
According to information, the teen collected his sisters and was accompanying them home when he told them he was riding ahead and would meet them there.
However, when the girls arrived home, the Overwinning Primary School teen was not there and a search conducted failed to locate him.
Following an intense investigation, several persons were questioned and two main suspects were arrested. Under intense grilling, the duo told detectives that they had snatched the teen the same night and sodomised him. The two further told investigators that after the boy fell unconscious during the ordeal, his body was dumped into the nearby river.
Sometime around 15:00 hrs, on September 23, Archibald’s badly decomposed body was discovered some three miles away at Kortherbraadt Village, by four men from a search party that was out since Friday, combing all corners of the Berbice River after the suspects confessed to murdering the teen and dumping his body in the river.
Following the suspects’ admission and details of what had transpired to the investigators, members of the public called for stiffer penalties for paedophiles, including the death penalty.
Police have arrested two male suspects, Hilary Edwards, 29, of Sisters Village and Odedeih Christopher, 19, of Skeldon, Corentyne and also of Sisters Village, for the death of the schoolchild.
The parents of the deceased child said they will “not rest” until they receive justice for their murdered son.
