Speak Up!! CitCo Hosts First Domestic Violence Conference

Speak Up!  It’s the first-of-its-kind public forum to openly address the prevalent issue of domestic violence.  Organized by the Belize City Council, the conference provides a platform to break the silence by acknowledging how domestic violence negatively impacts society.  At four o’clock this evening, dozens of attendees converged on Swift Hall where Mayor Bernard Wagner and a host of other presenters, including Commissioner of Police Chester Williams, addressed the gathering.

Carolyn Trench-Sandiford

Carolyn Trench-Sandiford, Social and Political Activist

“According to our law, domestic violence includes physical, sexual, emotional, psychological or financial abuse committed by a person against a spouse, child, de facto spouse, or any other person who is a member of household of the applicant or respondent.  One can quickly surmise that by its very definition domestic violence is beyond the general perception of being beaten up or sexually abused and when domestic violence is combined with other forms of abuse originating in policies that are practiced within our society and state.  Those exclusion policies which are political, social, cultural and economic and geographic in their oppression and exploitation.  It truly becomes incomprehensible to even conceive that a pathway to navigate out of it exists because it becomes difficult to grasp the complexity of the issue considering the multiple years or abuse and intersectional of those abuse.”

Survivor of Domestic Abuse

“Someone said earlier, you have to love yourself.  I had to learn to love me.  I had to learn to respect me and my body.  I didn’t know when to get enough until I was physically picked up and thrown over a verandah because I told him, I said, “I get enough and I want to leave.”  He says, “Okay, you want to go?”  I got raised up and stoned to the ground.  “Go!”  That was my turning point.  That was my time to say, you know what Felicia, it’s enough.  But there are so many women out there who do not know when enough is enough for them because they are so in love and you can’t blame nobody for loving anyone or loving that person because every relationship starts off with the honeymoon phase.”