When did we become so inhuman? Gang rape, shock treatment, and the brutality of “life pon de dam”
By Savitri Persaud
Savitri Persaud was born in Guyana and spent part of her childhood in Moblissa, off the Linden Highway, and in Bellevue, West Bank Demerara. Savitri is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her doctoral dissertation examines discourses of disablement, mental health, and violence in Guyana and the Caribbean.
“Male teen accuses 10 men of ‘gang-rape’,” was the online headline that I encountered on January 9th in one of the local dailies. A caption of such cruelty was further contextualized when it was revealed that an 18-year-old man from Bellevue, West Bank Demerara, was allegedly sexually assaulted after being invited by a friend to a house in Vreed-en-Hoop on December 31, 2014 to celebrate the New Year. At the time of the initial report, the young man was unconscious and in critical condition. His mother relayed his account to reporters. She explained that while her son was in Vreed-en-Hoop, he was drugged and repeatedly raped by ten men over a period of two days, escaping for his life on January 2, 2015. The mother told Kaieteur News: “He said that his friend jook him with a needle and he and about nine other men rape him in a house. He said that blood spray up on the sheet, and the boys dem take off the sheet and hide it… He said that the boys took him somewhere and they were going to shoot him, but a lady see and shout, and tell him to run… My son was in a terrible condition. He was scared for his life; he was nervous, his body was trembling, and I could see he was in pain.”
According to subsequent reports, the teen was first taken to West Demerara Regional Hospital (WDRH) and on several occasions thereafter where he received treatment and was repeatedly sent home before being transferred to Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). At GPHC, doctors recommended electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and his mother apparently agreed. The young man was moved to the National Psychiatric Hospital (NPH) before being transferred again to New Amsterdam Regional Hospital (NARH) where he received his first round of ECT on January 27th. The young man’s friend who invited him out on Old Year’s Night was remanded but later released. The police claimed that they could not proceed further until the victim was able to provide them with a statement. The young man has since regained consciousness. Investigations are ongoing.
This kind of sexual violence – both vicious and grotesque in the most visceral sense – is not spectacular. The headlines scream these incidents every day; they bawl at increasing decibels that eventually cause us to turn away with the hope that we will never personally experience such brutality. And yet, this brutality and the violence of this case, in all its various forms, set out and confirm dangerous courses of action that affect us all – especially the youth of Guyana.
The physical violence experienced by this young man is further reproduced and executed at the cultural and institutional levels.
According to the young man’s family, the accused persons told investigators that the victim was gay and that he is a “lil mad” and “mentally challenged” as a way of casting doubt on the victim’s mental health and (consequently) his allegations against them. What makes the accused persons competent to make a determination of madness/disability? To label the victim as gay or to pelt him with the accusation of being ‘mad’ is, in this context, an assault on his credibility.
To be rendered mad/disabled/othered in this way is to tacitly rule that any account from the said individual is utterly invalid – to speak is to be heard through the filter of fabrication. The tragedy is that rumours like this – in this case, of the young man’s madness – can come to take the status of truth, not fabrication. In other words, he is gay so how can he be raped (maybe he is just out to attack the character of these other boys by accusing them of raping a man)? His ‘head nah good’ so why take anything he says seriously? To be gay and to be ‘mad’ means that he is not to be trusted. He is not considered a credible witness.
These attitudes and the ability to make such claims against the integrity of a victim are buttressed by rape culture, homophobia, ableism, and saneism. They are further supported by the blatant lack of institutional protections in place. As several women noted in a December 11, 2014 letter to the Stabroek News (“We are not prepared to accept there is no money for comprehensively addressing the scourge of sexual violence&rdquo
:
“…for the period 2011-2013 there were no convictions out of the 22 sexual offence cases which reached the courts. Incredibly, this signals that Guyana has gone backwards as in 2000-2004 and according to GHRA research only 1% of reported rapes resulted in convictions; today 10 years later Guyana has zero convictions for reported rapes…we are of the opinion that it is the lack of implementation of the Sexual Offences Act 2010 (SOA 2010) and the failure of the state to put in place the necessary human, financial and material resources for its full functioning and the low priority, low consideration and low importance it gives to issues such as protection of human rights of women, children, youth and LGBT which has brought us to such a situation.”
At the institutional level, we must also ask how and why ECT was recommended and ultimately used to treat a victim of sexual assault. ECT is commonly considered a ‘treatment of last resort’ after other therapies are exhausted. Recall that the victim received the first round of ECT less than a month after the incident. What kinds of counseling or talk therapies were offered to the victim and his family? What kinds of social service and financial support were made available to them? To be sure, there are resource constraints in terms of professional personnel and tools to address mental health in Guyana; however, this debate is a matter of priority. Mental health is simply not an area of prime concern in Guyana. The resources to comprehensively address mental health and the social determinants of mental health impairments are sorely lacking. The government must work to address the systemic and structural causes of psychosocial disabilities and implement other therapies outside of drug treatments and ECT. I am left asking if ECT then is truly a ‘treatment of last resort’ in a place where there are so few treatments to begin with.
Moreover, this young man belongs to a working class family and community. Was his mother made aware of the potential side effects of ECT, which include memory loss among others? What happens then if he is unable to give a statement to investigators because he has forgotten? What of patient rights and issues of informed consent? Was his mother approached by medical experts who talked at her and over her head instead of listening to her? Who advocated for her when she was faced with these medical decisions to determine the course of treatment that her son would receive? Should we not be weary of a culture in Guyana where questioning is regarded with disapproval; where patients are discouraged from querying about why they should ‘tek dis injection’, ‘drink dat tablet’, or ‘tek dis lil shack’ ‘fuh feel betta’?
Additionally, the police must also do their work. Violence against young people must be addressed, especially in a nation where state torture is promoted. I mean this both in the figurative and literal sense, particularly after the recent promotion of two police officers, Narine Lall and Mohanram Dulai, who were accused of burning the genitals of a 14-year-old boy in police custody. The young people of Guyana must be actively involved in changing this culture and making the state answerable. The Guyana National Youth Council (GNYC) was asked to provide a statement for this column regarding the rape incident of the 18-year-old man. They issued remarks that echo the sentiments of state and institutional accountability:
“The Guyana National Youth Council condemns the gruesome acts against the 18-year-old, who was gang raped on December 31, 2014, and is presently still receiving treatment. We are cognizant that investigations are still ongoing but urge all authorities to do everything possible to protect the victim, ensure justice is served and that he is not victimized by the very system meant to protect him. We have no knowledge of the full medical report but certainly hope that measures were taken to preserve DNA evidence. The GNYC reiterates the call for the full implementation of the Sexual Offences Act 2010, which offers protections to rape victims.”
The GNYC statement reminds us of the work that we have to do. In truth, this young man is being further victimized by the very system that is intended to protect him. According to a newspaper report on January 21, 2015, no public hospital outside of Georgetown is equipped with rape kits; this includes the first hospital, WDRH, that the young man made repeated visits to over several days before finally being transferred to GPHC. Rape kits are designed to provide assistance during physical examinations, and they preserve biological evidence. These examinations and the collection of samples must be done as soon as possible. It can be assumed that since regional hospitals outside of Georgetown were not supplied with rape kits, that reliable samples were not securely obtained at WDRH in the early stages after this sexual assault. In a way, the rape kit is an advocate for justice; however, justice continues to be derailed when the SOA 2010 has no teeth.
This young man and I belong to the same community, Bellevue, West Bank Demerara. I am a child of this village, and I am a diasporic youth of Guyana. Last week, as I started to write this column, students and staff at the University of Guyana mobilized to rally for a better Guyana. Thinking about this young man, about the physical, emotional and mental injuries he has been subjected to, I wondered what is our future, as young people in Guyana, those of us in the Guyanese diaspora whose navel string is buried in this place that we call home, those of us who plan to return and those of us who continue to make our contributions from abroad. It is time to come together, to rally for a better Guyana, to take a stand publicly if this nation is to be a Guyana for everyone.