The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

It shocked the nation, so we were told – but given the level of violence in our nation towards women, are we really shocked by Adriel Moxey’s murder?

Don’t get me wrong – we should be. It is outrageous. We should not be living in a world where a little 12-year-old girl has her chance at life taken away before it’s really begun.

She was last seen leaving school on Monday afternoon. It was the next day she was reported missing.

A lot of blame online has been directed towards her life situation and her family members – and there is much to be learned about what support could have been given to her and her family, certainly. But the blame lies squarely with one person – her killer.

Whatever her home situation was, the killer made a choice to take Adriel’s life. And the terrifying thing for us all is that violence towards women from men such as that is far from uncommon.

In another incident over the weekend, a woman was killed in her home by an intruder. Police arrived at the scene to find two male relatives attacking the suspect. They apparently found the suspect in the home along with their dead relative.

Days apart, just two examples of the violence inflicted on women in our society.

Is that just a coincidence of timing? Far from it.

According to a survey reported earlier this year, one in four women in The Bahamas have suffered from physical or sexual violence.

That report came from the Inter-American Development Bank, and was reported in April.

The numbers only get worse on closer inspection.

Of the women who reported physical violence, almost 65 percent said it was severe. That included being threatened with a weapon. It included being slapped. Choked. Kicked. Even burned.

As for sexual violence, 6.6 percent of women said they had been forced to perform degrading or humiliating acts.

Others reported psychological and emotional abuse. Of those who suffered psychological abuse, 43.6 percent reported having a miscarriage. The effects of this abuse affects even the unborn.

The physical abuse does too. More than one in five women who were physically abused while pregnant said they had been punched or kicked in their abdomen.

This is also a face of our society that largely goes unpunished – only about one in five women told police they were suffering from violence.

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. It is supposed to mark 16 days of activism to tackled gender-based violence.

Today will also see a press conference by police in which Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander will discuss the death of Adriel Moxey and the latest murder of a woman.

That latest murder takes the total number of killings in the country to 111 for the year. We are experiencing a murder roughly once every three days in this country. That rate seems to have been roughly the same year on year. We are not making a difference in cutting the rates of murder.

But when it comes to rates of violence against women, are we even trying?

When the government had the opportunity to introduce a bill against gender-based violence, it fumbled and came up with the Protection Against Violence Act instead.

Supposedly, the gender-based violence bill was too confusing – even though it was something the country had committed to internationally.

Attorney General Ryan Pinder said in August last year: “It is our position, and that of esteemed professionals, that a regime focused only on gender-based violence has the potential to be confusing, and a broader application to violence is more appropriate.”

In response, FNM Senator Michela Barnett-Ellis said: “We are concerned about gender-based violence. There is an increase in gender-based violence, and we need specific legislation to deal with gender-based violence. This legislation does not. Bahamians deserve a bill to provide for the protection of victims of gender-based violence and all connected matters.

“The women of this great country deserve an administration that takes them seriously, not an administration that ignores their own female expert; not an administration that dismisses without justification the work of stakeholders, many of whom are female; not an administration that does not take a woman’s allegation of rape and threats of death seriously and not an administration that does not have the testicular fortitude to protect wives from rape.”

At the same time, we have seen the government back away from the possibility of legislation to outlaw marital rape. It stays the case in this country that you have more legal protection from a partner you have not married than one you have. That cannot be an appropriate state of affairs.

But aside from all the protections – or lack thereof – there is a more fundamental issue. And it’s down to the men of the nation.

Women only need these protections because of what we are doing. Too many men are quick to raise their hands. Too many are quick to look at women as potential victim. Too many think they are entitled to sexually assault, rape or abuse women.

Those men do not exist in a vaccum. They are as likely to be as quick with their words as their hands. Other men will have heard them talk this way. Other men will not have spoken out when they could have done.

We must be quick to condemn such behaviour. We must be clear with our brothers that there is no room for such actions. That it is not a joking matter. That we do not encourage men who laugh at the bar about hitting women.

Too often we see cases where we talk about the circumstances surrounding the victim. What about the circumstances surrounding the killer? He does not have to commit these crimes, he chooses to.

And time and again such cases see killers and rapists taking it out on the young, the old, the vulnerable. Let’s not shame the victims, let’s blame their attackers. And make clear to every man we know that such behaviour is unacceptable.

We don’t seem able to rely on government tackling this issue with any speed – how is that domestic violence shelter coming along? – but we should not only be depending on them anyway. This is a matter for all of us. We should all stand up and say “No”.