Caribbean Crisis Conference Set For Bahamas

Director of The Bahamas Crisis Centre Dr. Sandra Dean-Patterson, who announced the event at a press conference Tuesday, said such an event is needed for the entire Caribbean.

"Not only is The Bahamas number one in terms of sexual violence and incidents of rape in the world, but three Caribbean countries are in the top 10 who are experiencing sexual violence," she said.

"This is not a women’s issue; it is a international issue. So we thought we would invite representatives from crisis centres from all over the Caribbean so that we could brainstorm to see what we need to do as a region to deal with this."

Other Caribbean countries that are on the list are St. Vincent and Grenadines, which is third in the world followed by Jamaica, which is fourth.

On the first day of the conference, the various crisis centres will come together to discuss what are the best practices throughout the Caribbean.

On the second day, the conference will focus on prevention and how men can assist in spreading the message of anti-sexual violence. On the third day, the conference will turn its attention to young people and come up with strategies to address the problem.

Assistant Director of The Bahamas Crisis Centre Sandra Neville said this conference is significant because it brings to light the challenges that the Bahamas Crisis Centre is faced with every day.

"It’s giving us an opportunity here in The Bahamas an opportunity to confront issues that we have to deal with on a daily basis not just here in The Bahamas, but the other Caribbean countries," she said.

Conference coordinator Donna Nicolls made a special appeal to the church community to attend the conference.

"We really want [the churches] to get involved because they can pass on the information to their various churches. We want everyone to get the message," she said.

"Everybody is affected by sexual violence and we have to say stop and we have to join together to end this," Ms. Nicolls added.

Dr. Dean-Patterson explained why The Bahamas is at the top of the sexual violence list.

"Some of that may be because we have better reporting; some of it may be because we really worked hard to raise people’s consciousness," she said. "People should not live in this kind of fear. It is unacceptable.

"Even in a greater country like Britain their conviction rate is five percent. What it means is predators and perpetrators of sexual violence do not stop because there are no consequences."

She added that twice as many children are being sexually assaulted in The Bahamas.

"It may be because adults are not coming forward to report rape as much as they should. Our reality is internationally this occurs," Dr. Dean-Patterson said.

Although she said the centre is efficient, she called on corporate Bahamas to assist the Crisis Centre on a regular basis.

"Corporate Bahamas needs to step up to the plate," she said. "Some of corporate Bahamas are helpful and are assisting, but a lot of people are in denial, so we really need their help."

Dr. Dean-Patterson added that the crisis centre is still committed to assisting the government in finding harsher punishments for sexual offenders.

"We have been talking about the need for stiffer and different penalties and consequences," she said. "If you do get a conviction and you send an offender to jail, there is no intervention in prison and if there is no intervention he can come out and do it again."

She suggested life-long probation for repeat sexual-offenders and a registered sex-offenders list. However, she acknowledged that it is a delicate situation.

"The only question is do we make it public or given the size of our community…[we] may not want to do that. [There are] some complications about making it public," Dr. Dean-Patterson said.