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Let us have more empathy towards child abuse

Published:Tuesday | June 30, 2020 | 12:16 AM

THE EDITOR, Madam

I write in response to the Gleaner article ‘Sharp increase in minors under 10 being raped – May Pen SMO sounds alarm over children being viciously abused during COVID-19 lockdown’ by Corey Robinson, published on Sunday, June 28, 2020.

In 2013 and 2014, as talk show host on Power 106FM, then Senator Marlene Malahoo Forte repeatedly complained that despite sufficient evidence, as a judge, she often couldn’t convict those accused of rape or incest because the jurors’ verdicts were ‘not guilty’.

CULTURAL FLAW

When asked how they had arrived at that conclusion, jurors usually replied, “You can’t punish a man just for having a little sex. That’s part of our culture”, even when the victim was a child and even when the predator was the child’s father. They were of the view that it was girls’ and women’s destiny to please men whenever they desired. Rather than feeling compassion for the victims, they accused the victims of maliciously embarrassing the poor men.

Rape and incest are widely accepted as part of Jamaican culture while the same people who condone it criminalise and threaten consenting adult homosexuals. Coronavirus cannot be blamed for committing sexual abuse.

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