After 12 is lunch.
I remember the first time that I heard that phrase. I was quite young, probably just about the age of twelve and still in school of course, first form (7th grade). I was not the top of my class, but I had the ability to understand things by analyzing the context in which they were being presented. Common sense one would say.
It was at my bus stop. A group of men were talking about a particular girl. I was not intentionally listening but was within ear-shot of what was being said. I remember most of all the nasty feeling that arose within my chest when I figured it out, few hours later when I sat in my bedroom replaying the scene in my head. Anger and disgust then followed. It is one I still get today when material of similar content manages to catch my attention, whether on my social media timeline, or in a conversation that I happen to overhear (and I say overhear because I quickly excuse myself when they pop-up. My anger and passion on the topic is usually too much, so I either say ‘No comment” or I leave the room), an article in the newspaper or a public radio announcement.
I grew up on a small Caribbean Island. The population just about seventy thousand at any given point in time. A place where everybody knows everybody. Beaches, rivers, mountains, immaculate flora and fauna, rich culture in dance, music and song, exquisite local cuisine, and the ever-vibrant creole language. Oh, and this thing made possible by an outdated and ridiculous court system, and mind-boggling so-called laws. Laws that protect the identity of people who commit sexual crimes, especially against children, rather than that of the victim. Where the victim is publicly shamed and humiliated, and even chastised and blamed for what happened to them, simply because an adult could not, or refused to contain themselves. I acknowledge the rebuttal and fact that sometimes it’s a false accusation. So yes, someone’s reputation can be protected. If they are proven innocent, the liar should be dealt with! If they are proven guilty however, where is the sex offender’s registry? Why are they allowed to simply slip back into society after serving a ridiculously short sentence, most times hungrier for people’s children than when they went in?
The men speaking at my bus stop, some of them young, most likely teens, others early twenties and about three of them at least over thirty, were laughing loudly at the statement made by the loudest and most obnoxious of the group. “After 12 is Lunch boys!” The eruption of laughter was what had initially caught my attention.
“But yes!” said another.
“Those little girls not (aren’t) so little. They like to play big woman. Her mother self dunno (doesn’t know) she checking her scene?” a fat man said, seemingly angry.
“They are little big women, and that one for sure in her business. Such and Such, (They said her name) in her business long time, so meself, I all ready to pass. She well ripe” said a tall, slim boy, probably twenty at the time. I will never forget his face. He said it so casually, and it was followed by a chorus of “it’s true’ and “yah wii boy, them little girls not easy.” Basically agreement.
‘In her business’, and ‘Checking scene’, I came to learn, were phrases sometimes used to mean sexually active, and to ‘pass’ was to have sexual relations. I recognized the name instantly, and knew who they were talking about as she lived in the community next to mine, and we went to extra-curricular activities together. That bus-stop served about five communities in all, so unless there was another girl with her exact name and age, it was her. I always knew that she was different, from me anyway. Though I was clever, I was still very childish up till about seventeen. I still played with dolls or my brothers’ toys. Still read Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton and even dressed too young for my age, or so I was told by my then peers. That girl always seemed to me, a little bolder and more in control of her life. More, self-aware. She was able to converse with the teachers and instructors of our extra-curricular program on topics I was completely lost at. It made me look at her as “super smart and cool.”
I never in a thousand years would have linked her attitude to sex, and the involvement there-in.
There is this strange thing that happens to me. It has been happening all my life and I dare say it has saved me from many an embarrassing situation. It is this thing where I learn about something right before I need that very information. Just a few nights before the bus-stop incident, I had listened to my mother and my father (my father was then a police officer, Inspector actually) talk about a court case where a man was given bail after being accused of sexually assaulting a ten-year-old on several occasions. There was a great deal of evidence against him and yet he was given bail, leaving the country the very next day. “That case is already dead.” My mother had said in anger. “Lord protect our children.”
She then lamented on the alarming number of grown men taking advantage of children, especially girls, and how not much is being done about it. “It is like they cannot wait for the children to grow up. Going after them, then saying oh! The child was already in her business. Already in business at 10, 11 and 12 years old? Who put them in business? Where did it start? The entire household and the people who frequent it needs to be investigated! The bloody police force is not doing their work!”
My dad stood shaking his head. That same uneasy feeling came over me when I listened to my parents, and I knew instantly that the topic was “bad” in my then pre-teen mind.
So, sitting on my bed the night of the ‘conversation incident’, feeling very uncomfortable about it, I remembered my parent’s conversation and applied it. After 12 is Lunch. It clicked!
*Lunch meaning, by the age of twelve, girls were ready to be preyed upon. A pun on the one o’clock hour being lunch time on the island. It was used to mean that girls from the age of about thirteen were old enough to be sexualized, if they weren’t already ‘In their business’ or ‘checking their scene’. *That because any type of sexual awareness seen in their demeanor, other grown men were ready to ‘pass’ because they would not be the first nor the last. The fact they were going to be termed ‘sexually active’ rather than VICTIMS OF SEXUAL GROOMING AND ABUSE, would make the perpetrators get away with further abusing these girls (and boys, though it was less at the time, or so it seemed), quite easily at that.
*That women also, who are supposed to be naturally nurturing would be turned away by the opinion that these children are really “adults”, because of the shared experiences, regardless of the circumstances
*That there was often a back-story of the victim’s parents, particularly the mother, having in some way, shape or form, abetted the crime by either not believing the victim, or covering up for the abuser who in most cases was a family member, or close to the family. How hurtful could that be? To find the strength at such a tender age to tell on your abuser, and be called a liar, or be told that it is your fault. The more I type, the angrier I am becoming.
*That the people who commit these crimes, or those who are ok with it because they too are attracted to minors for whatever reasons, are comfortable enough to say in public; “meself all ready to pass”, and that it is considered funny enough to laugh at, shamelessly!
*That the court system protects the identity of the abuser by hiding his/her identity, while the entire country knows who the “fast” little girl and now, boy is.
I got mad! So mad that I did not speak to my brothers nor my father for the rest of the night and into the next day. I didn’t want a man or boy in my presence, and I wondered if my brothers would end up like those animals on the bus stop. I had already had my experiences with perverts on the street, feeling the lust oozing from their bodies as they said “good-afternoon sweetheart, how was school?” or some crap like that, to me. I still looked like a flat-chested, acne riddled twelve-year-old up till the age of eighteen. I didn’t know it was lust at the time, but I did know that I didn’t like it. It disgusted me and made me feel uncomfortable. The realization that some men were going as far as to actually have sex with people’s children, my age, and sometimes so much younger both frightened and angered me.
Now so many years later, visiting home recently as I now live abroad, another case of “sex with a minor” as they so sweetly put it, made waves around the island, and the same feeling rose like bile in my throat. Nothing at all has changed. Very few are stepping up to protect our children. Today, boys are just as abused as girls. We are creating a safe environment for predators to destroy lives. Traumatized children grow into fucked-up (please do NOT pardon my French) adults and in turn may ruin the lives of their own or other unfortunate children. Who protects the victim?
If some form of justice is received, its short and sweet. A slap on the wrist for the offender who then becomes a repeat offender. Social media has made it even worse, with evidence of sexual abuse being ‘forwarded many times’ on WhatsApp either in outrage, curiosity or just plain support of the dreadful acts being committed against our children.
After twelve, before twelve and at twelve should be ‘protect our children’ at least until they are eighteen. Sixteen I believe is the age of consent on the island but I for one, am not in support. At eighteen I feel that these young people can consent to their sexual decisions, if they are of sound mind, and if there is no consent, regardless of age it is still rape!
I could go on and on about this, and give countless examples of cases that were leaked or purposefully shared with the public, almost always involving the name, age, picture and backstory of the victim, and next to that, a ‘the laws forbids the identifying of the alleged offender for his/her protection’, but the bottom line is, if we as a country and the wider Caribbean community, and by extension, other countries in the world continue to let these things slide, we are only making it more comfortable for people to commit these offenses. We then wonder why so many people are facing issues of childhood trauma and anxiety in today’s world. I think that a more suitable phrase would be “After laughing is crying” as a serious warning to the people who brush aside the seriousness of sexual abuse and those who commit the act themselves.
Sincerely, an ANGRY Island Girl.
Story Mwen To Tell (My Story To Tell) 