I read with great distress an article under the banner Covering the Courts in the Sunday Observer edition of December 28, 2014 in which the learned Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey sentenced a mother to 30 days in prison for rubbing faeces on a child, splashing some on a school building, and causing some to catch a guidance counsellor.

Perhaps your reporter could not write the full story, for you did not give the expected other remarks from the fearless Judge Pusey, she with the deserved reputation for fairness. What of the other complaint?

1. Who has investigated the matter of the four boys putting their penises in the convict’s daughter’s mouth?

Children of tender years tend to mimic adults. If they see their parents in certain acts that appear pleasurable, they will carry out the act even if the pleasure mechanism is different. That is why early sex and promiscuity is so common in the ghettoes, with their overcrowding and multigenerational sharing of habitation.

2. Was the mother speaking the truth when she said that there was a nonchalant approach and reaction at the school when she, quite rightly, went there first for redress?

It is the guidance counsellor who would be expected to put in place the necessary mechanisms to address problems such as these. I would never condone her/him being splashed with faeces, but hopefully by now he/she must be reviewing what role he/she is playing at the school and how, in such an underpaid and underfunded capacity, she could expand to provide a more holistic management to certain problems.

3. Was the Centre for Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) contacted so that experienced counsellors could be made available to the girl child?

I am very aware of a situation that we are now managing at the National Action Coalition of a young girl, now a grown woman, who was raped in her formative years by an older stepbrother. She is now a practising, committed lesbian, her mother will never have a grandchild, and her stepbrother — who is now a top attorney for one of the biggest conglomerates in this country — has his own family. Her life has been profoundly altered.

The girl must be counselled and quickly.

4. Was the Ministry of Education contacted so that this ‘common situation’ at the school could be addressed?

The case now involves five ministries. Education, because it is a school, though it has its own counsellors; Ministry of Justice, for mediation and victim support; Ministry of National Security, for the police units and the required training are there; and Ministry of Welfare for the investigative social arms are there; and Health for the whole family will need care.

5. The boys, being too young to have committed a crime, should they not also be sent for counselling? And, what of the parents, do they not have a role to play here?

6. By what name is the girl now known in the cruel, unkind ghetto?

Justice in the ghetto means that the child can no longer live in the same community and survive either physically and mentally. She is to endure a life of shame for having dared to complain to her mother. Suicide is not an option, but what else will bring relief? When and how will she be made capable of dealing with the scorn?

7. What of the mother? Can she now, in her disgrace, return to her home and community; for in every way she has lost her community standing, her respect, her home, and she now has a criminal record. It is she that, above all, must deal with her child’s ongoing mental issues.

8. The learned judge was right, and her indignation was correct. For that she has our respect. But for the mother, poor, undereducated, even foolish, she tried her own ‘social justice’ and she was wrong; “ignorance is not an excuse”. If she had had got the chance to do what she did then people in the community would have understood. If she had gone to the ‘don’, then he would have ordered ‘social justice’ and contained the whole thing. But that time is past. For if there is one thing to be learnt from this whole sad episode, vis-à-vis the Tivoli Enquiry, there are two Jamaicas: one of class and privilege, and one of subjugation and misery. These modern Children of Sisyphus deny us our greatness as a nation.

Lest this be construed as a criticism of the judge, far from it. For what else could she do if the society is to be maintained? Her hands were tied. She understood, and I do not envy her job as she walks the tightrope of reactive justice.

But truly, I long for the day when an arrest and courthouse is the final mechanism for domestic settlement; when people of standing in the community could have disputes brought to them for settlement; when the “Sarge” at the station is firstly an arbitrator; when the other “Elder” could be the one who would call the police when there was no other way; when the policeman’s role is not only the law, but order is of equal importance.

And what of the church in all this? Surely they are failing us all, it cannot all be about “fire and brimstone”.

In the same article, Judge Pusey in a case involving the beating of a child for discipline made a ‘no order’ although she pointed out “the complainant’s right to make a report”. Such was the wisdom of a Solomon applied.

Justice for one is justice for all. You are never alone.

Dr Jephthah Ford is executive director of his branchild National Action Coalition. Comments: jephthahford@hotmail.com