Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

Valdeen Tama­ra Shears is a vic­tim and sur­vivor of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and a moth­er of sev­en who has spent the last five-plus years speak­ing open­ly about her ex­pe­ri­ences on the re­ceiv­ing end of gen­der-based vi­o­lence (GBV). Shears har­ness­es her 21-year jour­ney of suf­fer­ing at the hands of an abuser to sup­port, en­cour­age and arm oth­er women who des­per­ate­ly need to be heard and seen.

She is the founder of the Col­or Me Or­ange Cam­paign, which calls on the pop­u­lace as a whole to recog­nise gen­der-based vi­o­lence and lob­by for sub­stan­tive change in leg­is­la­tion sur­round­ing GBV. This cam­paign is held from No­vem­ber 15 to De­cem­ber 10 and is 16 days of in­ten­si­fied ac­tivism across the globe in recog­ni­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions “Or­ange the Globe” Move­ment which calls for ac­tion to end gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“I live in fear.” This was the ti­tle of Shears’ first blog on a web­site in 2012, called “World Pulse”, a site that gave women a space to speak open­ly about their do­mes­tic abuse from in­ti­mate part­ners. From 2012-2017, Shears ac­tive­ly blogged about her ex­pe­ri­ences as a vic­tim. These ex­pe­ri­ences in­clud­ed her for­mer abuser at­tempt­ing to run her over with a car, ver­bal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly abus­ing her, and phys­i­cal­ly abus­ing her caus­ing in­juries and scar­ring.

She was able to use blog­ging as a cathar­tic out­let through these years, un­sus­pect­ed by her for­mer abuser, be­cause as a pro­fes­sion­al in­de­pen­dent writer for lo­cal news­pa­pers, he as­sumed she was work­ing from home on her job. Shears used the plat­form to build her courage to speak out, and “got en­cour­age­ment from peo­ple as far as Ugan­da”, she re­mem­bers, “but my own peo­ple right around me here in T&T had no idea what was go­ing on”.

The ques­tion posed to many vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is why it “takes them so long” to free them­selves from abuse. Shears de­tails the men­tal and emo­tion­al ma­nip­u­la­tion of her for­mer abuser, de­scrib­ing the “trau­ma bond­ing and mis­placed loy­al­ty” that of­ten comes as a re­sult of these cy­cles of abuse. As a com­pound­ing fac­tor, she de­scribed feel­ing com­pelled to be a “good Chris­t­ian wife”, who had a du­ty to make her abuser hap­py–and the per­cep­tion that his un­hap­pi­ness was a fail­ure on her part. Fur­ther­more, as the moth­er of sev­en chil­dren, the sig­nif­i­cant com­plex­i­ty of sup­port­ing them on her own, and the in­her­ent guilt of “de­stroy­ing” the fam­i­ly unit was an­oth­er ma­jor im­ped­i­ment in her “get­ting out” of the abu­sive sit­u­a­tion.

Shears had many mo­ments of near es­cape–go­ing to a shel­ter in 2011 af­ter re­port­ing abuse and even go­ing in­to hid­ing with her chil­dren in 2013 af­ter pulling them out of school.

How­ev­er, it was not un­til 2016 when a ma­jor frac­ture in the fam­i­ly caused Shears and her son to be ar­rest­ed and jailed on ac­count of her for­mer abuser’s ac­tions, that she was deeply com­pelled to end the abuse. As a re­sult of a sit­u­a­tion in which she had no in­volve­ment, while preg­nant with her daugh­ter in 2016, Shears spent two days in jail. They were re­leased on bail on Christ­mas morn­ing at 2 am when a fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer in­sist­ed that the hy­gien­ic con­di­tions in the jail were un­suit­able for a preg­nant woman. Shears re­mem­bered the mo­ment as deeply over­whelm­ing. Los­ing her pro­fes­sion­al con­tracts be­cause of her ar­rest, she re­called “fac­ing 2017 with a big bel­ly, four chil­dren, no sup­port, and no job” .

As her ex-abuser went to jail for two years, with the sup­port of her fam­i­ly and best friend (al­so a fel­low sur­vivor) Joanne Ma­haraj, Shears was able to slow­ly take com­mand of her life, get a di­vorce, full cus­tody of her chil­dren and de­ny her for­mer abuser ac­cess to her chil­dren and her­self.

“Abuse thrives in si­lence.” In her tran­si­tion from vic­tim to sur­vivor, Shears has made her sto­ry and voice heard, in or­der to shed light on do­mes­tic abuse and gen­der-based vi­o­lence and raise aware­ness on be­half of women suf­fer­ing from in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence.

One of the move­ments she has spear­head­ed in­cludes the All for Bracelets Alert (ABA) Move­ment, a spe­cial in­ter­est body which lob­bied for the leg­isla­tive en­force­ment of GPS track­ing bracelets, a cor­re­spond­ing Vic­tim App Alert and manda­to­ry coun­selling for abusers. Shears al­so pop­u­larised the Col­or Me Or­ange cam­paign, a call to ac­tion to mo­bilise oth­ers to­wards lob­by­ing for leg­isla­tive change aimed at se­cur­ing manda­to­ry coun­selling for abusers, their as­sess­ments at the courts and a com­pre­hen­sive, work­able Bat­ter­er’s In­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme to help break the cy­cles of abuse.

In 2023, she al­so part­nered with Dr Cather­ine Ali dur­ing the 16 days to of­fer al­ter­na­tive pain and trau­ma ther­a­py and men­tor­ing to sur­vivors of DV, GBV and IPV. One of her proud­est mo­ments in ac­tivism was in No­vem­ber 2021, when she was in­ter­viewed by a group of at­tor­neys and lec­tur­ers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to dis­cuss the fail­ings of the jus­tice sys­tem with re­gard to gen­der-based vi­o­lence and to dis­cuss strate­gies to­wards es­tab­lish­ing more sur­vivor-friend­ly na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion. More specif­i­cal­ly, she de­tailed the dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting pro­tec­tion or­ders for her­self and her chil­dren. Her plat­form and lob­by ad­vo­cate for an in­creased lev­el of con­fi­dence in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which would in­spire vic­tims to come for­ward ear­li­er and more of­ten.

“Con­trol, iso­la­tion and fear are the ma­jor tech­niques of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence,” said Shears, now a trained Sur­vivor Ad­vo­cate Men­tor against do­mes­tic abuse, in­ti­mate part­ner and gen­der-based vi­o­lence. Her work as a men­tor pro­vides vic­tims with the holis­tic heal­ing, ther­a­py and men­tor­ing that they need to tran­si­tion from vic­tims to sur­vivors. Us­ing her plat­form, Shears has al­so rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al oth­er NGOs and spe­cial in­ter­est groups in­clud­ing the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV) and the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Since 2020, Shears has as­sist­ed vic­tims to get out of their sit­u­a­tions with the in­ter­ven­tion of the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit of the TTPS. Her work is not ex­clu­sive to fe­male vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, how­ev­er, as she high­lights that many men of­ten suf­fer silent­ly, with the added bur­den of the stig­ma that in man­hood there is no place for ar­tic­u­la­tion of do­mes­tic abuse.

Shears’ ul­ti­mate goal is to share the mes­sage to vic­tims and sur­vivors that they are not alone. Ac­knowl­edg­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of vic­tims find­ing their voic­es, she is en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple suf­fer­ing from do­mes­tic vi­o­lence/gen­der-based vi­o­lence to utilise the agen­cies, such as the TTPS GBV Unit, Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit, women’s shel­ters, and Fam­i­ly Court, that were de­signed to help. Un­der­stand­ing the in­her­ent dan­ger in women leav­ing abu­sive sit­u­a­tions, she in­di­cat­ed that a strate­gic safe­ty plan is cru­cial, and vic­tims should ad­e­quate­ly pre­pare and pack for a strate­gic ex­it.

More­over, she places the onus of ac­tion on the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to ral­ly around vic­tims, no longer be­ing by­standers or spec­ta­tors where vi­o­lence is sus­pect­ed. She iden­ti­fied some “tell-tale signs of abuse”, in­clud­ing sud­den in­tro­ver­sion of a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber, or un­ex­plained in­juries for which vic­tims of­ten make un­like­ly ex­cus­es. “It’s no longer about he and she al­ways fight­ing,” or “that is man and woman busi­ness”, she said, as do­mes­tic vi­o­lence can and of­ten does re­sult in col­lec­tive trau­ma and grief, es­pe­cial­ly when mur­der is the re­sult.

De­tail­ing her life’s jour­ney in a book, Shears has au­thored “Free from Men­tal Bars”, an in­spi­ra­tional au­to­bi­og­ra­phy of­fer­ing in­sight in­to her sur­vival and es­cape from 21 years of abuse. Dur­ing the 16 days of #ColourMe­O­r­ange, she en­cour­ages peo­ple across the world to wear or­ange in sup­port of vic­tims and to raise aware­ness about do­mes­tic abuse, in­ti­mate part­ner and gen­der-based vi­o­lence.