Georgetown, East Demerara are Guyana’s rape centres

Jul 18, 2015 News

…as rape climbs by 74 percent

As the latest round of police statistics show a whopping increase in the number of reported rapes, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum has opined that the police force’s sexual offences unit is fuelling the increase seen in rape reports.
During a recent interview with this publication, Blanhum explained that mechanisms have been put in place by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) to tackle the increase in rape reports. He said one of the mechanisms to deal with rape is the installation of sexual offences units in each division.
According to Blanhum, these units are driving rape reports as persons feel more comfortable coming forward to the police. He said too that special care was taken to place female investigators within the units to interact with the victims and ensure that they feel comfortable.
“From there, we do an investigation and based on the advice we receive, we prosecute,” the Crime Chief added.
In regards to old rape cases – such as the gang rape of a Mahdia woman last year – Blanhum said that all investigations are active. “As long as we get the information, we’ll proceed from there,” he said.
Furthermore, while Blanhum noted that there were feelings of distrust towards the police amongst members of the community, he said that the GPF is working on removing such feelings. He said that a social crime prevention programme has been launched.
“We are working with members of the community to build trust and those are initiatives that we’ll continue working on to grow from strength to strength,” he said.
According to the GPF June statistics on crime, rape was listed as one of the serious crimes policed by the Force. Though for the months of January to May 2015 the police did not indicate the rape statistics, they finally did so in June. Their statistics showed an increase of 74 percent in the number of reports of rape when compared to 2014. At the end of June this year, there were 207 reports compared to 119 for the same period last year.
Police said, too, that the majority of the reports came from Georgetown (A Division) and the East Coast (C Division).
In the past, women who took their stories of rape to the media complained that the police are inadequately prepared to handle rape reports. Victims had also expressed fear of non-prosecution due to their rapists having “links” in high places.
These claims have been evident in the low rate of convictions for rape matters in the court. A few years ago, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) released its study, “Without Conviction: Sexual Violence Cases in the Guyana Justice Process”.
In the 60-page report, the GHRA showed that over the years 2000 to 2004, the average conviction rate was 1.4 percent. This figure represented 9 convictions out of the 647 reports originally made to the police.
Furthermore, in the first year of the study the conviction rate had been 0.9 percent (1:117). For the last year, the report showed that the conviction rate had dropped to 0.6 percent (1:154). Additionally, only three percent of the original complaints made it to trial.

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Georgetown, East Demerara are Guyana’s rape centres

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