Melville CookeGirl won't you go home to your Mama
You're too young to be my lover
You must be 18 and over
Cocoa Tea
A FEW stories in the local newspapers over the past two or so weeks have disturbed me greatly, but none so much as the first one that caught my attention. They were all on the same topic - carnal abuse.
The first was in The Gleaner of March 15, which went in part:
Although the Court of Appeal found the crimes of a 42-year-old child serial rapist distasteful, the justices ruled that his 30-year prison sentence should be reduced to 20 years. Barrington Keslow, steelworker, of 2 East Water Street, Kingston 2, who has 11 previous convictions, six of which are for sexual offences, had filed an appeal on his latest conviction on grounds that his sentence was manifestly excessive.
Keslow had pleaded guilty in July 2002 to four counts of molesting schoolgirls, some of whom were 12 years old. He was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment at hard labour for the crime which he committed in November 2000.
Keslow had just returned from prison, where he spent seven years following his conviction in 1995 for carnal abuse.
His modus operandi was to tell the children he had a gun and then rape them. His lawyer argued that his client was a sick man, who lived in a sick society.
Now, I know that my cure for persons like this serial child rapist - brain surgery with a bullet - is not yet accepted in this society, which will, however, quite cheerfully lose a man in the prison system for breaking a window. However, at 42 and sentenced to 20 years, with time off and all that he may just get out in time to be able to stand up to the task of raping a few more children. Heck, he may even get lucky and grab the daily double, raping the daughter of one of his previous victims.
Then there was the allegation of child molestation against a bus driver, who reportedly asked a colleague to take the steering wheel of his vehicle and proceeded to fondle a child on the back seat.
RAPED BY TWO MEN
And another of a brand new teenager, who was taken to the bushes on the pretext of bird-hunting and raped by two men, a subsequent medical examination showing that his sphincter muscle had collapsed. I would love to put the situation in Jamaican terms, but this is a family newspaper.
I was heartened somewhat, though, by a story out of St. James, where it was reported that a woman killed her common-law husband. It was also reported that he had been accused of molesting his stepdaughter. Now, there was no direct link made between the two in the stories, but it does not take an extremely smart person to figure out the connection.
If that is the case I applaud the woman heartily, but with one criticism. She should have done the deed in such a way that she would not have been in trouble with the law. Y'know, like take him away on a long, nice hike in the hills.
Big men preying on and molesting little children is a serious problem in our society, but obviously not important enough for any newspaper but The Star to take seriously enough to make it front page news. As someone whom I exchanged thoughts on the matter with said, the 'wucka man' in our society is often not far removed from the pedophile. If sex, sex and more sex is the sum total of a man's existence, he has the potential to molest a child.
So, what do we do? I would really like to see a registry of convicted child rapists established, their whereabouts recorded and tabs kept on their movements. If we can suggest that for deportees, we can do something to protect our children.
And heavier sentences would be very good as well. Whatever happened to that rule of thumb I heard of as a teenager - your age minus the girl's times three? And, for the record, boys are molested by big women too.
The really scary thing, though, is that the few cases which do reach the courts and the even fewer which reach the press and the even fewer which have caught my attention are the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Woman yu pretty but de dread no response
What him looking at is a life sentence
- Buju Banton
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
