KD: We are more than a little concerned because we seem to be full of form but not a lot of content. There is this push for the laws but I think that there are a lot of child protection laws in the making. We have been involved in the consultations towards developing those laws. The problem is that there is not a sense of urgency about getting them on the books. The ‘Stamp it out’ consultations ended last year or the year before then we have a delay of about a year before the legislation surfaces again in the Parliament; then it goes to a Select Committee. After all this consultation and discussion we have to wait for Parliament to go into recess … we don’t know what the processes in the Select Committee are – whether they are going to call for further inputs in the legislation. We don’t know how long we are likely to be waiting before it comes back to Parliament. So there is foot-dragging in a situation where, as we have said and as many other organisations and individuals have said before, the way the law stands young children are totally vulnerable because whether they are able to give evidence in a situation where they are abused is at the discretion of the Magistrate. It is barbaric that we continue to be a country that is not doing everything possible to protect children in these situations. We have all the right words but we are not really taking the actions that are necessary; And we are going to have more grief when that legislation gets on the books………… if it gets on the books.
GR: Why do you anticipate this?
KD: Because the provisions of the legislation require a whole lot of things that the government has to do. One of the provisions has to do with a one-stop shop so that you are not asking people who are already vulnerable and who have no money to go to the hospital now, come back to the station to give a statement, come back tomorrow because the policeman is not here to give the statement and so on ………. That legislation is going to make provision for paper committal so that the legislation does away with the Preliminary Inquiry which will cut out one of the big delays in rape trials. You have a whole big trial where all the evidence is there in the Magistrates’ Court and then the delay of five years or sometime, even more than five years before it goes to the High Court for the trial. So instead of the PI it will mean just sending a completed file to the judge for committal.
I don’t think that the defence lawyers are going to be very fond of that provision because the law as it stands does a disservice to the survivor of the assault and it also does a disservice to those who are accused of the assault as we see in that recent NOC case where the complainant (the child) who was allegedly raped by these officers – that case is taking too long. The law as it stands is very barbaric.
It is these provisions which the government will have to put resources to. The law speaks about counselling for the survivors and so on. It speaks about real ‘in camera’ – literally ‘in camera’ evidence from juvenile survivors. So the resources for having cameras, the court arrangements that will permit this kind of evidence will have to be made.
They claim to clear the courtrooms when you have one of these cases but people are in the corridors listening. The child arrives at court in school uniform so everybody knows that something is up. There is already a lot of finger pointing at the court. There are a lot of things that need to be done to give that legislation life when it comes into effect.
GR: Are you confident that the required resources will be committed to ensuring that those provisions are implemented?
KD: I think that we have to insist on those provisions being made. It is not going to be easy. It is going to require a lot of retraining. The different government departments are not working together to uphold the same laws. We have to take issue with that.
Take the issue of the recent torturing of this child. We don’t need a new law to recognise that something is afoot here. The law as it stands requires that if the police are going to interview a minor the parents must be present. Instead of which the parents are given the royal run around as to where the child has been taken. How dare the police interview a 14 year old without a responsible adult relative being present? And if they want to claim undue influence then they must have a probation officer present.
Then we have a doctor who could examine somebody with their face covered with those horrendous injuries and no questions ARE asked. Something is wrong with the way these services are working. We need to – whether we have the law or not – get to a place where there is some oversight of these agencies. Whether we are talking of the Child Care Protection Agency or the police operations there must be oversight.
GR: Is that covered in the legislation?
KD: No, the Minister can appoint various things. The question is whether we are going to get to the place where the bodies responsible for oversight are not clients of the government. We need independent oversight just to keep these agencies on the ball doing the work that they must do. It’s not about antagonistic relationships because we all claim to be working towards the same end. If I think you are falling down I have a responsibility to say to you this is not the way to do it. You need to operate in a different way.
GR: Are you satisfied that the major issues that affect children are covered adequately in the legislation?
KD: I think that the legislation goes a good way. Remember this is just sexual offences legislation. It goes a long way towards redressing the disadvantage that young victims are faced with in the law. I am not saying that we can hang up our hats once the law is on the books. I think we have to be even more vigilant once we have the law to make sure that the provisions of the law are being met. I would say that we are not doing what needs to be done to save the children. The education system is in total shambles. BEAMS is talking about how successful their programme was. When I read about education projects, the one thing I’m asking is “has the project resulted in better teaching, better learning in the system? And at the moment I can’t see any project that is producing a better result for the children. I don’t want to hear about buildings. I want to know how many teachers are in the system, how are you monitoring the teaching in the system, how many children are still disadvantaged because they can’t read.
We are talking about the buildings and how many millions the government is spending. I don’t care about the millions that are being spent. I care about whether this child I’m seeing here in front of me can read. So these Primary Schools are sending children to write the SSEE knowing they can’t read. We still have a system in which parents are being intimidated into sending their children to after school classes. These same teachers who are not teaching the children are giving lessons which the parents must pay for. The parents are so intimidated that they are paying for those lessons.
We now have the ‘ghettoization’ of children. We don’t want Community High Schools anymore. We have all secondary schools but there are special secondary schools where all the children that fail the exam will go. Will they be taught to read when they get there? No. That won’t happen.
GR: What local organisations do you collaborate with?
KD: We collaborate quite a lot with Help and Shelter on issues of violence and several others. We are also very supportive of the work of the Child Care and Protection Agency. In fact I don’t think that we work closely with any one particular agency to the exclusion of the other. It depends on the issue. You see, Red Thread is postured to speak on any issue that affects children. So it’s not that we are only looking at violence.
We try to stay informed about the services that are available so that when we can’t help directly – since we never have resources to provide material assistance – we relate to agencies that may have the necessary resources. The important thing is to know what is available out there that may be able to serve the interests of women and children. It is still very frustrating because there is not a whole lot out there.
GR: In reflecting on the work of your organisation over the years, are you satisfied that it is making an impact on the issues that are of concern to your organisation?
KD: We could never be satisfied. For every single case that you address there are a hundred others that you don’t know about. At the end of the day I would say that even insofar as we provide services and we try to address individual cases the more important aspect of our work is to keep pushing for the intuitions to work properly. There are a range of forms that we have to adopt and not all of them are public. I can’t say that we are satisfied that our work has resulted in any of the official agencies and institutions working as effectively as we would like them to work. But that is what we have to aim for. the aim, really, is to put ourselves out of business. We would like to be in a place where what we do at the moment is not necessary because the official agencies are functioning well.
GR: The fact that you are involved in so many activities raises questions about your human resource capacity. If one is desirous of becoming involved in some of your activities, do you have to become a member?
KD: The issue is not really membership of Red Thread. One of the things that we are trying to do especially with regard to violence is to train and support groups in communities in knowing the law, understanding the various responsibilities at different levels – at the levels of the citizen, the police, the court and so forth – so that they can themselves be advocates. We have to decentralise that work because you can’t sit in Georgetown and expect to be able to deal with violence in Lethem or anywhere else. There must be people on the ground who can hold the police to account; who can make sure that matters are dealt with in the court…….. and so on. Our role is to provide them with information and – if things are not going right – to lobby the higher authorities and ultimately to let the public know that things are going very wrong in a particular case.
People are always free to determine whether they want to totally identify with Red Thread or not – to collaborate on a range of things. They can ask Red Thread to support their own actions or they can support actions that we are initiating. We are very open in that sense.
Basically if one wants to identify closely with Red Thread our rules are very simple. You have to agree that exploitative relationships, whether between men and women or between women, are out of order and that racist approaches and interpretations of situations are out of order because we came into being fighting against racism and against the exploitation of women and children and we continue to hold to that view. I think those are probably the only two absolutes we have in our rules.
GR: How many people do you have on board?
KD: In terms of full time volunteers, there are 8 of us that are here. And there is also this sense that because we are there and we are willing to be there we must be some highly paid people. Red Thread can’t afford to pay wages.
GR: How is the organisation funded?
KD: We have to design projects and apply to agencies for money. We also get a subvention of $25,000 from Parliament. Sometimes you have to give people more than that in a month. I guess this token offers us a kind of legitimacy………. I think.
GR: As we conclude this interview, are there any parting thoughts that you would like to share with us?
KD: I think that there is a sense in which because Red Thread is prepared to be pretty vocal on a range of things that seems to give licence to both individuals and some common authors to accuse or abuse Red Thread if we miss the boat on some issues. At the end of the day, we are a very small organisation although we reach very far out. We do this because it is necessary. Sometimes we have money to do it and support ourselves and sometimes we don’t. But we have to do it. The other thing is that people believe that there is something special about the women in Red Thread that makes it possible for them to do certain things, particularly demonstrations and speaking out on issues. But we had to learn to do it and everybody can learn to do it. There is no special courage. You just need to have a backbone and a sense of outrage and a sense of responsibility. I think that is what’s necessary and what is missing.
As a people we will mutter to our friends and in safe places when we think things are going wrong but we’re not prepared to stand up and say so publicly. There is always an excuse as to why we can’t do certain things. There is behaviour that is acceptable and behaviour that is not, and we have an individual and collective responsibility to stand up against bad behaviour, particularly bad behaviour in official places. And we have to stand together to defend each other.
