WHEN the body of 14 year-old Monique Tamara Gray was discovered naked, raped and strangled, it was, her friends say, an inevitable end to her short, miserable life. A life that was ruined by vicious physical and mental abuse by other children.

“Many people would tell her she was ugly and retarded and would threaten to rape or kill her,” said her best friend, Diana Kay, who lived on the same leafy street on the Four East Housing Estate in Greater Portmore. “No one here liked her… no one at school liked her.”

And why did this slight 14 year-old whose neighbours describe her as “a quiet, reserved, mannerable girl” arouse such hatred?

Because, according to Diana, Tamara looked and spoke slightly differently from everyone else. “She wasn’t ugly, she was a very bright girl,” said Diana — a pretty dark girl who looked about 12.

“But she would walk kinda funny and draw her words out and she had something wrong with her lip so people would call her cow-bite or retard. She often came and hid in our house.”

And, according to Diana and her 20 year old sister Terry, who described themselves as Tamara’s “only friends”, the taunts were not just verbal.

“The other children at Greater Portmore High would beat her, cowitch her, throw dirty food and chairs at her, steal her lunch money, give her dirty water to drink,” says Diana “She was crying all the time.” But, according to Diana, despite Tamara’s constant complaints, the teachers did nothing to stop the bullying.

“It was the school that killed her, just as much as the man who murdered her,” said Terry. “Because even before she was dead the teachers and pupils had already murdered her spirit.”

Tamara’s mother, Maxine Williamson, emerged from her house, clearly distraught about her daughter’s death. She said she had gone to the principal of the school many times to complain about the treatment being given to her daughter, but that nothing was done.

“Rubbish,” said the principal, Egbert Myers, when contacted by the Observer. “We were seriously concerned about Tamara. We sent her to a child guidance counsellor but she wouldn’t talk to them.” He added that he’d “had no reports of any bullying of Tamara at the school”, but admitted that although she’d been absent for four months he hadn’t noticed this until her death.

In fact, Myers blamed the child’s plight on her mother, who, he said, had “totally rejected her daughter and didn’t like her” and allowed her to go to school looking “dirty and unkempt”.

But Williamson said Tamara did not care about her appearance as “she would always say she was ugly. She never looked in the mirror and never allowed her photograph to be taken. She hardly spoke to anyone. She would spend most of the time on her own writing songs”.

Tamara first saw a psychiatrist when she was four because, her mother said, “she refused to play and refused to talk” and then later when she became “completely out of control”.

“She would say she was going out for two hours and then we wouldn’t see her all four, five, six hours later. She would come in at all times of night or sometimes not at all and when I asked her where she was she would just say she had been with friends. That was why I would not let her go out much,” Williamson explained.

According to Diana, who had a more unfortunate explanation for Tamara’s behaviour, the teen, like some her age and in her position, had early sexual encounters.

“She just wanted the company. She would say to me, ‘he says he loves me’ and I’d say ‘no, he’s just using you’,” said Diana

Unable to cope with Tamara’s behaviour, last October her mother took her to court where she was classified as an “uncontrollable juvenile” and sent to the Glenhope Place of Safety in Kingston. But, according to her mother, the institution was anything but safe.

“The other children would burn her with irons, jump from the top deck of the bunkbed onto the bottom where she was sleeping onto her chest, cut off her hair and shave her eyebrows in her sleep, rats would bite her… everytime I went to look for her I would cry and beg her probation officer to take her in front of the judge so she could come back home,” said Williamson.

The superintendent of the Glenhope Place of Safety, Beverley McHugh, said she had had “no reports” of such incidents. But she added that “the children are not experienced in how to treat each other, all they know is violence and aggression, particularly those who are here because they’ve committed an offence or have been abused. So if a child is quieter and not as rough as them they may get set aside and teased”.

After two further court appearances, Tamara was finally released on two years’ probation into her mother’s custody on Friday, February 8. But as she had no bag to put her clothes in so she had to return to Glenhope to get her clothes the following day, the last time she was seen alive.

Her disappearance came in a manner that was all too familiar to her mother. “She said she’d be back in two hours,” said Williamson. “When she wasn’t back after four hours I called the police officer in charge of her. I called her granny and her step-mother to see if she was there. We couldn’t find her anywhere. Then, on Monday (Feb 11) a taxi driver told me they had found a body in bushes off the Dunbeholden main road…..” her voice trailed into silence

“Her little brother’s taken it the worst,” she whispered. “He can’t look at anyone, can’t talk to anyone, can’t concentrate, just keeps asking: ‘Mummy, why did they kill Monique?, why isn’t she coming back?'”

Diana was sure she knew who was responsible for Tamara’s death. The suspect, she said, was heard bragging to the local youth that he had killed a 19 year-old girl. According to Diana, Tamara had told the suspect that she was 19 years old.

“I’m sure he meant Tamara,” she said. “Why did he have to kill her? He could have just raped her, she would never have gone to the police.”