CARIMAC Times 2016: The JREAM Edition Journalists Reviving Awareness of what Matters | Page 41

emotion apart from anger. We don’t teach
them to be worried, anxious; we teach our
girls every single emotion,” she said, “but boys
if they cry, they’re not allowed to … So we’re
stopping boys from reaching their emotions
and understanding them. Therefore, they’re
quite dysfunctional emotionally.”
After two weeks at the home, Wyatt’s aggressive
spark faded to an ember, and he became a
shadow of the boisterous boy he had been
before. One day, he sat and walked aimlessly,
quiet and alone. When asked why he was not
his usual self, he bluntly said, “Mi hungry,” and
walked away.
In a rare moment, Wyatt said his mother was
in America, his father in Cuba, and his sister
in Barbados. But he said they would send for
him soon.
He, like Noel, did not like Strathmore.
“Mi don’t like how you haffi [have to] stay one
year before you go ah [to] outside school,” he
said.
But the teachers, Laurissa Newton** and Darlene
Moore**, insisted that the Child Development
Agency is responsible for assessing the children
annually and determining whether they were
fit for school outside the home. As a result,
many have a long wait.
Shantal Norris’s story
“I cry every morning, every night, because I’m
used to being with my family and my friends,”
14-year-old Shantal Norris* said.

She had only been in Strathmore for a month,
placed there for her safety after being raped by
an older friend. She said men with guns had
come to her school searching for her, but she
had stayed home that day. She was forced to
stop all contact with friends and was unable
to tell anyone where she was. Only her mother
visited regularly.
Norris is an addition to the 278 cases of child
sexual abuse seen by the Centre for the
Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child
Abuse (CISOCA) since the start of 2015. And,
for each, the trauma of being sexually abused
as a child is different, but always horrific.
“Some people could never have a sexual
relationship again. Some people have millions
[sic] of sexual relationships because they’re
trying to be in control, and they want to get
sex before the man gets it from them,” Dr.
Gibbon said.
“There’s self-validation through all kinds of
things. There’s taking the pain away with selfmedication, drugs, or bad lifestyle … As much
therapy as you can possibly ever get throughout
your life will never ever take away the pain and
the scarring from being raped as a child.”
Norris coped by pouring her pain into the pages
of her journal, in which she wrote poems and
prayers and entries regarding her life.
“I have not been with my family for a month.
The one month that I missed, not being with
my family, is driving me crazy. It makes me feel
down. It makes me feel empty. It makes me feel
like I am no one,” one entry read.

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