DEAR READER, if you found a grown woman in your home “skin up” in front of your six-year-old son, what would you do?
The question is rhetorical but, sadly, the above scenario not only occurs behind closed doors, but in clear view of anyone who dares to look, as the picture on the Centre Pages of the last SATURDAY SUN showed.
I asked the above question because it is now time to stop getting all indignant and moralistic, and take decisive action. Pictures depicting lewd behaviour have become as commonplace as street garbage.
Commentators, religious ministers and others have warned of the moral and societal implications of such lewd behaviour, and some have even sought to bring God off His throne to damn the perpetrators straight to Hell! But, who’s listening?
Who go to Grand Kadooment the following year and consciously decides to temper the way they dress or dance or how much alcohol they drink? With all the well meaning talk, the skimpy costumes have become skimpier, the simulated sex on the streets has become even more acrobatic – or realistic – and the widely publicized pictures in the professional and social media seem only to have emboldened people to “skin up” more. After all, they can become “popular” as their pictures are splashed across papers and screens for all to see.
This is a world in which more than a few people, young and old, see their signal achievement as having a tattoo or “breeding” a girl – see also last SATURDAY SUN’S Court Page, by the way. So it’s no surprise that some party animals feel proud to display their bedroom business all over Facebook.
I’m tired moralizing about lewdness when hardly anybody is listening. Many of those who behave this way hardly read newspapers, anyway.
This is not to say that the goodly pastors and social commentators who have this country’s best interest at heart should give up.
But I no longer need to wish there were a law to keep these adults from doing worse than “de dog” in public. Now that at least two adults have stupidly got a child involved, I wish to call for both of them to be prosecuted.
This episode of child abuse alluded to above, which came before a thousand eyes, days before it appeared in the newspaper needs to be treated with more than the usual comment, with more than the threat of divine wrath that somehow spares the most “wutless”, profane and violent among us.
Since last week, child care authorities should have called in the police and experts to analyze that published picture. Identification of the perpetrators should not be a problem, particularly in relation to the woman exposing far more to that child than he can mentally or physically handle.
And if she cannot be found, there are several witnesses in the picture from whom evidence can be gleaned, not to mention the photographer as well.
But what about the child, who can be no older than seven, who will need to be counselled and probably removed from the family environment that has allowed his exposure to such abuse? The effects of such an experience, which he, in blissful ignorance, may have enjoyed, should not be wished on any child.
And while the other published pictures were indeed lewd, no law was probably broken, as each individual involved was a consenting adult, except for the two children at the top of the SATURDAY?SUN Centre Pages, who were merely mimicking grown-ups they had seen.
In the main picture, however, the lewd behaviour goes too far. Then we’re baffled as to “how de yutes get so”, and surpised about this “new” subculture. We saw this being manifested in very obvious ways in certain neighbourhoods, at public events, on television, in minibuses, at River Bay . . . and we talked and talked, and did nothing more.
It would be surprising if something was done in this present case, for in typical Bajan style we’ll pretend this is an isolated event, and that all is well, as we reap the fruit of this society’s deeply rooted Hollywood Tree – with apologies to Ian Webster.
• Ricky Jordan is an Associate Editor of THE NATION.
