The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

AMID criticisms over the politicisation of rapes in the country, FNM Deputy leader Loretta Butler-Turner blasted the government and its efforts to combat violence against women calling them “vastly insufficient”.

While Social Services Minister Melanie Griffin went to great lengths yesterday to outline various programmes and commitments the Christie administration has adopted, the Long Island MP questioned the frequency of warnings to women.

Five of the PLP’s women MPs gathered at Parliament to decry Mrs Butler-Turner’s public statement that with so many women in government, there should be more of a focus on social ills. She was responding to a recap of statistics gathered for 2006 to 2010 which said there were a total of 1,299 cases of sexual abuse where all of the victims were children.

“There are some matters that should not be used as a political football, particularly crimes and more violent crime and sex crimes against women and children,” said Mrs Griffin.

“We know that violence against women and children is a worldwide phenomenon.

“We understand and know that the Bahamas is not exempt (and) that we do have our share of these challenges and issues. But this government does its best to deal with these circumstances.”

The government, according to Mrs Griffin, has enacted initiatives including a task force led by retired Justice Ruby Nottage which examines the root causes of violence and moving into communities to raise awareness of the rate of violence against women. She listed several others.

Another PLP MP Glenys Hanna-Martin said she was ashamed of Mrs Butler-Turner’s comments. She said the FNM Deputy has participated in the lowest form of politics by voicing the disparaging comments.

“I want to say,” she said, “that it is perverse and obscene that a woman and mother who serves in public life would use the ugly heinous incidents of rape that every woman has embodied in their minds as a fear because of what we know is happening in our county.

“What it does show is that she is a part of a political organisation that is fragmented and self destructing. You see a string of desperate politicians trying to distinguish themselves in their personal effort to rise to the top. This is a weak environment that they are operating in. I am disappointed in Mrs Loretta Butler-Turner and I think that women in the region and politics will be disappointed.”

Speaking to The Tribune last night, Mrs Butler-Turner said the truth of the PLP is that they do not care about the issue as they should.

“How many warnings have they sent to women? They talk about all these conventions and this conference and the next conference until the cows come home. But who is warning women? What are they doing? All these things still don’t change the fact that women are being raped at alarming rates out there.

“These are people who are sitting around the Cabinet table not concerned with what is really happening,” she said.

Other PLPs at the press conference included Senator Cheryl Bazar, State Transport and Aviation Minister Hope Strachan and Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Aviation Cleola Hamilton.