The Tribune

IT was just about two weeks ago that the general public was told that a serial sex offender who has not been rehabilitated would be released from prison. Women were made responsible for their own safety. We were given this information as though it could protect us from the gender-based violence that is everywhere we turn. All we knew was that he had committed many sexual offences, that he blamed the women he violated and a “spirit” he claims to have had since he was a child. His comments to the Minister of National Security should have led to action that does not include his release to the public.

Whether or not he had a psychological evaluation was not a part of the announcement, and many members of the public have come to two conclusions in this regard. The most dominant was, and still is, that he need not be released to violate women and girls. Instead, even if it is not prison, he needs to be in an institution that could provide the appropriate treatment while keeping him away from the public which he has demonstrated and stated he navigates in violent wants. The second, relatedly, was that he should not be foisted upon the public, leaving us to deal with his behaviour.

One week after the release of the serial sex offender was announced, angry residents of Coconut Grove showed up at his residence, armed with bottles and rocks, in response to rumours that he had attempted to abduct a girl. Police were seen taking the serial sex offender into custody, leading people to believe that he was a suspect. It was later announced that he was taken into protective custody. Police said, for his safety, this serial sex offender was “escorted from his residence by police.”

There has not been much commentary on this, but it deserves attention. This man, who has faced 20 counts of sexual assault, had what many victims beg for and do not get. People showed up at his residence, angry about not only what they suspected he had done, but what they knew he had done and said he would do again. The police went to his residence and took him into protective custody. This is outrageous. It is an insult to all of us who have ever turned to the police, expecting protection, and being turned away, ignored, or insulted.

Do you remember Alicia Sawyer and Ednique Wallace? I will never forget their names, their faces, or what happened to them. Alicia Sawyer was 30 years old, and her daughter Ednique was eight years old when they were murdered. In October 2020, days after the double murder, police said they were hunting for the murderer in the hours before he killed Alicia and Ednique. Alicia Sawyer has reported her ex-boyfriend for the death threats he made, and the response of the police was to search for him. They left her home with no guard. They sent her no escort to a safe location. They made no arrangements to safely house her and her family members. She was left to be hunted and killed while police looked for the murderer.

Then Commissioner of Police Paul Rolle said, “The protection is to try and catch the culprit and on that night when the incident happened, we had several units all over the city trying to find this culprit and in the midst of that …we suspect he returned and then we have which took place, which is sad.”

If it was not clear before, on that very day, it became clear that there is a limited and flawed view of protection, and that protection is insufficient and ought not be the goal. Protection is, frankly, a last ditch effort when every system has failed and when no effective system has been developed to address the scourge of gender-based violence. The rhetoric about “protection” is, in fact, dangerous as well as lazy. A focus on “protection,” especially in legislation and policy, is acceptance of the current state of society—proliferation of violence and, in particular, violence against women and girls.

Prevention and intervention are not getting sufficient attention and certainly do not have resources allocated to them. Worse, the social transformation we need does not seem to even be a thought for the government. Its position continues to be that there is violence, violence is bad, and it’s sad that women and girls are being violated every day. In addition, it continues to feed into the idea that the resources and services that have been made available for women and girls, because of our disproportionate experiences of violence, must be replicated for men and boys. It is not that these resources and services are not useful for everyone, but that they are specifically needed for women and girls, and that men and boys need to be engaged and supported in different ways. This is what it means to be gender responsive.

We see that women and girls are experiencing homelessness because they experience violence at home and flee without having a place to go, so we need a temporary housing programme that includes support for transitioning to permanent housing. We see the men and boys are turning to violence and this is connected to their struggle with experiencing a wide range of emotions — particularly beyond anger — and understanding them as valid and congruent with masculinity, so we need to change the way we raise boys and counteract the limited portrayals of masculinity in the media by identifying and highlighting men and boys who demonstrate emotional intelligence.

Protection, even in the limited way it is understood by government agencies, is not ineffective, an indication of continued failure, and somehow more available to a serial sex offender than a woman who made a report to police, only for them to focus on the culprit and leave her and her daughter to be murdered. Protection is a low bar. This, again, is one of the many issues with the nonsense “Protection Against Violence” bill which does not acknowledge gender relations or sufficiently move beyond a response to violence that has already occurred. What kind of protection is that? In case you have not yet figured it out, it is not protection.

Protection will not save us. Protection is not the answer. Who qualifies for protection? Who offers protection? How will society change if the emphasis is on and the resources go into protection rather than making society peaceful, safe, and equitable? “Protection” is an easy word to throw around, and it sounds good when we think it is being offered to us, but without social transformation, there will always be some of us who fall out of the zone of protection. Where that zone is depends on who has the power and who has their attention. Police, and the government at large, have shown that they are most concerned about criminals, and not just catching them, but “protecting” them too, while victims struggle to survive.

Recommendations

• Join Feminist Book Club in reading Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi. Equality Bahamas and Poinciana Paper Press have been hosting this monthly book club since January, and the selection for September is this short novel about a girls who is chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a school for creative teens. She sees it as a safe haven while her peers want to venture beyond its walls and be a part of a revolution. Attend the meeting in person or virtually. Sign up at tiny.cc/fbc2023 to receive updates.

• The Cult of Spiritual Scammers. Check out this episode of Sounds Likes Cult—a podcast that delves into elements of popular culture to determine which of them are modern day cults and which don’t quite meet the requirements. As people search for other ways to understand and navigate life, it can be easy to fall into fads, scams, and maybe even cults. This episode gets into some of them.