(Guest Editorial)
IN MORE enlightened and more efficient jurisdictions, the man who murdered 41-year-old mother of two, Isha Hosein at her sister’s home on Monday might not have been free to commit the act.
Threatening to kill someone is an arrestable offence, for the law operates on the assumption that while intent is not the same as action, one can often lead to the other.
Again, in other jurisdictions, incidents of domestic violence — however slight the actual physical contact may seem to the perpetrator and, indeed, to many Trinbagonian men – are viewed by officers of the law with utmost seriousness.
So much so, indeed, that men who have emigrated to North America, for example, are taken by surprise to discover the swiftness with which domestic violence distress calls are answered.
Offending men are prosecuted vigorously and without delay, even when the victims forgive and decide not to press charges.
Women’s organisations in Trinidad and Tobago have made some headway in turning disapproving public scrutiny toward the long-standing scourge of men beating women. Today, the culture is not as permissive of woman-beating as it used to be.
Note, for example, the disappearance of songs with that theme from the repertoire of even the more macho-traditionalist calypsonians. Still, enlightenment has been slow in becoming universal.
This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why Ms. Hosein’s relatives have good reason to believe they were let down by the police. According to their story, the violence meted out to the hapless woman had been going on for fully 14 years, with the police not intervening — or not intervening effectively enough — despite her entreaties to officers manning police stations.
Even when the victim invoked her legal rights, and obtained a restraining order against her attacker, that measure still was not enough. For men sufficiently deranged treat restraining orders with disdain; moreover, the prevailing police slackness allows some officers also to show indifference to restraining orders, in effect expressing a dangerous reluctance to intervene in “husband-and-wife business.”
Even with the best will in the world, it is not always easy — neither in the so-called developing nor the developed world — to stop killers in their tracks. But societies have a responsibility to put up all the roadblocks that they can muster.
These include well-trained and empathising police officers for whom every call for help made by a woman facing injury, or worse, at the hands of her past or present mate is received as an alarm signalling the potential for fatal bloodshed — as was so tragically the case with ‘Babe’ Hosein.