Shameful, reprehensible, and misogynistic!
Those are just three of the adjectives one of the women who authored the “unusable” report into sexual misconduct allegations against former sports minister Darryl Smith used yesterday to describe Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and attorney General Faris Al-Rawi.
Former temporary senator Folade Mutota, one of three women who investigated Smith, broke months of silence yesterday via a scathing two-page letter in which she condemned what she described as the “boys club” mentality which kept women silent in the face of inappropriate and unwanted sexual conduct.
In her first public statement since the report which Mutota and two other women produced was deemed “unusable” by both men, Mutota said “the conduct of the Honourable Prime Minister and Honourable Attorney General has been shameful, reprehensible, misogynistic, and an attack on women’s agency and women’s right to challenge injustice and to be heard.”
According to Mutota, “a declaration about the number of women in high office in Trinidad and Tobago is insufficient to remove this shame. It is on the public record,” she said.
Mutota was able to walk a fine line between getting her point across and still not making any revelatory statements about the Smith matter.
“It is a stain that both men must endure and I hope that any sincere attempt at contrition will significantly benefit women and deliver strong action against sexual harassment,” she said.
Using todays culmination of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence, as her reason to break the silence, Mutota said that she “choose to speak out on a very public perpetration of Violence Against Women”.
“What the Honourable Prime Minister and Honourable Attorney General sought to do was silence women’s voices in their attempts to wash their hands of any responsibility for transparency and accountability to the public, “ she said.
Mutota said both Rowley and Al-Rawi described the process leading up to the final report as “flawed” and said that Smith was not given an opportunity to be heard
She said that both men knew “full well that the Terms of Reference of the Committee was to act as a fact finding inquiry on behalf of the Prime Minister”.
According to Mutota the committee was mandated to submit a report only to Rowley.
She said that level of reportage specifically to the Office of the Prime Minister “could create some level of hesitance by Committee members to respond publicly to the statements” made afterwards by both Rowley and Al-Rawi.
“The very public and pejorative characterisation of the report as “unusable” and words to the effect that the methodology used by the Committee resulted in the denial of natural justice callously sacrificed the professional credibility, competence, and reputation of anyone who served on the Committee including myself,” Mutota said.
“Because misogyny finds subtle ways of hiding and repackaging itself in multiple forms, I choose to analyse the public actions and utterances of the Honourable Prime Minister and the Honourable Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago along with the maelstrom of comments and commentaries by their declared and undeclared spokespersons in the context of Violence Against Women (VAW),” she said.
Smith was removed from office back in April 2018 after allegations of sexual misconduct and reports of a subsequent payment of $150,000 to the alleged victim Carrie-Ann Moreau, and a Non-Disclosure Agreement that blocked any details from public scrutiny.
Rowley later appointed the committee to review the circumstances surrounding the dismissal and payment of compensation to Moreau and the allegations of alleged sexual harassment she made against Smith.
The three-member committee which conducted the probe was chaired by Jacqueline Wilson and included Mutota and Elaine B Green and found that Moreau was not the only person who had raised sexual allegations against Smith, while there were other incidents that were considered consensual.
The committee also found that there appeared to be a concerted effort to sanitise the firing exercise of any reference to the allegations of sexual harassment and to treat it as an orthodox claim of unfair dismissal. It noted, however, that Miss Moreau was in fact making two complaints. The committee found that she was complaining that she had been sexually harassed by the former minister and that her reporting of that complaint was the reason for her dismissal.
Mutota said yesterday that with every public utterance both Rowley and Al-Rawi either intentionally or un-intentionally diminished the professional conduct of women who served, without any payment, in the interest of national service, and violated the rights of women to serve in public office with the expectation of fair and just treatment.
“It is an example of the ease with which public service, with hasty utterances by men in positions of power and decision making can be converted into public shaming of women. It is the story of how misogyny actively seeks to make women invisible, without value and attempts to impose victimhood on women regardless of our many accomplishments,” she said.
Mutota, former Permanent Secretary and human resource expert Jacqui Wilson and attorney Elaine Greene were appointed to investigate Smith’s alleged payment of $150,000 as part of the NDA. The women produced a report which was later rubbished by Rowley and Al-Rawi.
Guardian Media reached out to both Rowley and Al-Rawi for response.
Rowley did not respond. However, Al-Rawi said he had not read Mutota’s statement but was aware she had released one.
Al-Rawi defended his previous statements about the Smith matter. He said he was advised on the matter by Senior Counsel Douglas Mendes.
“The report as produced by the committee breached the rules of natural justice and rendered the report unusable,” he said. “I have made no comment in relation to the persons on the committee.”
He said when he was asked why the report was not being used or disclosed, he publicly disclosed the advice from two attorneys.
“Not sure if she is referring to those persons as being misogynistic but I have only repeated the advice to what I received, “ Al-Rawi said and repeated that he made no comment on their personalities at all.
The AG thanked the three women for their service and confirmed they were not compensated for the work they put into compiling the report.