‘We need bystanders to stop being silent’

WESTERN BUREAU:

RETIRED DEPUTY Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant says it has become too easy for predators to attack, rape and kill children across the island, noting that many adults have not fulfilled their role as guardians of children within communities. She decried too the reluctance among people to actively engage in helping to protect potential victims of domestic violence.

In a presentation to police officers and civilians from Trelawny and St. James, attending a two-day domestic violence intervention workshop in St. James on Thursday, she said, “Predators should not be able to quickly grab a child, abuse them and then kill them. So we want us to all be aware of our roles and responsibility as we leave here.”

Grant, who has held several top positions in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, including briefly as acting commissioner of police in 2017, noted that predators have found it easy to attack their victims because too many people have become silent bystanders.

“We need bystanders to start talking about these things,” she said, referencing the surge of domestic violence in communities across the country.

The former deputy commissioner of police also questioned the absence of guardians of children as they traverse the public space, citing the reported incident earlier this month of a nine-year-old schoolgirl in Hanover who was allegedly restrained, raped and killed by a 42-year-old man from her community.

“There are people out in the public who are quite able to become capable guardians, if we remind them of what it means to care for our children and to see them safe,” said Grant.

Police reported that on February 1, nine-year-old Nikita Noel, of a Kew address near Lucea in Hanover, was reported missing by her mother Nordia Edwards, who had become concerned when her daughter didn’t return home from school by 4 p.m. as was customary. Following hours of a community-wide search led by family members and law enforcers, her lifeless body was found near her home. The police theorised that she was raped, and strangled.

Grant said the domestic violence intervention workshop held at the Calvary Baptist Church Hall in Montego Bay was designed to provide all stakeholders, with tools and knowledge of how to help to prevent domestic violence and how to intervene whenever it happens.

“Part of what we hope to do ... is that you will be able to start to have conversations and become capable guardians if we remind of what it means to care for our children and to see them safe,” she explained at the start of the workshop.

“We are also going to learn good communication. We are going to help you to ... communicate to victims and perpetrators and hopefully with bystanders because we need bystanders to stop being silent,” Grant continued.

She further encouraged participants to develop a plan to build on the information they received.