An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

With more and more per­sons be­ing af­fect­ed by crime, a Ro­man Catholic priest is urg­ing faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions to put mech­a­nisms in place to sup­port peo­ple in their grief.

Fa­ther Matthew D’hereux spoke about the is­sue af­ter lead­ing a litur­gy of lamen­ta­tion on Wednes­day at the St Mar­tin De Por­res RC Church in Gon­za­les for the four vic­tims fa­tal­ly shot in an in­ci­dent on Sun­day that start­ed in that com­mu­ni­ty and end­ed at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

“Af­ter the 40 days, af­ter the one year, peo­ple go back to their lives and so there must be some sort of mech­a­nisms with­in faith-based com­mu­ni­ties to sup­port peo­ple in their grief, to process that grief, es­pe­cial­ly in cas­es of mur­der and vi­o­lence, to process the anger,” he said.

“I think cor­po­rate T&T should help in pro­vid­ing ther­a­py for fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties where trau­ma is con­cerned.”

Not­ing that there are trau­ma­tised adults and chil­dren in com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by gun and gang vi­o­lence, Fr D’hereux added: “We need to pro­vide a space with­in prayer to ex­press feel­ings but al­so chan­nel those that are hurt­ing and find­ing it most dif­fi­cult … to chan­nel them to cor­po­rate mech­a­nisms to get ther­a­py from pro­fes­sion­als as part of the jour­ney.”

In the mass shoot­ing in­ci­dent last week­end, Jay­den Reyes, 21, Pe­ter Williams, 31, Kevin King, 33, and Johnathon Ar­joon, 23, were killed short­ly af­ter par­tic­i­pat­ing in a foot­ball friend­ly.

Com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent, Fr D’hereux said: “We can’t be silent. We have to ex­press it in some way, whether ther­a­peu­ti­cal­ly, whether through peace march­es, whether through prayer days.”

On the is­sue of a fi­nan­cial re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest and con­vic­tion of the per­pe­tra­tors, he said it was al­so nec­es­sary to solve the crimes.

“If we are talk­ing about putting fi­nances in­to the fight against crime, put it down to the lev­el of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, of for­ma­tion, of do­ing work with young peo­ple who may find them­selves at risk,” he said.

“It is not one so­lu­tion and if we go down the rab­bit hole of one so­lu­tion, we will con­tin­u­al­ly be hit­ting our heads against a brick wall.”