Clevon Raphael

The re­sponse to the ar­ti­cle on the man who was sex­u­al­ly abused as a child more than 40 years ago, which was car­ried in this space two columns ago, has been over­whelm­ing. This out­pour­ing of of­fers of help has again con­vinced me that we are a large­ly car­ing peo­ple and be­cause "good news" doesn't sell as much as the bad tid­ings, one has to seek out the pos­i­tives in our so­ci­ety. The very day on which that ar­ti­cle ap­peared there were ten hits be­fore 10 am on my e-mail, most of the writ­ers lament­ing the ab­sence of prop­er so­cial in­fra­struc­ture to deal with sex­u­al abuse on the whole.

Two of my read­ers said this prob­lem, which al­so af­fect­ed chil­dren a great deal–boys and girls–was more ram­pant than was re­port­ed, for the very rea­son out­lined by the gen­tle­man who asked me to high­light his bur­den–that peo­ple were afraid of be­ing ridiculed by re­port­ing these cas­es to any­one–at home or the po­lice. Would you be­lieve that some of my read­ers doubt­ed the au­then­tic­i­ty of the sto­ry? It re­mind­ed me of the at­ti­tude (which I hope is a dy­ing one) of some po­lice of­fi­cers to re­ports of a sex­u­al na­ture, which bor­ders on the same kind of in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty dis­played by the in­dif­fer­ent and the cal­lous in the so­ci­ety.

The gen­tle­man him­self has asked me to pass on his grat­i­tude to those who ex­pressed con­cern and of­fers to help him. He deeply ap­pre­ci­ates it and said for the first time he feels that the emo­tion­al pain bot­tled up all these years is fi­nal­ly be­ing eased, grad­u­al­ly. He promised to care­ful­ly go through the re­spons­es and will de­cide for him­self which to ac­cept. But he swears he is not go­ing to re­spond favourably to the ad­vice from the read­er who sug­gest­ed that he should share his se­cret with his wife or chil­dren, if they are adults.

"Al­though we have a per­fect re­la­tion­ship with love be­ing the key word, I don't think I can ever tell, es­pe­cial­ly my wife, about this prob­lem that has been eat­ing away at me for so long. Un­less I am con­vinced to do so by the per­son whom I will chose to deal with my is­sues," he told me. He said he was re­luc­tant to ac­cept the ad­vice at face val­ue in that hav­ing lived with his wife for an ap­pre­cia­ble length of time he was quite aware of her at­ti­tude to­wards cer­tain things, and he would not want to de­stroy his re­la­tion­ship with his fam­i­ly. I am re­pro­duc­ing just one of the re­spons­es with no com­ment of my own.

�

Dear Mr Raphael

Re: "Painful se­cret."

Thanks for high­light­ing a very sen­si­tive sub­ject here. And I wish to sup­port the broth­er per­son­al­ly in­volved. I sin­cere­ly hope he will soon be in con­tact with a ca­pa­ble in­di­vid­ual will­ing to of­fer him the com­fort, com­pas­sion and emo­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty he needs with­out him be­ing trapped in­to a life­long ther­a­py de­signed to keep many in busi­ness re­al­ly. This is of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to me and why I am pro­pelled to make an im­me­di­ate con­tact re­gard­ing your ar­ti­cle. It must be very dis­turb­ing and painful for some­one to live with this silent his­to­ry for so long.

I com­plete­ly un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult it is to find help and com­fort in Trinidad. In a so­ci­ety that is by na­ture very open and ex­pres­sive and at the same time suf­fers se­vere­ly from a lack of care and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly its part of the lifestyle and way of life very much ac­cept­ed here. Hav­ing lived in Trinidad for many years I'm aware of the sti­fling is­sues re­lat­ing to this small is­land and the ex­plo­sion of free­dom that ex­ists there al­so.

In many ways it has at­tract­ed me and there­fore kept my eyes and heart on this poor par­adise no mat­ter where in the world I find my­self. A place I dear­ly love...and would al­ways be avail­able to as­sist in any way I can. To en­sure a de­vel­oped so­ci­ety in every as­pect for my fel­low broth­ers and sis­ters and not re­fer­ring to the de­vel­op­ment tak­ing lace in Trinidad by means of high-rise build­ings but with no vis­i­bil­i­ty...

I would be more than hap­py to of­fer any as­sis­tance to our broth­er if he is will­ing to make con­tact and thank you once again for pro­vid­ing me with an in­sight of what's hap­pen­ing to that spot on the map wedged some­where deep in my heart and bleed­ing se­cret­ly for what I have left be­hind... Sor­ry for my unedit­ed thoughts and hope you un­der­stand my feel­ings...

Best re­gards

From a chilly space

Pa­tri­cia