Saved from domestic violence
By JULIEN NEAVES Thursday, August 15 2013
WHAT would you do to help save a victim of domestic violence?
This
was likely a question on the minds of the attendees of the Police
Service annual Eid-ul-Fitr celebrations, held yesterday at the Police
Administration Building, Port-of-Spain, as Police Service head of human
resource, Veronica Simon, told of a family assisted by two Islamic women
to get “out of a horrible domestic violence situation.”
She explained that the woman was a visiting student from one of the islands and got in a relationship with a young Trinidadian man “who began to whisper sweet nothings in her ears.” She forgot about her scholarship, went to live with him and had six children in six years.
“But the abuse began from the day the first child was born,” Simon recalled.
One night “in a reign of terror” he brandished a cutlass to cut off her head but she was rescued when her children jumped on top of her to save her. The police did not have a case against him and had to release him in 24 hours and a group of women were called in to assist, including two from the Islamic organisation Anjuman Sunnatul Jammat Association (ASJA).
The police got a home for her in South but then a taxi driver who was a friend of her common-law husband saw her and she had to be moved again. After that incident she decided to return to her island with her children because she feared for her life.
“And those children stayed for three months until we got them out of Trinidad. And we got them out at two o’clock in the morning and these two ladies were with me,” Simon said.
She noted that the assistance did not stop there and even after the family left the country the two women sent money for them to get settled back home. She reported yesterday that two of the six children are at university. Simon noted that the two women had “practised what they preached.”
“It was a way of life for them to give alms, to do good, to do things,” she said.
She asked rhetorically, “What do we do as a way of life, as a people? Do we do good, do we put ourselves out like these two ladies did?”
She noted Islam teaches that Allah loves those who perform good deeds and these women performed good deeds.
She explained that the woman was a visiting student from one of the islands and got in a relationship with a young Trinidadian man “who began to whisper sweet nothings in her ears.” She forgot about her scholarship, went to live with him and had six children in six years.
“But the abuse began from the day the first child was born,” Simon recalled.
One night “in a reign of terror” he brandished a cutlass to cut off her head but she was rescued when her children jumped on top of her to save her. The police did not have a case against him and had to release him in 24 hours and a group of women were called in to assist, including two from the Islamic organisation Anjuman Sunnatul Jammat Association (ASJA).
The police got a home for her in South but then a taxi driver who was a friend of her common-law husband saw her and she had to be moved again. After that incident she decided to return to her island with her children because she feared for her life.
“And those children stayed for three months until we got them out of Trinidad. And we got them out at two o’clock in the morning and these two ladies were with me,” Simon said.
She noted that the assistance did not stop there and even after the family left the country the two women sent money for them to get settled back home. She reported yesterday that two of the six children are at university. Simon noted that the two women had “practised what they preached.”
“It was a way of life for them to give alms, to do good, to do things,” she said.
She asked rhetorically, “What do we do as a way of life, as a people? Do we do good, do we put ourselves out like these two ladies did?”
She noted Islam teaches that Allah loves those who perform good deeds and these women performed good deeds.
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