The Guyana Police Force (GPF) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is currently investigating the alleged mishandling of a report filed by a young woman who has alleged that she has been continuously abused and assaulted by her father, a city businessman, over a period of years
On Friday night, the GPF said that an investigation was launched to determine whether the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) were followed by the investigating ranks of the Kitty Police Station.
“The OPR investigation will ascertain when the report was made and what actions were taken against the alleged perpetrator,” the GPF said in a release.
On March 28 at the Kitty Police Station the victim filed a report in which she alleged that her father assaulted her on March 25 at his Kitty business place, the police said.
As a result, the police added, an investigation was launched and the businessman was arrested on March 31.
His licensed firearms were subsequently seized, the police said.
The police said businessman appeared before Magistrate Leron Daly in a city court and was charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm and threatening language.
He denied the charges and was released on $400,000 bail.
In an interview with reporter Leroy Smith on Friday, the victim, whose identity was concealed, explained that she was allegedly forced to endure years of abuse at the hands of her father. “…For the past few years, I have been abused; physically, verbally, emotionally, even mentally. It has impacted me for such a long time but I have never found myself being [conditioned] to believe it’s the way of life—that it is okay, that it is right for anyone to be hit in that manner. It was definitely not okay with me. I was the only one being abused in my household,” the young woman related.
The abuse, she said, was “ongoing”. “You don’t need to specifically do something terribly bad for him to react the way he reacts. It can be very simple,” she said.
The victim told Smith that her last encounter, which stemmed from a telephone conversation, occurred on Friday. “He was telling me to move out because we were having arguments and this is the first time he was actually telling me to move out. Knowing who he is, I knew he initially wanted to me beg and plead with him to stay in his house but I didn’t. I was very upset and I said ‘okay I am going to move out’. He started yelling at me, calling me names,” the woman recounted.
“I said he is going to put me in the hospital…..I called a taxi. My father got there before the taxi did….He came in. He asked me to sit. He started asking questions like ‘who have you been following?’ ‘Who you been listening to?’ ‘Who do you think you are to be telling me you will move out of my house?’…He started to call me names. Terrible, terrible names…. He try to make me feel like I was such a bad person and justify the things that he was telling me,” she said.
Following the attack, she said she was locked away in the house for days and she was unable to leave. “…They locked me in the house. There was no way out of the house,” she related.
‘Very powerful’
She claimed that her father, was “very powerful” and had a lot of “connections” with “people in high places” in the country. “My father is a very powerful man. Seems to hold a great amount of power. He likes to be in control of most things in his life, including his kids, his wife, whoever is around him,” the woman said.
She suggested that the man’s anger towards her mother may have been directed at her“…He would bring in my biological mom. Throw things at me to say ‘you are just like your mom. You look like your mom, your personality is like your mom. I brought you away from there and you are still showing me you are just like your mother.’ I think he has so much hatred towards my mother….I cannot forget that I look like my mom because he brings it up so often. He has so much hate towards my mom, he would project it onto me,” the victim further related.
The woman explained that she was only able to go public after managing to secure security footage of the latest attack on her.
She claimed that the businessman was cautious and would assault her only where there were no security cameras. But on the last occasion, she said, it appeared as though he didn’t realise he was being recorded.
In the footage seen by this newspaper, the businessman could be seen slapping, cuffing and kicking the victim.
At one point, he pushed her and kicked her into what appear to be clothes racks in his store. A firearm could be seen tucked in his waistband.
The victim’s brother eventually intervened but this did not stop the man from wanting to continue assaulting her. “After he began to hit me, he was just hitting me, kicking me. My brother was there, he managed to stop him,” she said.
The woman also expressed dissatisfaction at the manner in which ranks of the Kitty Police Station dealt with her report.
“They were very reluctant in the matter. I was very surprised by the way they handled the matter because at the end of the day it’s a police station. You should feel safe enough to go to them and know that they will help you regardless of what the situation is,” the woman said.
She said they even misinformed her of the procedure as it relates to serving the businessman with a summons.
‘Horrifying’
In the interview, the victim said she wanted to leave a long time ago but it was “very” difficult.
“Knowing the connections my father has in the country, knowing the person he is, knowing how much influence he has in so much people in high places… Living with him, I am very aware of those connections so it was very hard to just up and leave without figuring things out,” she said.
In a post on her Facebook page yesterday, Minister of Human Service and Social Security, Dr Vindhya Persaud said the victim is receiving the necessary support.
She said the victim called the 914 hotline and was able to get the assistance of a Survivor’s Advocate.
“This is horrifying and my heart goes out to this young woman who suffered so much…..Her courage is remarkable for speaking out against these unconscionable and atrocious acts. We will continue to offer our support and our services to her,” Persaud noted in her post.
The victim said she finally got the courage to leave two days after he last encounter. “I knew that I needed to do this as hard as it was,” she said.
Over the years, she said, she confided in friends. “I couldn’t speak to my family…I didn’t had a voice in our house because my father felt so powerful…You couldn’t be living in his house and then go to the law for him. It would just end very badly,” the victim noted.
