Dreadful things happen in this society, but nothing quite appalled the nation as much as the allegations which were publicized last week concerning Colwyn Harding, who is currently in the Georgetown Public Hospital under treatment. The story in outline is that on November 15 last year, Mr Harding was a visitor to a house in Timehri when a number of police from the Timehri Police Station arrived. They were looking for someone who was not there at the time, but nevertheless they still searched the house. Thus far the facts do not appear to be in dispute. What allegedly happened next, however, is a source of controversy. Mr Harding says he was beaten by a constable, who also sodomised him with a police baton covered with a condom.
Mr Harding has gone on to say that during the rape he was screaming, and as the constable tried to stuff his mouth with a pair of panties to silence him, the victim bit his hand. Emerging out of that incident, Mr Harding says, he was charged with assault of a police officer and disorderly behaviour. According to Police Commissioner Leroy Brumell, the ranks at the Timehri Police Station have denied that rape ever occurred.
There is also no dispute about the fact that thereafter Mr Harding was taken to the Timehri police lock-ups, where he spent four days from November 15 to 18. He has described how he was severely beaten here by the same constable, save for one day when the shift changed. Two witnesses have given statements to Attorney-at-law Nigel Hughes, Mr Harding’s lawyer, corroborating the victim’s account of what happened in the lock-ups. The first witness, a teenager who is now in prison, spent time in one of the cells with Mr Harding, one of which he described as containing faeces, while the second witness recounted that his son was also beaten at the same time on one of the days, about which he complained. As a consequence of that complaint, he himself was beaten. He also stated that when he was helping Mr Harding out of one of the cells at one point, the former told him that a police constable had raped him with a baton.
At one point it was decided by a senior officer at Timehri to send him to the hospital, but according to Mr Harding, the rank detailed with this assignment was the same constable who had been abusing him, and he never reached the hospital at all. Instead, says Mr Harding, he was left in the policeman’s parked vehicle outside a rum shop, and when they returned to Timehri, he was beaten again.
Mr Harding was taken to Providence Magistrate’s Court on November 18, but the case could not be called on that day. He appeared in the Providence Magistrate’s Court on November 19, where the charges of assault and being disorderly were read to him, and he was given bail in the sum of $50,000. His family could not raise the money, however, and he was remanded to the Georgetown Prison as a consequence.
In prison, owing to his condition, he spent much of his time in the infirmary, where he was given painkillers. According to Dr Sheik Amir of the Georgetown Public Hospital at a news conference on Friday, Mr Harding was brought to the hospital on December 13 and was seen at the Outpatients department and diagnosed. He did not say what the diagnosis was, although by implication it might have been the same complaint for which he was subsequently admitted, since when Mr Harding was brought back on the second occasion, Dr Amir said (among other things) he had “increased swelling to the affected area.”
Whatever the hospital decided at that initial stage, he was sent back to the prison, and it was after he collapsed bleeding on December 17 in the prison infirmary that he was taken to the Accident and Emergency Unit in the evening, and was diagnosed with a strangulated inguinal scrotal hernia which required emergency surgery. That was done, and he subsequently underwent a second operation owing to grangrene in a portion of the intestines. He will need to have a third operation, the media were told, in about three months’ time.
Several questions arise here. The first, quite obviously, is the matter of the rape. Did it occur? Firstly, Mr Harding says that the charge of assault, etc, against him arose out of the sequence of events relating to the alleged sexual assault, so since the Timehri ranks are denying that this occurred, exactly what circumstances do they say generated the charges? Now this is in a context where Mr Harding has never been arrested for anything, was not wanted by the police at the time, and was not the man they were looking for. What were they doing in a confrontation with him, therefore? The behaviour of the police officers even at this preliminary stage of events indicates that they were the aggressors.
It might be noted too, that it is hard to imagine the average Guyanese dreaming up the panty story, and even less the rape. In the culture of this country the latter would be an unspeakable source of embarrassment to most males, and in fact when questioned Mr Harding explained his reticence and reluctance to tell various people about it because he was ashamed. He had related how when he tried to tell the prison officers, they mocked him. The GPH doctors have already gone on record at the press conference as saying that he never told them at any stage, and that they first learned about it from the press. Of course when he was seen by them he was in a great deal of pain, which above all else he would have wanted dealt with, and in any case, that was a month after the event.
Would there still be evidence of the sexual assault now? Dr Amir was quoted by this newspaper yesterday as responding, “two to three weeks after those injuries they would be healed already… it depends on how serious the injury is.” The hospital indicated it was not investigating such evidence, since Mr Harding had said nothing to them, although if he did they would deal with it. However, the allegation is such a serious one that one would have thought the police themselves – or if not the prison authorities in whose custody he is ‒ would have requested that the GPH look for signs on the small chance that they can still be detected.
So is there a nexus between the alleged rape and the hernia? Dr Amir when asked on Friday about a connection replied, “It would be difficult for me to say.” However, he was reported as going on to observe that the condition could develop as a consequence of continuous hitting on the abdomen. Well, if there is one thing which is not in dispute (except perhaps by the police) it is that repeated beatings of Mr Harding took place, to which there are witnesses. So even if the sexual assault is not responsible for his current condition, the beating may be. The odds are that it is unlikely we will ever be able to establish whether that is so or not, but that does not mitigate the gravity of the accusations; the baton rape allegation in particular stands on its own as a matter crying out for an inquiry, and it does not matter in the least the hernia may be unconnected to it.
There are other questions which arise, such as the treatment in the prison infirmary, and why Mr Harding was not taken to the hospital sooner (of course the Medex there would have limited medical knowledge, and in any case may have operated in a context where there was an institutional reluctance to refer to the GPH); and as mentioned above, exactly what the Public Hospital diagnosed on December 13, and what the grounds were for sending him back to prison.
But in the end, the biggest questions are for the police, and why among other things, they were so slothful about following up the case after the Commissioner was texted by Mr Harding’s mother in mid-December after she learned from her son what he had endured. The matter was handed to Commander Vyphuis of ‘A’ Division to investigate, but the report up to the time Commissioner Brumell took over the case last week, was “incomplete.” It is now in the hands of the Office of Professional Responsibility which most citizens regard with a very dubious eye. What needs to happen in this instance, as the Bar Association has recommended, is an independent inquiry; and what needs to happen in terms of police conduct generally, is the establishment of an independent authority empowered to investigate complaints against the force.
Minister Rohee has his priorities all wrong; he should abandon his fixation on the SWAT team for a while, and turn his attention to the rotten culture at the heart of the Guyana Police Force.
