PRIME Minister Portia Simpson Miller said a lot about child safety and protection during her national televised broadcast on Sunday, May 17, 2015. She reminded parents that their “ultimate responsibility is to care for their children”. As I see it, this was one of the most salient features of her broadcast. The prime minister’s intervention is significant. It is significant because it marked the first time — at least that I can recall — that a Jamaican prime minister dedicated an entire national broadcast to issues concerning the nation’s children. Simpson Miller vowed to do all in her power to ensure that people who abuse children receive the harshest punishment under the law. She encouraged children not be afraid to speak out, even if the perpetrators are in their homes and include their own parents or family members, because “No one has the right to abuse you; you are to be loved and cared for…”

Concomitant to that was the announcement by her that the Cabinet had approved a submission from the minister of justice to, among other things, “prescribe harsher penalties for persons who murder, rape or commit other serious violent offences against children”. She announced that work is already underway for legislation to be passed to create a new offence for parental neglect. She said that when this law comes into effect, a parent whose child is found in circumstances consistent with inadequate parental care and attention could be charged and tried for parental neglect. According to the prime minister, “Such circumstances will include children found unsupervised on the streets or other public places late at night, or a child found living with an adult where the arrangement exposes the child to the risk of sexual or other abuse…”

Although the philosophical merits of the prime minister’s focus on legislation are without fault, she did not say how her Government intends to catch and bring to book perpetrators of these heinous crimes against the nation’s children. To me, a practical man, the “how, when, where, and who” of any plan are always important signals of seriousness of mission and intent. The prime minister is an influential thought-leader; as such she must use her thought-leadership skills to help reshape social behaviour, especially among teenagers. Lest we forget, many of these teenagers become parents to the children who end up in situations where they suffer verbal, physical and sexual abuse. For instance, she did not speak to plans for resocialisation through activation of the “values and attitudes” campaign.

This social recalibration is necessary. It is necessary because the deficiencies that many parents experience in caring for their children is because they, themselves, neither know nor understand what caring really means, having never experienced care. Make no bones about it, the callousness with which adult miscreants treat children is a reflection of an inter-generational paucity of love, care and civility; the clearest manifestations are evident in the patterns of depravity and gruesomeness of the sexual abuse and killing of children. Undoubtedly, there is everything extraordinarily brutal and mindless about cohabiting with, impregnating, and then killing a minor. It is simply atrocious!

Simpson Miller was spot on in reiterating parental responsibility even as she reasserted societal obligation to care for and protect children. It is an unfortunate reality that a great many Jamaican parents still believe that “di Govament” is responsible for the care and nurturing of their children, and that their responsibility starts and stops with bringing them into the world, period. The antecedents to the current spate of barbarity against our children have deep roots in the way some of us — men and women — were socialised. Two dominant features of that socialisation have been our over-fascination with sex and our fixation on acquiring material goods at all costs. Hence, the insatiable appetite for glorifying and elevating the machismo factor and willingness to “bow” for material gains. I know of parents who gave up their teenaged daughters for sexual intercourse with a one-foot crook named “Daddy”. His ‘sex chest’ was so darn high that he demanded only virgins. Many parents in the town of Highgate acquiesced on the premise that “Daddy” would obtain visas for them to travel to the United States. The scandal is known as “Cotton Flight”. People should have children only if they can afford to take care of materially and emotionally.

Many years ago, as I stood in a corner shop on Frazerwood Drive, in Highgate, St Mary, to fetch a bottle of Andrews Liver Salts my Dad sent me to buy, George, who went by the moniker Kustie, arrived with his common-law wife Gilda. For context, Gilda was unnoticeably beautiful. Though stress and childbearing made her look well into her mid-forties, she was actually in her late twenties to early thirties. She was of mixed race, Indian and Negro, and light-skinned. About five feet tall and semi-literate, Gilda weighed no more than about 130 pounds, but her huge deflated bosom nearly touched the apex of her belly button. Kustie, on the other hand, was illiterate, dark-skinned, easily into his mid-to-late-thirties and roughly five feet ten inches tall. His top incisors were missing, he was notoriously unkempt, yet ruggedly handsome with all the trappings and looks of an experienced, well-chiselled herdsman. Kustie easily carried around about 200 pounds in body mass.

Upon noticing that Gilda was with child, the shopkeeper, Ms Kurdell, ruefully inquired, “Wait, Gilda, ah pregnant yuh pregnant again?” Without allowing Gilda to respond, a visibly tipsy Kustie hastily and barbarically retorted, “Yes, she pregnant; wha wrong wid dat? Woman fi breed ’til dem dead. Mi have ’bout six more inna mi back…” As awful as it sounded, Gilda’s resignation to her plight as a hapless and prolific babymother evoked a stinging bout of silence from the throng of shoppers who waited patiently for their groceries.

Suddenly, a faintish but purposeful voice breached the deafening silence. The voice sounded very familiar. It sounded very much like Miss Cogle’s (the coal woman), I mused to myself ,and it turned out to be her voice. Miss Cogle caringly asked, “Gilda, is how many pickney you gone suh far?” As the question left Miss Cogle’s lips, and before Gilda could respond, Kustie immediately hijacked the spotlight, commandeered the conversation, and responded quite gleefully, “Ms Cogle, she only ‘ave nine, and dis one gwine mek ten. But mi still have six more nuts fi bruck, ’cause is nuff oil inna mi back enuh, Ma’am.” No one laughed. His attitude and words were too embarrassing. Obviously, common decency triumphed over debauchery.

A collective expression of anger and disbelief greeted Kustie’s sadistic outbursts. Still, his insensitivity was no match for Gilda’s pretentious giggle, even as she stood conscious of the abject scorn and condemnation her man inflicted. Some women shoppers wept openly as Kustie tugged his submissive concubine along and exited the shop and headed to an adjacent bar. The whispers grew as fast as the anger turned ugly. Some chastised Kustie, but the weight of their disgust was upon Gilda for reducing herself to a breeding heifer. A few months later, Gilda “gave up the ghost” during labour. Alas, Kustie’s animalistic view that “woman fi breed ’til dem dead” materialised, even though people close to him said he wept uncontrollably when he received news of Gilda’s demise.

Of all their children, only one attended high school. He subsequently got a job on a ship, left Jamaica and never returned. The others, five of whom were female, ended up producing as many children, but never managed to extricate themselves from poverty or misery. The last I heard of them was in 2009, when I visited for a funeral and saw one of Gilda’s boys who told me his brother had died during a fight with his other brother over a handcart. Sad tale, but stories like these are very common, and the causations behind today’s crimes against children may well have their genesis in similar circumstances. It is true, getting many youths is no validation of masculinity; it is an extension of poverty.

Burnscg@aol.com