Dear Editor,
I was writing another letter totally unrelated to this one when a Stabroek News editorial on the recent imprisonment of a father for beating his promiscuous teen caught my eye. That editorial justified the magistrate’s six weeks‘ sentence for a father who beat his out-of-place teen. Artfully penned, that editorial suggests that the sentence sent a message to parents that beating their children cannot take place in Guyanese society. While I may agree with the editor that brutalising one’s child for his/her bad behaviour is wrong, I could not disagree more that parents cannot discipline a child based on the age-old, tried and proven method of flogging. Are you telling me that something that we were brought up on is already banned? Then heaven help us! Are you telling me that a parent can’t touch them irrespective of their behaviour? Then, I would say as a West Indian a lot of heads needs checking. Let me tell the editor in clear language there is a lot of Americanisation going on in these parts with no sensible explanation for it.
The man is the sole breadwinner of his household, a vendor at that; one who has to eke out a living in the punishing unforgiving Guyanese society. Who will take care of his family in the intervening six weeks? What systems are in place for “protective, quality care” of the sexually active teen? Is it the Human Services Ministry which we all know lacks the manpower and resources to deal with such cases? Or, is it an aunt or grandmother whom the teen has no fear of? Clearly, that teen has no respect for her body hence none for those whose supervision she comes under. Such high risk behaviour exposes her to possible pregnancy, disease and abuse.
Again I must say in our haste to become Americanised we are stretching this child abuse clause too far, and dire consequences await us in the long run. I am saying these cases are fashioning fathers, in this case a single parent, into having stony hearts where their errant children are concerned and this is not a nice picture for poor struggling families. In these difficult times that teen should be harnessing her energies on schoolwork in preparation for her CXCs instead of having relations with adult men. The editorial then mentioned that the father should have had those adult men charged for statutory rape. Very interesting! Do you think that daughter would dare implicate any of those men? Certainly not! So the idea of going after those men is idle talk.
Yours faithfully,
Neil Adams
