In the Caribbean, Women and Girls Face Daily Threats of Sexual Violence; Getting Justice is Another Ordeal

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For many Caribbean women, few places are safe from the threat of rape or sexual violence. Women report experiencing sexual violence in their workplaces and being violated by people in their towns and villages. Many times, the places that should be the safest for women are the most dangerous: their own homes.

Homes are where many children–mainly young girls–are targeted for grooming, molestation and rape by a family member, neighbors or other people they know.

Sexual violence of women in the region is so prevalent that Caribbean nations accounted for five of the world’s top 20 rape rates in 2019, according to the World Population Review, which studies demographics around the globe.

Some 46 percent of women surveyed  in five CARICOM countries– Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago–reported experiencing at least one form of sexual violence, according to UN Women, which works for gender equity and women empowerment. Some 55 % of women surveyed in Guyana reported that they have experienced intimate partner violence–sexual, physical or psychological harm. Women in the four other countries also reported high rates of such violence with Suriname reporting 48 %, Trinidad and Tobago 44%, and Jamaica and Grenada, both reporting 39 %.

“Social and cultural attitudes, such as sexism and misogyny, …. contribute to the maintenance of entrenched gender roles within society leading to a significantly high level of intimate partner violence faced by women and girls,” Sannia Sutherland, who works with vulnerable communities in Jamaica, recently told the non-profit Atlantic Council.

In many Caribbean countries, women who experience sexual violence report similar problems:

*Police are slow to act on reports of sexual violence and technology, such as rape kits and laboratory testing, is non-existent or inadequate.

* Many victims say they have to relive their victimization when they are repeatedly interviewed by authorities, some of whom seem skeptical of their accounts.

*In some countries–Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, for example– some rape cases can take more than a decade, forcing victims to abandon their cases.

*Prime ministers and legislators are slow to reform the system to provide –or make it easier– for rape victims to access support for survivors, including shelters, counseling and legal aid.

Caribbean Investigative Journalism Network enlisted journalists in four Caribbean nations to tell the human stories behind the prevalence of sexual violence in the region.  

  • In Montserrat,  Keyola Greene reports how men on the island–including the former chief minister– groom young girls at the island’s lone high school.
  • In Trinidad and Tobago, a nation that has recorded 6,000 cases of child sex abuse in the last four years,  Natalee Legore describes how a young girl had to endure repeated sexual molestations by her mother’s male friends before she and her siblings were moved to a shelter for children.
  • In Guyana, Nazima Raghubir reports how young girls, women and immigrant women are victims of extensive sexual violence in the country. She opens her story with the mother of a young rape victim reading in court her daughter’s letter to her rapist, a family friend she called “Uncle.”

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