By Vanessa Cort
WHETHER it involves fatalities or not, domestic violence has been a cause for growing concern in countries around the world. It is also a subject I return to repeatedly and on this occasion, the horrifying news of a father who shot eight children — seven of them his — in the United States last week, has caused me to return to the topic yet again.
When domestic violence results in the death of children at the hands of a parent, it raises a number of questions, the most pressing being, ‘why’? The answers are many and varied, but there can be no doubt that the underlying reason is the parent’s mental instability. For who in their ‘right mind’ would commit such an act?
We all feel the shock and sorrow at the death of innocent children, often caught in the web of their parents’ verbal or physical disputes.
Earlier this month, a Guyanese mother was remanded to prison for strangling her 7-year-old daughter and attempting to kill her one-year-old son, then taking her own life. The tragedy occurred on Easter Sunday at Fyrish Village on the Corentyne and was apparently sparked by the father’s prolonged absence from the home, leaving the family with no food or money.
Ten years ago, a Soesdyke man received a life sentence after he hacked to death his three children as they lay asleep. The incident occurred five years earlier in 2011.
The Afro- American father, an army veteran, shot seven of the children as they slept, while the eighth was apparently shot on the roof of the house, placed there to save him from a death he ultimately could not escape. A resident of a small Louisiana town, the man was on the verge of divorce and days earlier had posted an online appeal to God to help with his emotional state. He also made a post in which he stated that he regretted his marriage.
These were definite ‘red flags’ that something was wrong. Another indicator happened years earlier when he discharged a loaded firearm in the vicinity of a school. In order to prevent such tragedies from recurring, it is incumbent upon the authorities to look more closely at the reasons for these acts. It is also important that we, as a society, learn to recognise and not ignore the signs that warn us that all is not well with someone.
It is not enough for us to simply lock offenders away or show no empathy, while, in Guyanese parlance, still declaring, ‘Dey head can’t be good fuh do something like duh’, as I have heard many say following tragedies of this nature.
As Guyanese psychotherapist, Shane Tull said, “It has to be a combination of issues…a person doesn’t just get up one morning and decide to kill their family.”
This means the Corentyne mother’s frustration was likely building up over time and was hardly the result of the one instance. The Soesdyke father perhaps suffered from feelings of inadequacy and rage, which worsened over time and the Louisiana father was clearly emotionally unstable and possibly overwhelmed at conditions in his home.
Psychotherapist Tull also voiced his suspicion that there might have been a history of domestic violence in these homes prior to the tragedies. He regarded the horror in the US as a “wake-up call” to us all, particularly noting that men need a safe space to discuss their mental health challenges without fear of judgement.
As someone who has been involved for many years in providing such a space, both here and abroad, Tull noted the reluctance among Guyanese to pay attention to their mental health.
If we are to avoid the horror of children dying at the hands of their parents, then we surely must consider our mental health to be of the utmost importance. As a psychotherapist, Shane Tull vehemently declared, “Mental health is health”.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
