On Sun­day, I read a com­ment by a par­ent which said she would nev­er let her child out of her sight. That for her child’s en­tire life she would be present or have the child’s dad, grand­moth­er, and on­ly a few trust­ed peo­ple guard her child. I un­der­stood those sen­ti­ments im­me­di­ate­ly.

I had no idea then about the lat­est news, but I was cer­tain some­thing rep­re­hen­si­ble had hap­pened to a child. I found the dis­heart­en­ing news of 12-year-old Mer­cedez Cabr­era-Layne, whose body was found in a forest­ed area in Erin on Sun­day morn­ing, hours af­ter she was re­port­ed miss­ing.

News re­ports spoke of the grief, out­rage and shock­waves across T&T as res­i­dents had been hop­ing for her safe re­turn.

The de­tails were that short­ly be­fore mid­day on Sat­ur­day, Mer­cedez’s grand­fa­ther stopped a PH ve­hi­cle to take her home re­port­ed­ly a short dis­tance away, but she nev­er got there. In­stead, her se­mi-nude body with “ap­par­ent blunt force fa­cial in­juries” was dis­cov­ered one street away.

A 26-year-old sus­pect from a near­by com­mu­ni­ty is in cus­tody in re­la­tion to this crime.

The mag­ni­tude of the pain of Annarese Layne, moth­er of Mer­cedez, is unimag­in­able. My heart goes out to her, the child’s dad, and es­pe­cial­ly the grand­fa­ther who must for­ev­er live with his in­no­cent de­ci­sion to “se­cure” trans­porta­tion for his grand­daugh­ter.

Read­ing fur­ther—it was com­pelling in a ter­ri­ble way, and I did more scrolling than usu­al­—an­oth­er par­ent had sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. He chose to chas­tise the rel­a­tives for plac­ing Mer­cedez at risk by putting her in a car by her­self “es­pe­cial­ly at that age.” He chas­tised all of us by say­ing par­ents should do bet­ter.

Peo­ple are en­ti­tled to their feel­ings, re­ac­tions and opin­ions and I avoid judge­ment. In­stead, I try to in­ter­ro­gate all the emo­tions that these in­ci­dents evoke. There are the laden fears and so­ci­etal dis­trust un­der­ly­ing most peo­ple’s re­ac­tion, among the out­pour­ing of hurt and grief.

I thought to my­self how won­der­ful it would be to live in a so­ci­ety where an ac­cept­ed and pos­si­bly on­ly avail­able trans­porta­tion sys­tem is not an av­enue for crime or an in­cu­ba­tor for so­ci­ety’s de­viant.

Which then leads to those who speak about the re­al­i­ty in which we live, one of a lack of sys­tems to give a mea­sure of safe­ty from “known” preda­tors, bad trans­porta­tion sys­tems, and ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty suf­fered by women and girls among crime sta­tis­tics that prove to me you are nei­ther safe in your home or on the street, even while liv­ing for an en­tire year in a State of Emer­gency.

In this trau­ma se­ries, I had de­cid­ed to speak about sex­u­al trau­ma to­day. In the in­stance of Mer­cedez, as I write I have not yet seen any con­fir­ma­tion of sex­u­al vi­o­lence. I can on­ly imag­ine that she died to si­lence her from telling what she suf­fered, but hope­ful­ly, not all will be hid­den.

I end­ed last week’s col­umn say­ing sex­u­al abuse al­ways seems to be added at the end of trau­ma lists of acts of com­mis­sion or omis­sion that cause in­deli­ble scars on peo­ple’s psy­che.

I wrote, “In my ex­pe­ri­ence though, sex­u­al in­frac­tions in ear­ly life are the main sub­ject in con­ver­sa­tions with adults pre­sent­ing with ef­fects from ear­ly child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and mal­treat­ment.”

Sex­u­al trau­ma de­vel­ops from any/many types of in­frac­tions. In one in­stance a vic­tim may have a one­time in­ci­dent that af­fects them for life. In oth­er cir­cum­stances acts of sex­u­al vi­o­lence may be per­pe­trat­ed over long pe­ri­ods.

The lev­el of vi­o­lence dif­fers too. We can­not de­ter­mine what a per­son may suf­fer (for life) from some­one vi­o­lat­ing them with a non-con­sen­su­al/un­want­ed kiss.

One of the main points I thought of mak­ing is how eas­i­ly and quick­ly cer­tain sex­u­al as­saults or sex­u­al in­frac­tions hap­pen. Sex­u­al preda­tors have most­ly per­fect­ed their game and may make pre­cise strikes so swift­ly even vic­tims are con­fused. On many oc­ca­sions there may not even be re­ac­tion times.

Then the em­bar­rass­ment. The deep shame. The guilt that be­longs to the per­pe­tra­tor but lives as con­tin­u­ous trau­ma in the vic­tim, if you live!

That is my sec­ond point: the shame and judge­ment of be­ing a vic­tim of sex­u­al abuse which cow peo­ple–girls, boys, women and men–in­to si­lence.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO, 1999) de­fines child sex­u­al abuse as the in­volve­ment of a child in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty that he or she does not ful­ly com­pre­hend, is un­able to give in­formed con­sent to … or that vi­o­late the laws or so­cial taboos of so­ci­ety.

Who would ever think that the re­spectable Princes Town tai­lor mea­sur­ing the length of a “crotch” zip­per for a jump­suit would have been able to vi­o­late me with my sis­ter sit­ting on a chair be­hind me. I could not have known that the dirty feel­ing would last a life­time, ei­ther.

But I do know that the very rea­son I did not tell is what si­lences peo­ple and al­low preda­tors to thrive. I al­ways think about whether the “boss tai­lor” had al­so per­pe­trat­ed sex­u­al acts/in­frac­tions on oth­er mi­nors or women.

I think of the one who killed Mer­cedez and won­dered who did not speak up, cowed by stig­ma, shame, guilt, and fear of re­jec­tion and/or judge­ment.

My sad­ness com­min­gles with fair and de­spair to­day.