Cinderella stories

IF the story of Cinderella brought tears to the eyes of some children and outrage in others, then the story detailing the treatment of some of Jamaica’s children today, would no doubt invoke an emotion of another kind in those who care to listen, and would probably sell more copies than the classic children’s book did.

But while Cinderella’s story is fictitious, this is not the case for those who continue to suffer at the hands of abusive step-parents; and there is no fairy godmother who with a flash of her wand can change their situation, or a charming prince to whisk them away to live with him in a castle where they can live happily ever after.

At least this was not the case for 22-year-old *Venrice Henry, who suffered years of sexual abuse from her step-father who her mother had married after a short courtship. In addition to dealing with the psychological spinoff from this, she had to face the wrath of her family who labelled her a liar when she finally decided to speak out.

The young lady’s ordeal began when she was 15-years-old, shortly after her mother married her step-father, a decision she had no part in making.

“I didn’t even know him before she met him, I saw him like two times and then by the third time I saw him, he was moving into our house and I heard that there would be a wedding soon,” she recalls.

She believes her mother made the decision because she was not working and needed the financial assistance that her step-father would have been able to provide.

“On the surface he did his best, he helped out in the house, and if I wanted anything he would try to let me get it every now and then. But I had other difficulties with him that made me very resentful. There were other things going on that no one knew about and when I told them, nobody would stand up for me,” she says.

She says on several different occasions her step-father raped and molested her. This continued until a year ago shortly after her mother died and she decided to move out of the house.

Child psychologist Dr Sandra McDermott says that like Henry, a number of children for varying reasons such as a divorce or for financial and emotional security, will be introduced to a “surrogate” or step-parent which they will have to over time, come to accept as they would a birth parent. But she says that this change in family structure is not necessarily always a smooth one.

Henry says that although she told her mother about what was happening, nothing was done to stop it from re-occurring.

“It was a case of her putting him over me, not to say that she was supposed to abandon him or anything. But she would say that there isn’t anything she can do. For one it would be embarrassing for people to know and she wouldn’t want that so she would say I shouldn’t tell anybody,” she recounts.

When she realised that no one was going to rescue her from the abuse, she decided she was going to kill her step-father. She slept with a knife under her pillow every night, but whenever he came into her room fear gripped her.

Next she decided to poison him, but she was dissuaded by a close cousin who she shared this thought with. This was the only way she thought the abuse would stop. But when her mother died last year, she decided to just move out of the house instead.

Like Henry, there has been a number of cases in Jamaica where children are ill-treated or abused both physically and sexually by their step-parents.

Their stories fill the airwaves regularly and are read by many in the daily papers. Just recently in October, 17-year-old Camiel Coote of a Hanover community, was reportedly stabbed to death with a screwdriver by her step-father because he believed she had a boyfriend. Many will also remember the 2002 case of Jamaican Randal Dooley – the fatal victim of what was said to be one of the most horrific child abuse cases in Canadian history. The boy’s father and step-mother were convicted of second-degree murder in the seven-year-old’s death.

The night of his death, the step-mother, Marcia Dooley, plunged her unconscious stepson into a cold bath and desperately tried to revive him so she and her husband wouldn’t have to take him to the hospital, prosecutors said. At one point during the trial, the court was told how Marcia Dooley – angry with Randal’s chronic inability to keep food down – forced the boy to eat his own vomit. Along with a grisly tapestry of scars and bruises, at post-mortem on Randal’s emaciated, 40-pound body found 13 broken ribs, a lacerated liver and a tooth in his stomach. Medical experts said Randal – whose battered body was found in his brother’s bunk bed on September 25, 1998 – died of a brain injury likely caused by repeated shaking.

And there have been many others.

Although there are no concrete statistics available in Jamaica to suggest how many children actually resided with a step-parent and how many are abused by these parents, it is a topic that has been researched in other parts of the world.

One such study was carried out by Martin Daley and Margo Wilson from the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University in Canada. The duo had studied the mistreatment of stepchildren in comparison to those raised by genetic parents and made some startling conclusions.

“In several countries, step-parents beat very young children to death at per capita rates that are more than 100 times higher than the corresponding rates for genetic parents,” the study showed.

The reasons for the mistreatment of these children, regardless of where they live are varied.

Dr McDermott believes it stems from the fact that sometimes an emotional disconnection exists between the step-parent and the child. It is for this reason that she suggests that counselling be done before two families are united so that the children can accept the surrogate family.

“Some women would take on men because of an economic need and not necessarily because of love. So the child is used as an emotional barter for favours,” she says.

She says that children who are being abused by their step-parents usually show some changes in the their behaviour. These changes include a lack of appetite, lack of interest in themselves and becoming very withdrawn. She says they are also sensitive to touch; they act out at school, become more sexually aware and display anxiety towards the surrogate parent.

Henry said that she tried to avoid her step-father as best as possible. Even so, years of sexual trauma made her very anxious and caused her to have problems sleeping, something which continues even today. Despite the psychological effect, she channelled her anger into her education and recently graduated form the University of the West Indies where she had pursued her degree.

Not wanting another child to suffer as she had, she cautions mothers especially, to be careful when introducing a new man into their family’s life.

“They should really try to find somebody with good values and not just for security, to say that this is someone who is willing to take up the child I already have, or this is somebody who would put food on the table. Most of the time it is a financial decision and so they say well I need help out because I have five or six kids.”

* Name changed