Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Close friends of mur­dered teacher Suzette Sylvester in­sist that she tried many times to flee from her abu­sive re­la­tion­ship.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia un­der strict anonymi­ty, a close friend and for­mer col­league of Sylvester said she lived a very fear­ful life as she was a vic­tim of do­mes­tic abuse and vi­o­lence for many years.

“She tried many times to run away but noth­ing could have added up for her to ac­tu­al­ly leave. It was al­ways some ob­sta­cle in her way and she wasn’t get­ting through to get things done how she al­ways want­ed it to be done and for all whom she begged for help and they re­ject­ed her in what­ev­er way be­cause ‘they didn’t want any trou­ble’...all of you are re­spon­si­ble for her death in one way or an­oth­er,” Sylvester’s close friend said.

“I am hurt­ing be­cause such a love­ly soul was snuffed out of this life. She helped so many young peo­ple in many ways oth­er than her teacher du­ties…this is hard to swal­low,” the friend added.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day at his home, Sylvester’s broth­er said he did not know that his sis­ter was a vic­tim of do­mes­tic abuse.

He said that over the week­end he saw Sylvester and the sus­pect in good terms, mean­ing that he saw her talk­ing and laugh­ing with the sus­pect.

The sus­pect re­mained in po­lice cus­tody yes­ter­day.

Sylvester’s life­less body was dis­cov­ered by her son at 6 am Mon­day.

She was blud­geoned to death with a ham­mer.

The sus­pect lat­er walked in­to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion and alert­ed po­lice to the sit­u­a­tion.

Sylvester was a Lit­er­a­ture teacher at the Preysal Sec­ondary School. She for­mer­ly taught at the El Do­ra­do Wet Sec­ondary School.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­sources Net­work (IWRN), Adri­ana San­drine-Rat­tan has con­demned the killing.

“I’m no longer ac­cept­ing this bull­crap about so­cial­iza­tion be­cause even if you were ex­posed to vi­o­lence in your ear­li­er years, there’s noth­ing stop­ping you from break­ing that vi­cious cy­cle and de­vel­op a strong cir­cle of in­di­vid­u­als who can show­er you with pos­i­tive in­flu­ence,” she said.

She added: “If you’re ex­pe­ri­enc­ing emo­tion­al tur­bu­lence let your ap­proach be one of ci­vil­i­ty and if that doesn’t work seek pro­fes­sion­al help even if it means go­ing sep­a­rate ways.”

Rat­tan chal­lenged men to “look in the mir­ror” and de­cide what kind of lega­cy they would like to leave for their chil­dren.