Dear Reader,

On February 2, my column was entitled, “Armadale double shame”. In that piece I criticised the state as well as Retired President of the Court of Appeal Justice Paul Harrison, the Armadale Comissioner of Enquiry, for the unspeakable tragedy in which seven teenage girls met a fiery death, and the almost five months’ delay in reporting the findings to the country. I had no idea at the time when I wrote the article that Justice Harrison’s report had been delivered to the relevant authorities approximately two weeks before. The report was dated January 15, 2010.

It was obvious that even my article that called down shame for the delay in the report had little effect on the powers that be, because it would take another two weeks after the column was published for the findings to be made public, and it happened only after Nationwide Radio broke the story following a leak of the document.

You would think that after the public disclosure of the shameful details of the Armadale report the government would summarily call a press conference to apprise the nation of the facts and the steps to be taken to correct the problems. No such thing. Ading insult to injury, the Ministry of National Security instead announced that a probe would be undertaken to ascertain how the document was leaked to the media. What a joke!

Did Minister Nelson expect that a document with the kind of damning and explosive contents would be left idly floating in the stratosphere for close to five weeks, and not be vulnerable to leaks? My only surprise was that it wasn’t leaked earlier. At any rate, it is an insult to our collective intelligence to think that the people of Jamaica would be distracted by the threat of a leak probe when it is the substance of the abominable atrocities of Armadale that our citizens are interested in knowing.

And Justice Harrison’s report is indeed damning, but refreshingly uncompromising. In fact, I want to congratulate the former chief justice for the courage and tenacity to have written so forthrightly and stridently as he has done about the Armadale tragedy. He certainly didn’t mince his words, and it is clear that if his recommendations are to be taken seriously, heads must roll and criminal charges must be brought against specific individuals.

Although nine months have passed since the tragedy, sections of the Armadale report would bring tears to anyone’s eyes. Under the heading, “Summary of Findings…the causes and circumstances of the fire…”, the following is recorded: “The girls, breathing in those toxic fumes and subjected to the intense heat of the fire in the darkness of the dormitory all, with the exception of three girls who jumped through the front window of the dormitory, rushed to the back window, the only visible means of escape. There was utter confusion. Probably, in panic and disoriented, they fought each other at this back window in their effort to escape. There were cries for ‘help’, trampling of each other and fainting of some of the girls.”

Further in the section it states, “It cannot be ignored that those were girls who since March of 2008, were confined in this dormitory 20 feet by 12 feet – a cramped, unhealthy existence and were condemned to the use of buckets to perform all their body functions at night. The entire Office dormitory was on ‘lockdown’ from 7th May 2009 because seven (7) girls escaped from the Cottage dormitory. Previously they were also on ‘lockdown’ because one girl jumped over

the perimeter fence on Sports Day, the 21st April, 2009.”

Continuing, Justice Harrison wrote, “This was injustice of collective punishment in operation. Some of the girls were compliant and meekly resigned themselves to their fate, for a period in excess of one year. Others were not so compliant, and did not. The latter group is deserving of some degree of understanding. There is a level below which no human being should be persistently forced and expected to exist. The girls in the Office dormitory, on 22nd May 2009, had been degraded to that level.”

It is hard to imagine how any government official could have read the report and sat on it for almost five weeks without saying a word. To compound the indifference and the lethargy, even after the document was leaked, the Minister of Health Rudyard Spencer, under whose portfolio the agency responsible for children, the Child Development Agency falls, hadn’t read the report. Speaking on Nationwide Radio, the Minister begged for the public to wait a little longer, until Monday, March 1 when Cabinet was due to meet.

But perhaps the most dastardly of the responses to the report that spurred me to describe the sequence of events as the “Armadale Triple Shame”, was the prime minister’s remarks upon his return from a trip to Mexico. In a tone that had no hint of sorrow, Mr Golding took aim at those who are calling for heads to roll, saying that they seemed more interested in retribution. I can only conclude that our prime minister must have been suffering from jet lag, and instead of choosing the word accountable, he mistakenly used the word retribution.

None of us could possibly imagine that Mr Golding would not see fit to call for those persons responsible for the death of seven teenage girls to be held accountable for what happened before and after that tragic night. It seems to me that if there is going to be any retribution, it may very well be heaped upon those who seem unwilling to clean up the system and make Jamaica a place fit for all of our children, regardless of their station in life, to live and grow.

With love,

bab2609@yahoo.com