There is a world of difference between adhering to the maxim of “sparing the rod and spoiling the child” and an ugly example of an angry, frustrated mother choosing to punish her daughter by way of a public beating with a piece of wood as the “correcting rod”.
Coverage of that recent deplorable incident by the DAILY NATION evoked, not surprisingly, some strong, emotional responses. Rational thinking will not be on the side of such public punishment. It can no more be condoned than any tolerance of crass disobedience or, worse, disloyalty by children either in the home or at school.
Those engaged in debating alternatives to public flogging; ill-treatment of children in general; and, more importantly, protecting children from sexual abuse, would have been horrified to learn through the SUNDAY SUN of the even more revolting, immoral behaviour by Barbadian mothers accepting monetary bribes to prevent court cases against men “charged with raping their daughters”.
What makes this sickening development all the more requiring of urgent, concerted action to effectively deal with this conspiracy is the source of the disclosure: former Juvenile Court Magistrate Faith Marshall-Harris, currently serving as a UNICEF Children’s Champion.
A spirited debate has already been sparked by educator and SUNDAY SUN columnist Matthew Farley in a critical assessment of the family laws to be reviewed by Marshall-Harris. He seems particularly disturbed over a proposed amendment that could result in the removal of corporal punishment from all legislation within the context of a new initiative for promotion of “children’s civil rights”.
It is early days yet for such a public discourse. What most certainly needs no delay is for the law enforcement agencies to get seriously cracking in bringing to justice those “mothers” who have so degraded themselves by accepting $10 000 bribes to prevent criminal proceedings against the men who, they knew, had raped their daughters! How many such cases are on police files and for how long?
What kind of a society do we really want to build for Barbados? Or, to ask it differently, in the manner of this nation’s “Father of Independence”, Errol Walton Barrow, when he asked on May 13, 1986:
“What kind of mirror image do you have of yourself? Do you really like yourselves? Because you can never really like anybody unless you first like yourself . . . There are too many people in Barbados who despise themselves and their dislike of themselves reflects itself in their dislike of other people.”
What kind of “mirror image” do these “mothers” of raped daughters have of themselves to accept $10 000 for their silence and inaction – the bribery toll to scuttle court trials against men who had committed this heinous act of human degradation against their daughters?