Dear Editor,

On Sunday, July 10, it was reported that a three-year-old girl was found with chop wounds, dead on a roadside in Orange Hill, St Ann. My heart sank. I double-checked the location to make sure that the community was the one I knew it to be.

I sent the news article to relatives, asking if they had heard about the news story. One of my relatives confirmed that she saw the article on social media. I rushed to my mother to share the news with her. Alarmed, she pulled herself forward in her seat and asked if it was the same Orange Hill where family and friends live. I confirmed that it was. This story had hit close to home.

The Orange Hill community is close to where I grew up and where some of my family members still live. Incidents like this don’t happen in our close-knit communities, I reasoned to myself.

The murdered three-year-old girl has been identified as Nevalesia Campbell. It has been reported that the child’s mother and common-law husband left Nevalesia and her sibling home alone. Police believe the child was abducted. There is an ongoing investigation into the matter, and as more shocking details surface we should all be heartbroken and angry at Nevalesia’s murder and the state of children in Jamaica.

The statistics are jarring regarding the safety and welfare of children in Jamaican society. According to the Office of the Children’s Registry, from 2007 to 2014, there were 14, 745 reports of physical abuse to their agency. During the same period, there were 16,790 reports of sexual abuse; 1, 129 reports of child labour; and a head-spinning 27,155 reports of neglect. This was just what was reported. While there are multiple government bodies and advocacy organisations doing the important and necessary legal and public policy work of bettering the welfare of children, our cultural norms concerning children should not go unexamined.

In our deeply religious society, parents often justify their use of corporal punishment by asserting that it is their duty to not “spare the rod”. However, the line between discipline and child abuse is often blurred. Parents often tell their children of the hard labour they endured when they were being brought up. This is often used as a shaming tool to ward off perceived idleness and laziness in children. In between the anecdotes, the message seems to be that Jamaican children are adults in training and should hasten adulthood.

For many Jamaicans life is hard economically. Oftentimes the stress and frustration adults experience get taken out on children during what parents consider disciplining. Children questioning their elders are punished for sassiness; “passing your place”. It doesn’t occur to many people that a child questioning their elder is a part of a child’s development and the creation of a sense of self.

The reality is that children are just that — children. They are learning and developing and should be given the room to grow and thrive. They shouldn’t be left to fend for themselves or preyed upon by older members of their communities. They are vulnerable members of our society who should be fiercely protected.

Most people would never consider committing a heinous act such as murdering a child; however, the everyday behaviours that perpetuate the undervaluing of children cannot go unchecked. If the state of a nation’s children is indicative of the health of a country, then Jamaica is in very bad shape.

Tiffany Walton

walton.tiffany@yahoo.com