Clevon Raphael

Quite un­ex­pect­ed­ly I got caught up in a con­ver­sa­tion, the main par­tic­i­pants be­ing two women who were dis­cussing in a very frank and poignant man­ner the abuse of chil­dren and women by their male rel­a­tives.

In­ter­est­ing­ly the talk cen­tred main­ly on the vi­o­lence be­ing per­pet­u­at­ed against women by their part­ners, and I got in­volved in it prin­ci­pal­ly be­cause I feel very strong­ly on both is­sues, which, if not tack­led head-on by so­ci­ety at large, could lead to un­told dam­age to the very foun­da­tion of our fam­i­ly life, or what has been left of our fam­i­ly life.

What made the di­a­logue more telling and deeply emo­tion­al to me was the fact that the women were vic­tims of se­ri­ous do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and al­though cer­tain­ly they were main­ly a bunch of strangers at a busi­ness es­tab­lish­ment, they did not "put wa­ter in their mouth" in ex­press­ing their views on what has be­come a dis­turb­ing and heart-wrench­ing top­ic with the re­cent up­surge of this type of crime.

One of them, who recog­nised me as a Guardian colum­nist with­out bat­ting an eye­lid, de­clared: "I know you are go­ing to write about this on Thurs­day, but please if you do any­thing, please don't use my name, you could re­fer to me as 'R.'"I hon­est­ly did not plan to write about it, but be­cause of the pro­found na­ture of the sub­ject and the pas­sion with which the ladies spat out their life sto­ries, I think it wold be a good idea to let my dear read­ers hear it from two vic­tims them­selves.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers