RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Anis­sa Ra­j­gob­in-Ageemoolar, the moth­er of two, who af­ter be­ing shot three times by her hus­band, Sharaz Ageemoolar, has been dis­charged from the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The in­ci­dent took place on No­vem­ber 20 when Sharaz fol­lowed Ra­j­gob­in-Ageemoolar in­side the Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent In­sur­ance at Cross Cross­ing, San Fer­nan­do, and shot her at point-blank range, be­fore killing by­stander Rosario Ramd­han and steal­ing a car. 

Sharaz lat­er died by sui­cide. He shot him­self in the head while sit­ting in the stolen car at Ar­joon­s­ingh Dri­ve, La Ro­main.

Through­out her mar­riage, Anis­sa faced years of abuse, yet she re­mained ded­i­cat­ed to car­ing for her two sons and even hid the abuse from her fa­ther Bas­deo Ra­j­gob­in in the ear­ly days.

She chose to stand by Sharaz hop­ing he would change. Ear­li­er this year, when she re­alised he was not chang­ing his ways, she de­cid­ed to move on.

Sharaz ini­ti­at­ed a di­vorce and Ra­j­gob­in-Ageemoolar made the coura­geous de­ci­sion to leave their mar­i­tal home in Ju­ly, which she helped him to build.

She sought refuge at her fa­ther’s home in Aripero. How­ev­er, a month lat­er, tragedy struck when Ra­j­gob­in’s home was fire­bombed.

Po­lice said de­spite these event, Ra­j­gob­in-Ageemoolar did not pur­sue a pro­tec­tion or­der against her hus­band. 

Fol­low­ing the mur­der/sui­cide var­i­ous ac­tivists high­light­ed the ur­gent need to sup­port trou­bled males in our so­ci­ety. 

Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, the founder of In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day in T&T and a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, em­pha­sised the ne­ces­si­ty for ed­u­ca­tion­al in­ter­ven­tions.

He ad­vo­cat­ed for fos­ter­ing re­silience among boys and men, high­light­ing the need for cop­ing mech­a­nisms to nav­i­gate fail­ure and dis­ap­point­ment. 

The Fa­thers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent, Rhon­dell Fee­les, said that of­ten, men face chal­lenges in cop­ing with the af­ter­math of a frac­tured re­la­tion­ship.

He rec­om­mend­ed that de-stress cen­tres be set up in com­mu­ni­ties to of­fer free ther­a­py for men who face dif­fi­cul­ties nav­i­gat­ing the emo­tion­al tur­moil of a bro­ken re­la­tion­ship. Fee­les rec­om­mend­ed ther­a­py specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored for men and pro­grammes to ed­u­cate them on how to go about seek­ing le­gal as­sis­tance or me­di­a­tion when fac­ing di­vorce or re­la­tion­ship chal­lenges.

Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Dr Pe­ter Weller echoed the call for ac­tion, specif­i­cal­ly ad­vo­cat­ing for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of anger man­age­ment pro­grams tai­lored to men. 

“We need to ad­dress men­tal health is­sues among men, as un­treat­ed men­tal health con­di­tions can con­tribute to vi­o­lent be­hav­iour. Pro­vide ac­cess to coun­selling and sup­port ser­vices. We must al­so ad­dress sub­stance abuse is­sues, as drugs and al­co­hol can ex­ac­er­bate vi­o­lent ten­den­cies and in­clude sub­stance abuse treat­ment as part of in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes,” he added.

He cit­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of pro­mot­ing non-vi­o­lent con­flict res­o­lu­tion strate­gies, em­pha­sis­ing com­pro­mise and ne­go­ti­a­tion as fun­da­men­tal tools.