Years of abuse at the hands of her partner, which heightened after the popular “Radica” chutney songs hit the local airwaves have forced a 33-year-old Blairmont, West Bank Berbice woman into hiding.
The battered and drained Jaswantie Persaud called Radica, who now lives a nomadic life, was even forced to escape from a shelter for battered women after the man somehow discovered its location and showed up there. Displaying marks about her body from the last beating she had endured, she said it started because she asked the man who drank and used hard drugs and was in a habit of abusing her to leave her home.
This angered him and “he choke me and threaten me that if me go to the station and any police go fuh he he gon chop off me neck,” Persaud related.
She said she was fed up with being beaten and insulted in her own home and recalled that the man had picked up a knife from the kitchen during an argument and chopped her leg.
She said she screamed and begged him to stop but “he tell me he gon kill me and chop me to pieces… he even try fuh burst the vein in me foot.” The neighbours too tried in vain to get him to stop, she said.
Fearing that the man would make good on his threat, Persaud said, she started to fight back and he put the knife down but punched and slapped her on her head, ears, face and other parts of her body and burst her lips.
The following morning the beating continued and when he turned his back she slipped out and made a report at the Blairmont Police Station.
The woman related that after the popular song, “Radica, why you leave and go,” began “playing all over” she began to be “punished for having the same name”.
She said that if the neighbours happened to play the song when the man was drunk, especially if they played the response which goes “I had a right to leave and go,” she would pay the penalty for it. “He gon start fuh beat me and tell me that I gon leave he and say the same thing about he.”
After she reported the chopping, Persaud said, she was sent to the Fort Wellington Hospital to have a medical report signed but the doctor was not available. She went instead and got it done at the New Amsterdam Hospital.
The woman told this newspaper that the man lay in wait for her as she left the hospital and “run me with a knife” into a yard. He then forced her to go with him, leaving the knife behind.
She said spent four days with him, fighting and quarrelling all the time and as soon as she got the chance she escaped and sought refuge at the Kamal’s International Home for Children and Battered Women where she spent 16 days.
On the 14th day, she said, the man somehow found the shelter and showed up there, but she refused to leave with him.
However, two days later she decided to leave the shelter. She said persons in charge of the shelter were reluctant to let her go until the man was arrested and placed before the court, but she insisted.
She said the police told her they have uplifted her medical reports from both the New Amsterdam and Fort Wellington hospitals and went three times to arrest the abuser but he was not there.
In the meantime, Persaud, who is constantly changing her location, fears for her life. She said she “still cannot go back in my own house because my life is in danger.” She said she spoke with the man’s mother on the telephone and she told her that she made her son move all his belongings out of the house. But Persaud is still afraid to return home.
According to her she “cannot stay one place all the time; me gat to keep moving. Anywhere me go he gon find me. One day me life gon left in he hands then the magistrate and the police gon do something. When it too late.”
Placed on a bond
Persaud said the abuse started a few years ago and she only found the courage to go to the police last year after he had dealt her a severe beating.
He was charged then and when he appeared in court the magistrate placed him on a bond to keep the peace for one year. He was also ordered to stay 100 yards away from Persaud.
During that time he indeed kept the peace – but not the distance. Persaud said he started visiting her and eventually moved back in with her. The man waited until the bond was up about two months ago before, he started to “beat me again – like a man.”
Persaud is separated from her first husband for whom she bore five children aged: 18, 17, 14, eight and four years old. Only the two oldest who are boys were living with her. But she said that after the man started to physically abuse her, the 17-year-old left and went to live with relatives.
She said she was not satisfied that the magistrate had placed the man on the bond when he appeared at the court charged with abusing her. She said he deserves harsher penalty for his violent behaviour.
Further she said she “cannot live in torment anymore. I want him to come out of my way. I am afraid to walk on the road alone. How long can I live like this? ”