RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA and

CARISA LEE

Founder and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Con­flict Women Ltd, Asiya Mo­hammed, says the trag­ic killing of Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion coun­cil­lor Romona Vic­tor is a painful re­minder that even those de­vot­ed to pub­lic ser­vice of­ten strug­gle silent­ly with their own per­son­al chal­lenges—in­clud­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Mo­hammed said politi­cians and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers fre­quent­ly fo­cus on help­ing oth­ers while mask­ing the dan­gers they them­selves face.

“Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is such a hid­den prob­lem, and it’s such a stig­ma with­in so­ci­ety that of­ten­times it’s very, very dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly for those in pub­lic life like Romona Vic­tor, to reach out for sup­port,” she said. “Of­ten­times the pain is couched in sup­port­ing oth­ers and help­ing oth­ers and in ser­vice to oth­ers when, you know, that per­son them­selves may need sup­port, may need ther­a­py, may need coun­selling.”

Mo­hammed said Vic­tor’s death il­lus­trates that abuse can af­fect any­one, re­gard­less of sta­tus.

“Gen­der-based vi­o­lence, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence—it cuts across bor­ders, it cuts across every bound­ary, whether that is class, so­cioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus, or pro­fes­sion. We’ve had CEOs of For­tune 500 com­pa­nies who are sur­vivors or vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. So Romona’s case would not be iso­lat­ed.”

She not­ed that Vic­tor’s life was ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing oth­ers through lo­cal gov­ern­ment ser­vice, yet she may have been en­dur­ing her own pri­vate bat­tles at home.

“Some­body work­ing for the peo­ple, in the com­mu­ni­ties that she had—at home fac­ing her own per­son­al chal­lenges,” she said.

Vic­tor and her hus­band, Rod­ney Ram­sumair, were found dead in their Siparia home on Sun­day, in what po­lice sus­pect may have been a mur­der-sui­cide.

Mean­while, the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) re­newed its ap­peal for cou­ples fac­ing chal­lenges to seek help.

“Reach out for as­sis­tance or seek re­me­di­al coun­selling,” head of the net­work, Adri­an­na San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan, said.

In a state­ment, the IWRN ad­vised that tur­bu­lence in a re­la­tion­ship should not be ig­nored, as it will on­ly wors­en and could end in tragedy.

“No one is per­fect, and there­fore in­di­vid­u­als need to re­move shame from their sit­u­a­tion and in­stead seek heal­ing,” she said.

Isaac-Rat­tan is en­cour­ag­ing any­one in need of as­sis­tance to con­tact the IWRN through its so­cial me­dia plat­forms.