Last week, we brought you the story of a woman from the south who survived an assault at the hands of her common-law husband. The images of her disfigured face after her attacker hit her repeatedly with a hammer sparked outrage on social media. The Minister of Human Development and Families issued a press release on the incident saying that while they cannot issue a statement on every report of domestic violence, they were compelled to do so in this instance. The Minister, Dolores Balderamos-Garcia reiterated those sentiments today.
Hon Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, Minister of Human Development
"It really saddens my heart but it is a constant, constant struggle, and it is a struggle that never ends. It seems that almost anything that we do is never enough but it is something that we must never take our focus away from because we continue to see the abuse of women and children and families on a whole, you know, and so I just want to say that we appeal to the Belizean people, our families, men, and older people, everybody, let's respect one another and cherish one another because with these COVID times a lot of people are under pressure and somebody might tend to lash out and so we have to be here and ready and responsive to maybe children who are being neglected and abuse and also elder people we don't want to forget that but I just want to say on behalf of our ministry because we have tremendous support from all our workers in the women and family department, in the community rehab department, and also in the human services department, there is a lot of focus now on assisting families and children at a time like this. But of course the message must be that we must never ever take our eyes off of this intractable problem if I could put it that way because its for all of us, we're all in this together and we have to signal, we can't make a statement each and every time someone is abused but it is a problem that we must never ever forget and there must be a zero tolerance attitude."
The perpetrator, Joel Bardalez, was remanded at the Belize Central Prison.
