Brits selling Bacolet home

 Peter and Murium Green, the British couple who was seriously injured in a brutal cutlass attack in Tobago in August 2009, say they are selling their house in Bacolet because “travelling now is no longer a convenient or exciting thing” for them. In a radio interview yesterday, Peter Green lamented the fact it took six months for the Criminal Injuries Compensation Unit to get moving on their case. He said the possibility of their selling the house to the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) was not their idea but came up initially in their talks with a local official, Faris Hinds.

It was suggested that the THA could help since due to their severe injuries from the attack, the Greens were not in a position to travel back and forth from London to handle the sale of the property. “We felt that Mr London, in his position as Chief Secretary, could have at least said, ‘well okay, we’ll help you sell the house,’ or even could have bought it and there would have been no issue of compensation. We would have been just as grateful,” Peter Green said.

Commenting on how the attack had affected his quality of life, Green said he would be happy just to be able to walk properly and to kiss his wife. He explained: “Due to her injuries, her lower mandible was detached from her face. I can no longer enjoy the loving companionship of my wife. It has been taken away from me.” He also said he would feel a lot better if he knew locals were on his side. Green said the comments he had read in local newspapers upset him because he has been described as “white trash”.

He added: “All I am doing is trying to push a civilised country into accepting the rules and regulations which should be in place. “These compensation arrangements should be in place for you, the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. “In some ways I feel like I am a representative of everyone who has been injured in T&T and we need to rethink what should be in place for these very, very unfortunate people,” he said. The Greens, who spoke about their traumatic experience in an interview with a British newspaper a few days ago, had said they would protest outside the T&T High Commission in London if the Government failed to compensate them for medical expenses incurred as a result of the cutlass attack.

In response, Justice Minister Herbert Volney has promised that the couple would be paid compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act early in 2011. The couple were brutally hacked with a cutlass by an intruder who entered their house on an August afternoon. The severely injured couple were admitted to Mount Hope Hospital where Murium underwent operations to rebuild her shattered face. 

Peter spent two weeks in a medically induced coma to help reduce the swelling on his brain. He had not been expected to survive. When it was deemed safe, Murium was flown home to continue her treatment, leaving behind her still critically ill husband. After he returned to the UK, Peter spent a month at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, learning how to walk again, and also underwent seven weeks of radiation treatment for his cancer.