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Friday, July 25, 2025

Falling through the chasm

by

20131207

Six-year-old Keyana Cum­ber­batch was per­verse­ly con­sumed. Like a thor­ough­ly sucked man­go seed she was dis­card­ed, ca­su­al­ly tossed in­to the garbage. Some un­speak­able crea­ture sat­ed his de­mon­ic lust in a man­ner that most of us sim­ply can't process. "How ah man could look at a chile and do some­thing like dat!"

My ca­reer as a re­porter was cursed with a seem­ing­ly in­ter­minable stint on the crime beat, so the bru­tal na­ture of Keyana's mur­der did not res­onate in me with the same force it did the na­tion. One per­sis­tent im­pres­sion left by my years in the killing streets was a com­plete de­sen­si­ti­sa­tion to the hor­ror of vi­o­lence to which I was ex­posed on a week­ly ba­sis.

There came a point though, when the trau­mat­ic im­agery brand­ed on­to my brain had be­come prob­lem­at­ic. I was de­sen­si­tised, but my thoughts weren't sani­tised. It be­came nec­es­sary to think of these vic­tims as less than hu­man, but in so do­ing I was al­so be­com­ing less than hu­man.

While Keyana's mur­der was deeply shock­ing, we have a long his­to­ry of de­vour­ing our chil­dren in some of the most hor­ri­fy­ing ways. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, fad­ed strands of con­scious­ness trans­port me back to the morn­ing I vis­it­ed the scene of a mur­der/sui­cide in St Joseph. An over­bur­dened fa­ther, buck­ling un­der ei­ther im­pos­si­ble re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or do­mes­tic up­heaval, took the de­fault ex­it path: the mur­der-sui­cide. He drugged his three chil­dren, though ap­par­ent­ly not very ef­fec­tive­ly, and then went at them with a cut­lass.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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