Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Clin­i­cal trau­ma­tol­o­gist and ther­a­pist Hanif Ben­jamin says com­mu­ni­ty trau­ma in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed to help cit­i­zens deal with the im­pact of crime.

“We are a trau­ma­tised so­ci­ety and the vi­o­lence con­tin­ues,” he said, not­ing that the pop­u­la­tion has sub­con­scious­ly changed lifestyles in re­sponse to the crime rate.

Ben­jamin said he has been ask­ing for a long time for places to be es­tab­lished where peo­ple could go to heal.

“We need to heal ... we need to look be­yond one-, two-day in­ter­ven­tion,” he said.

In the last two months, there have been mass shoot­ings at Harpe Place, Port-of-Spain, and Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite.

Ben­jamin raised the is­sue in his ad­dress at the ninth in­stal­ment of the Caribbean Colour Splash Sec­ondary Schools An­ti-Bul­ly­ing Con­fer­ence at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) yes­ter­day.

He used the con­fer­ence theme, “Be a bud­dy, not a bul­ly”, to ex­plain to the chil­dren that while a per­son might be a bul­ly, a sys­tem could al­so be a bul­ly.

“I want to talk about the ag­gres­sor ... I want to talk about the per­son who might be the silent or se­cret ag­gres­sor in the back,” he said.

“I al­so want to talk about the key­board bul­ly. I want them to un­der­stand that while a per­son may be a bul­ly, what might be your role in the world of bul­ly­ing?”

He re­mind­ed adults at the con­fer­ence that a child’s role is to ab­sorb every and any­thing, so they should de­cide for chil­dren what and who they should fol­low.

“We have seen who these young peo­ple want to em­u­late and it’s not the stan­dard bear­ers. We need to ask our­selves a ques­tion, what are they lean­ing on that side and what must we do as a sys­tem, be­cause it can­not be the par­ents alone, it can­not be re­li­gion alone,” he said.

Ben­jamin said com­mu­ni­ties must now be­gin to talk about safe­ty and re­build safe­ty and the po­lice must be­come even more in­volved in the com­mu­ni­ty.

He added, “Even our church­es, our schools, must be­gin to talk about how we can keep these com­mu­ni­ties safe be­cause that is where we are in our so­ci­ety now.”

Con­cerns about the ef­fects of crime on com­mu­ni­ties were al­so raised by St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen who ap­pealed to state agen­cies to up­hold their du­ty of pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial ser­vices in at-risk com­mu­ni­ties de­spite the chal­lenges posed by crime.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, Ameen said min­istries and state agen­cies must recog­nise the rights of cit­i­zens to ac­cess ba­sic ser­vices, re­gard­less of the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in their neigh­bour­hoods.

“All rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to col­lab­o­rate ef­fec­tive­ly to en­sure that vi­tal ser­vices such as drainage, garbage col­lec­tion, pub­lic util­i­ties, and so­cial ser­vices con­tin­ue to reach every cit­i­zen,” she said.