Glenda Simms
I WAS away from Jamaica for three weeks, and while I did try to read the two local newspapers online, I was quite alarmed when the June 4 edition of The Gleaner shouted the headline 'PREDATORS' over a photograph of four headless young women.
Headlines play two functions, they sell newspapers and they immediately challenge the readers' imagination. Perhaps, that is why I immediately thought that a new specie of 'hairy-legged animal' had been found preying on Miss Matty's pigs in the Cockpit country.
Conjuring up the image of an animal at the sight of the word 'predator' is consistent with the definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. In this most prestigious publication, a 'predator' is a 'predatory animal' and being predatory is to be 'addicted to plunder or robbery' and/or 'preying naturally upon others'.
Within this framework, the predator could also be the 'two-foot puss' that is always so aptly described and despised, not only by the Honourable Minister of Agriculture but also by every God-fearing, machete-wielding, hard-working farmer of St. Elizabeth.
NEW LABEL
It was upon reading the article that I realised that 'predator' is a new label to try and come to grips with some of the most awful atrocities that are being perpetrated against the girl child in our society. In other words, the predator has always been amongst us and he is no more hairy than the man on the moon. Indeed, he is the respectable gentleman whose wife is protected in her caged edifice in gated communities and on the slopes of the hills of Kingston and St. Andrew. He is the uniformed man from whom we expect justice and fair play. He is the man in the collar who preaches from the pulpit as he hails down fire and brimstone on the heads of awful sinners. He is the teacher that is looked up to by starry-eyed children in many of the classrooms. He is the father who is expected to protect his children. He is the bus and taxi driver than every mother should be able to trust with her child. He is the toothless wonder dressed in pants below his waist and perched at the corner. Shockingly, the predator is not a definable character, he could be anyone.
By labelling him 'predator', we might indeed neutralise the evil that is so close at hand while we look for the unusual, the strange and the bizarre.
RISE IN PRETEEN PREGNANCY
The Gleaner editorial headline of June 7 pointed out that even though there is a trend manifested in the decline of teenage pregnancies, there is a noticeably frightening rise in the number of 13 year-olds and other preteen girls who are becoming pregnant for older men. This information was detailed by Garreth Manning, a Gleaner writer who pointed out that many of these men are at least 10 years older than these children, and many of us know that an undetermined number of them could be the children's fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers.
The sexual atrocities and defilement of these children include horrendous criminal acts of rape, incest and carnal abuse. This means that the 55 cases of these pregnant children which were addressed by the services of the Women's Centre Foundation of Jamaica should have resulted in 55 men ending up in jail.
In other words, a serious criminal activity is being pursued by men who don't have any respect for the laws of the land. We also know that these men have no respect for women and girls. We, therefore, cannot appeal to their conscience or to their personal and moral integrity. It is this knowledge that prompted the Gleaner editor to call for "outrage in the community and family".
STRONG STANCE ON PUNISHMENT
It is also this knowledge which has caused the members of the Jamaican Senate to take a strong stance on the kind of punishment that should be meted out to men who have been described as 'predators'. In the June 19 edition of The Gleaner, staff reporter, Dionne Rose, detailed the Senate's "raft of measures to address the issue of violence and crime being committed against children". Amongst other things, they suggested conflict resolution, the training of guidance counsellors, social workers and others who interface with children, after school care, and the strengthening of programmes to eradicate poverty. They also proposed a 25-year mandatory sentence for all those who target and sexually violate our children.
Jamaica is not the only society that is in the throes of finding a suitable punishment to fit the sexual crimes committed against children. In the June 10 edition of the New York Times, writer Adam Liptak informed his readers that both Oklahoma and South Carolina have enacted laws that will allow the death penalty for sex crimes against children. The Oklahoma law would "make people found guilty of rape and other sex crimes more than once against children younger than fourteen eligible for the death penalty".
In South Carolina, the multiple offenders against children under 11 should face the death penalty. Of course, all across the United States of America there is a resistance to the death penalty, so these awful violators of the dignity and life chances of children might rot in jail rather than swing from the gallows or experience the last moments of a lethal injection.
SYMBOLIC LAWS
Many social activists and political analysts maintain that such laws are mainly symbolic and Liptak himself points out that no one in the USA has been executed for rape since 1964. In addition to this, women need to be conscious of the fact that not many human rights advocates or parliamentarians are outraged enough to call for stiff penalties for the rape of adult women.
Perhaps, the time has come for every woman and all men of good will to support the call for harsh penalties that potentially could result in the incarceration and severe punishment of many who are our significant others. To this end, we will recognise that the 'predator' has no distinguishing marks. He looks just like us, the only difference is that he is just thoroughly evil and we must put him behind bars for a very long time.
Dr. Glenda P. Simms is a gender expert and consultant.
