By Nathan ‘Jolly’ Green

During the last eighteen years, the Caribbean paradise state of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has become a living hell for women. Rape and molestation accompanied by the brutality of beatings, torture, and murder have become so commonplace in the mainland island of Saint Vincent that almost daily news reports of ever worse circumstances appear.

The situation is out of control, and the politicians in power are doing almost nothing to relieve the condition. The opposition party is trying hard, but they are not in power and are limited in what they can do.

Among the latest cases and reports are of a nurse who is a mother being shot dead by her husband at her son’s school where she had gone to collect him. Shot in the head and cradled in the arms of her young son before being taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. The public is calling for “a thorough investigation” into how the police responded to Arianna Taylor-Israel’s complaints that her life was threatened before she was shot and killed. Friends say she had complained twenty-eight times to the police that her husband had threatened her life, the police say it was just three. Twenty-eight or three, the police took no action whatsoever regarding the woman’s complaints. None action by the Vincentian police is pretty standard and holds back even more women complaining to them. The police have an ongoing history of doing nothing to help women, especially when there is a political conection.

For years now, women have complained that when they go to a police station, officers tell them to go home and behave themselves. They have even been laughed and jeered at when trying to complain formally. Women are asked questions in the outer public office instead of being asked within the confines of an interview room.

Little of this went on twenty years ago. Still, Saint Vincent in 2007, had the third-highest rate of recorded rapes after the Bahamas and Swaziland, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime document cited by the report. UN statistics showed that in 2011, St. Vincent was the fourth-worst country worldwide when it came to its rate of recorded rapes. Between 2000 and 2011, 60 women died from gender-based violence or at the hands of their partner — a staggering figure considering the gross under-reporting of cases and St. Vincent’s tiny 2011 population of 109,400. Université du Québec à Montréal’s International Clinic for the Defence of Human Rights and the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Human Rights Association. “In response to this cultural epidemic, the state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines does not provide adequate protection to women.” During that period, more than 4,490 Vincentians — four percent of the current population — sought asylum in Canada, the majority being women. Vincentian women were seeking asylum, and court documents suggest that almost all were fleeing violence. When abuse does occur, the woman’s quest for justice often ends at the police station. Under St. Vincent’s Domestic Violence Act — which considers domestic abuse a civil matter, not a criminal one — police are not even legally obligated to investigate. According to a report of that time by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. Although officers receive gender-sensitivity training, victims are often met with “gross, disrespectful, chauvinistic, young male police officers who feel that the victim asked for what she received.”

2020, Jan. 4 attack on Vincentian resident, Monique Hutchins, who was beaten in the face with a hammer, allegedly by a former lover.

2020, Jan. 29, a voice note was circulated via social media, in which a woman pleaded with a man to stop beating her, as he threatened to kill her in a vehicle.

2020, Jan. 29, photos and voice messages began circulating on social media, this time, surrounding the brutal chopping in the face with a sharp cutlass of a Vincentian woman, allegedly by two other female villagers.

Rape is such a problem, little girls as young as five years, and great grandmothers as old as eighty-five have been raped. Women raped on beaches after dark or walking home from work, no woman or child is safe anywhere at any time of the night or day.

Like all crime, there is a need to be tough; it is essential that strict punishment is not just administered, but is seen to be tough. Unfortunately, judges and magistrates are not tough on almost any crime in SVG. The prisons are overflowing, including a massive state of art prison built by the current administration — cells built for two house ten, if they imprison more, where will they put them.

But there lies another problem because the Prime Minister of St. Vincent, Dr. Ralph E Gonsalves, has also been accused of rape and other sex crimes against women. Not just one or two women but untold numbers of women. Yet not one of the complaints has ever resulted in a court case. The allegations included rape, and one such alleged crime resulted in a charge being brought against Gonsalves. Yet still, this man has never appeared before a court to face any of his accusers or address their allegations there.

You can be sure some of the readers of this article will be astounded that such things can be reported and no conclusive action resulting in a court appearance has ever taken place. Ralph Gonsalves besides being the Prime Minister is also the Minister National Security, Grenadines Affairs and Legal Affairs. He is an ex lawyer and is in charge of the police. “One of the accusations is from 40 years ago,” the brutish prime minister told a confidant.

Dr. Ralph E Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

“What do they want from me? I have been elected with more votes each time since 2001 — I am a hero, statesman, and savour of my beloved country.”

A leading Caribbean writer Nathan ‘Jolly’ Green recently wrote ­­–

There is a rape culture in SVG; even PM Ralph Gonsalves has been accused and charged with sex crimes. Vincentian police have had 20 years to act and have done nothing regarding looking into the allegations against him. The danger to woman is also a deterrent to tourism which perhaps is why the mainland island of Saint Vincent has the fewest tourists of all the developed islands in the Caribbean.

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IMAGES: Supplied by author

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