-Police accused of slow response
By Mia Anthony
A young woman is in fear for her life as she endures consistent threats from her ex-partner. Lenese Alexis, a young entrepreneur, shared her story with Stabroek News. She related that when she first met her now ex-partner on the popular social media platform, Facebook, in 2020, he struck up a conversation with her. They then began their friendship the following year, in 2021, and decided to take the platonic relationship to a romantic level.
“Initially, he was sweet. You would not believe that this guy could harm a fly. He was the total gentleman, but boy was I wrong, so utterly and totally wrong,” Alexis recounted. When asked about when she started to notice the red flags, she responded that “It was two and a half months in.” She proceeded to describe an incident which she said was one of many during their 18-month on-and-off relationship.
“The first incident was one morning when he gave me some money before I left for work. I did not count the money in front of him. I went to work and then opened the money and counted it, and it was ten thousand dollars. So I called him and told him that I do not need the money as I am a big woman. I make my own money, and I know what it takes to take care of me. So I told him that when I get home later, I will give him back the money, and I asked him what the money was for really.” She added that he became enraged by this conversation, “He started getting aggressive and disrespectful,” and she then told him she was not going to do the back-and-forth.
Fast forwarding to the first time he became physically abusive. She stated that the first instance of this was after a trip to the Giftland Mall. “We went to the mall. I was inquiring about a product, and the sales staff, who was male, smiled at me, and I smiled back. He made a scene about this, stating that I am smiling with men, and he started cursing and going on, so I walked away.” However, things became progressively worse. “When I got back into the car with him, he called a friend and asked him the question of if your girl smiles with another man, is that not flirting? The friend encouraged this behaviour, stating yes.” This was when Alexis stated that all hell broke loose in the car. “He started cursing and hit me repeatedly, tearing my dress in the process.”
As if there weren’t enough enablers of her ex’s behaviour, his mother pleaded with her not to involve the police. Notwithstanding this, Alexis ventured to the police station with her torn dress. “I walked into the station with my breast being covered by the torn dress fragment supported by my hand, but then he turned up at the police station with his mother and said that I abused him instead and that I hit him first. The police did nothing about the situation.”
After explaining the situation to her parents, Alexis was advised by her mother to end the relationship, which she did. But as she said, he was good at gaslighting her. “I had some stuff at his place, so I went there to pick them up. But when I got there, he started the usual thing by saying he was sorry and it won’t happen again.” However, noticing that she was not budging, he became enraged and started to attack her. His mother, who was in the upper flat of the home, came to her aid and told Alexis to hide. In an attempt to protect herself, Alexis contacted the police. Upon the police’s arrival at the home, however, her ex’s mother’s tone changed. “She told them that he nor I was there, but I was in the room all the time. However, the police requested to search, and I was able to get out. He was hiding under a bed. They found him, and she started begging me not to press charges.”
Alexis recounted that this incident led to him promising to change, even getting baptized in church under the guise that he was doing this for the betterment of himself and their relationship. He quickly reverted back to his old ways.
She recalled another incident. “I went out with my friends one night, and on the way back, we noticed a car following us. So I started to follow him, and he sped off. So I called his phone, and he was not answering my calls. After a while, he did, and he pulled into a corner.” She described the confrontation as shocking. “I walked up to his car, and he came out before I reached the door. So I told my friend, since he was here, I would go home with him.” Finding the situation a bit weird but notwithstanding the circumstances that they met under that evening, she proceeded to enter the car. “I swung open the car door, and there was another female in the front passenger seat.” After a brief confrontation with him about the reason for another woman being in his car that late at night and him making excuses, she called her friend to take her home instead. This led to Alexis being harassed by him, after which he continued to lie about who the young lady in his car was that evening.
Stalking, obsession, and explicit tapes
Following the instances of abuse, the final nail in the coffin of their “situationship” was what Alexis described as a shock but still not a surprise. “I was finally done with him after I found a memory card containing explicit videos of him and me and other girls he had been intimate with.” These recordings were done without Alexis’s knowledge, and she suspects the other women may not have known either. “The camera was hidden in the alarm clock beside his bed. I found the memory card, and I took it to delete the videos he had with me.” However, this led to him harassing her even more and taking her phone, her identification card, and her house keys, holding them as ransom until she returned his memory card.
He then began frequenting her home between the hours of midnight and one am, breaking her windows and pipes. He continued to threaten her life by sending her abusive messages and voice notes and even stalking outside her home during the day. Although the police have finally taken her reports seriously, Alexis is appalled at how long it has taken them to acknowledge her plight. He consistently frequents the area and threatens her through various mediums, even though she provided CCTV footage of him lurking around her home, peeping through her windows, and breaking them.
