The young man, who said he was gang raped by a group of men on Old Year’s Night, appears to have suffered a relapse after “doing well” following the administering of three sessions of Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) at the National Psychiatric Hospital, his mother said yesterday.
The woman said her son was released from the hospital last Friday and he was “talking good but now he saying stupidness and me ain’t know wah fuh do.”
Speaking to this newspaper by phone yesterday the woman said she took him back to the Georgetown Public Hospital yesterday morning where medication was administered and she was told to take him back later this week as should his condition not improve he would have to be readmitted.
According to the mother, the young man has stopped eating even though he was doing so well after he “had the shock treatment.”
The woman said she had hoped her son’s condition would have continued to improve and he would have then been able to give a statement detailing his experience. However, with him not talking again she is fearful that the perpetrators would not be brought to justice.
“A wan dead,” the young man could be heard shouting in the background as his mother spoke to this newspaper and there were bouts of screaming for the duration of the conversation.
The mother had said her son, who had worked at a supermarket and with other persons prior to the incident, had told her he was raped by a friend and other men on Old Year’s Night after he had left to attend a party with the friend. When he returned the following morning he was acting strangely and his mother said he bled from his anus before telling her what had happened. However, after he was taken to the hospital he stopped talking and eating and was later transferred to Berbice for the ECT. While his mother made a report to the police the young man has not given a statement. The named friend was arrested but was later released after he denied the incident. The mother said she has not heard anything from the police in a while and she is worried that the investigation has stalled.
Meantime, the decision to administer the ECT to the obviously traumatised young man has been called into question. In yesterday’s ‘In the Diaspora’ column in this newspaper written by PhD candidate in the Department of Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto, Canada Savitri Persaud.
His mother yesterday said that she had to sign a document for the treatment to be administered and felt it was a good intervention by the authorities as her son was able to talk and eat after weeks of not doing so.
Asked if she was warned that her son could have side effects from the treatment, the woman said, “All I know is dem say that deh treatment would help he to talk.
“I want to thank de hospital because dem been very good to he and dem try with he and I see he get a lot of improvement but me ain’t know wah happen dem last two days this,” the woman said.
Persaud yesterday said that an institutional level the question about why the ECT treatment was recommended should be asked since it is a treatment commonly considered as a last resort, after other therapies are exhausted. She pointed out that the ECT would have been administered less than one month after the alleged rape incident and questioned what kinds of counselling or talk therapies were offered to the victim and his family. Persaud also questioned whether his mother was made aware of the potential side effects of the treatment which include memory loss among others.
“What happens then if he is unable to give a statement to investigators because he has forgotten?” she asked.
She also questioned about the patient’s rights and issues of informed consent and whether his mother was approached by medical experts who talked at her and over her head instead of listening to her.
Further she called upon the police to do their work when it comes to violence against young people which should be addressed especially in a nation where state torture is promoted-an indirect reference to the promotion of two police officers, Narine Lall and Mohanram Dulai, who had burned the genital area of a child while in custody.
