KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As tears flowed for mur­dered moth­er of three, Adeina Al­leyne, her chil­dren sat in the front pew of the Pro-Cathe­dral of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help, San Fer­nan­do, un­aware that she had sac­ri­ficed her life for theirs.

As he de­liv­ered the homi­ly at Al­leyne’s farewell yes­ter­day, Fr David Khan told mourn­ers that the great­est de­cep­tion Al­leyne re­ceived from the man who was sup­posed to love her was his in­ten­tion to kill her two chil­dren. Khan re­vealed that her fi­nal act of love was to sac­ri­fice her­self in their place.
“De­spite all her pains, her sad­ness and her sor­row, she knew the love of God. And she knew that love so much, she laid down her life for her chil­dren. For those who do not know, in her last mo­ments, the trick­ery was, the de­ceit was, he was go­ing to kill her child. That was the trick­ery and she of­fered her­self as a sac­ri­fice,” Khan said.

As Al­leyne’s body left the cathe­dral, her daugh­ter Shy­la kissed her on her fore­head and placed a yel­low and white rose on her chest. Dur­ing the ser­vice, she knelt be­fore the al­tar and prayed for her moth­er.
Last Wednes­day, Al­leyne, 34, a su­per­vi­sor at Puff N’ Stuff Bak­ery in Vista­bel­la, left her Apart­ment 2, Build­ing 3 home in Em­ba­cadere, San Fer­nan­do, to vis­it her for­mer lover and fa­ther of her chil­dren, Dwight Wal­drop. She had tak­en her sev­en-year-old son and two-year-old tod­dler to see Wal­drop, a 33-year-old watch­man who lived in Build­ing 5. Her 10-year-old daugh­ter was not there.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the vis­it Wal­drop sav­age­ly hacked Al­leyne to death while the tod­dler screamed on the bed. The el­der son ran to neigh­bours for help but when they ar­rived, Al­leyne was al­ready dead. The neigh­bours sub­se­quent­ly found Wal­drop in the kitchen with a cord around his neck.
Neigh­bours and rel­a­tives said Al­leyne had end­ed her re­la­tion­ship with Wal­drop, who then threat­ened to kill her.

He even sharp­ened knives and test­ed them on him­self be­fore mur­der­ing her, they re­vealed.
Not­ing that scores of women had made sim­i­lar fates while try­ing to leave abu­sive re­la­tion­ships over the past few years, Khan said it means that de­spite all the trag­ic ex­pe­ri­ences, it was clear that the na­tion has not learnt its les­son. 

“This is not the first time this has hap­pened. Over and over, this has hap­pened in our na­tion and we did not learn. We did not let ex­pe­ri­ences change us. If we want change, we have to do things dif­fer­ent­ly,” Khan said.
He said that abuse al­ways be­gins with harsh lan­guage be­fore it turns in­to phys­i­cal vi­o­lence. He said that in the lead-up to Al­leyne’s death, she most like­ly cried out for help.

“What did you and I do as a peo­ple who say that we are a peo­ple of God, that we are broth­ers and sis­ters? Have we done what we were sup­posed to do?”
Ac­knowl­edg­ing that both women and men suf­fer do­mes­tic abuse, Khan ad­vised mourn­ers that if some­one claims to love them but abus­es them, that is not true love. He re­mind­ed them that “ac­tion speaks loud­er than words.” He told them that any­one un­will­ing to lay down their life for them but puts their lives in dan­ger is not a friend.

While Puff N’ Stuff re­mained opened yes­ter­day, col­leagues paid trib­ute with mem­o­ries and po­ems.