Female police officer hostile
A frustrated North Sophia woman says she can no longer take a male neighbour verbally abusing her teenage daughters in the vilest manner, and while she has turned to the Guyana Police Force for assistance there still seems to be no end in sight.
While Felicity Benjamin has the support of the womenfolk in her neighbourhood it appears as though it is only moral support.
“I really don’t know where else to turn or what else to do, but this thing getting overbearing and my children are suffering,” the woman told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
What makes it worse is that the woman’s husband and the father of the two girls aged 12 and 13, is a sergeant of police, but was assaulted by the male neighbour who allegedly stabbed him earlier this year forcing him to be hospitalized. The sergeant and his alleged attacker are now before the courts as he made counter claims of being assaulted by the police.
Benjamin herself has matters before the court involving the man, where both of them have been charged. One of the matters against her was dismissed early last week.
But she said the man has now taken to abusing her young children and this she cannot tolerate, as the children are traumatized by his behaviour and there is not much she can do to put a stop to it.
In desperation some women in the neighbourhood reached out to this newspaper begging for justice for the woman and her children. When contacted Benjamin said that she is scared of the man but she is more concerned for her children, who are now afraid even to go into the yard to fetch a bucket of water.
“And what hurting me more is the a policewoman that I went to report the matter to at Prashad Nagar Outpost was so terrible to my children and hollered up on them and up to now the man ain’t get no charge,” she related.
The ongoing issue with the man has its genesis in land sold to Benjamin in 1998 by the man’s reputed wife for $15,000. She said the area is not regularized and no one has title for the land but she bought the piece of land from the woman because she was desperate for somewhere to live. However, the woman apparently had second thoughts and attempted to take back the land, but Benjamin said she went into the Ministry of Housing & Water and was told that the land is not regularized and that she should remain there until the area is surveyed.
When she first purchased the land Benjamin recalled that the woman was not in a relationship with her tormentor, but he later came on the scene.
For years there was torment, but it got worse about two months ago when the man turned his attention to her two daughters.
“He start busing them and cursing them and telling them he will get people to b…..r them and all kinds of things and now the children afraid to stay home by dehself and even me afraid to be home now,” the woman said.
She told the Sunday Stabroek that if her daughters are cleaning the stairs or are in the yard for any purpose the man would commence his tirades which are always laced with expletives.
Not knowing what else to do the concerned mother said she was advised by the woman in her area to visit the Child Care & Protection Agency which she did, and she was very happy with the response of the agency.
After listening to her the officer at the agency sent her to the Prashad Nagar station to report the issue.
The paper, which was dated September 20, was shown to this newspaper on which the officer wrote “Mother reported to the CCPA that children are being severely verbally abused by their neighbour. Urgent police attention is needed to stop the abuse of these children.”
Benjamin said she had taken the children with her to the agency and it was with the children she headed to the police station, but the response of the female police corporal in charge of the outpost left much to be desired.
She said when they arrived at the station the man was already there and the female officer “start to bark at me children; she did not speak to them nice at all and they start crying.”
Hurt for her children the woman said she hugged them and encouraged them to tell the officer what had been happening, even while the man sat in the station laughing at them.
“But I had to ask the corporal if she had children because of the way she talking to my children, they just so afraid and the man right there laughing,” the woman lamented.
She said what made it worse was that the corporal forced her to sign a bail form by threatening to “throw me in the lock-ups if I don’t sign the form.”
Not daunted the woman said she headed to the Brickdam Police Station when she left the outpost and met with the commander, who after listening to her told her the matter would be further investigated.
“He talk to me and he call the corporal and ask she why she mek me sign the bail form, and she say how she charging me but he tell me not to go back the station and that they guh investigate more.”
But while the ‘investigation’ is ongoing the woman said the man continues to torment the children and she played a recording on a phone for this reporter which she said was recorded just the night before the interview. On the recording a male voice could be heard using numerous expletives saying that “no public servant” could touch him. According to Benjamin he was referring to the officers at the child protection agency. The man was heard saying that he would deal with the entire family.
Benjamin said she was charged with killing the man’s dog and “beating him with a 4×4 stick” all of which she denied, but those matters were dismissed. The man is also before the courts for allegedly stabbing her husband and burning and attacking her on several occasions.
“[H]e is not stopping with the abuse, he wants us to remove but where would we go, he is playing a bully,” the woman said.
‘Until something happens’
A concerned female resident, who accompanied Benjamin to this newspaper’s office, said she is afraid that the police would only take decisive action when something serious happens, and by then it would be too late.
“I does walk with her when she going and make the reports and so on, because I feel sorry for what she and she family going through,” the woman said.
She said she is very concerned that a resident of their community could be allowed to behave in such a manner, and from all indications he is a law unto himself.
“The woman and her children are afraid to be in their home because of how this man behaving. I don’t understand how this man could do this and nothing is happening; if it was someone else deh police woulda charge them forthwith.”
“I am calling on the opposition parties, the APNU and the AFC, to look into this matter. The children are our future and why these two young children must go through this?” the woman asked.
