“The Silent Community” @petchary

I am sharing today a blog by my friend Emma Lewis, who had the courage to write about something I did not. For the past few weeks, this has been weighing on my mind. The murders of two fourteen-year-old girls, both of whom were pregnant. They were sexually abused by older men in their communities. Emma wrote about it, I could not. I am also trying to gather the courage to write about another murder, this time of a young man in Montego Bay.

A friend sent me a recording of his murder on social media. He did not warn me as he had not watched it. I almost threw up, immediately started crying and cannot get the images out of my head. One is left feeling so hopeless, but in the words of my friend, “We keep empowering them.” The “them” he speaks of is LGBT youth who are assaulted, harassed, discriminated against, and yes, killed. You can hear people yelling “Battyman fi dead” in the recording. In other words, kill him because he is gay. I will not post the video, it is too graphic, however, you can likely find it on social media with some diligent searching. Another two youths were assaulted (one may be dead) for the same reason, and this video is also circulating now.

What can we do? What can be done? What should authorities do? Why do human beings do these things to one another? How do you go on when your heart is so burdened? How would the families even start to put their lives back together? There are no answers, as usual, there are only questions.