Last week Friday, 23 year old BDF soldier Micha Miguel committed suicide. She was supposed to have gone home to her father's house in Mahogany Heights but never made it there. Instead she committed suicide in a room at her aunt's house in Ladyville.
Now, the story never made the news - suicides usually don't. But, that does not reduce the scale of tragedy for her family. And they say the authorities have literally added insult to injury by mishandling he case, and mistreating her body.
Today her family called us to the medical school where bodies are sometimes stored and autopsies performed. He told us his daughter had been going through a lot.
Micheal Miguel, Father of Deceased
"She was going through [depression] but I didn't know she would do this. They started to bully her on the camp, and a lot of them slept with the same man they said she slept with. But they started bullying her and she didn't come home. I got a phone and I spoke to her Thursday and she said, 'daddy I am coming home'. But she didn't come home, she went to her aunt's house and she answered me so I felt like she was alright, didn't know she would do this to herself. One thing I heard was that she was on a little suicide [watch] but after that they didn't say anything else to me and it wasn't BDF who called me either and told me that. So, I just called you all out because from it happened, you don't hear it on the radio, you don't hear police saying anything about it so I just want to make it aware that there's a lot of little allegation in BDF, it's corrupt. They were aware that she was on suicide watch, but they didn't tell me anything about it, I had to hear about it."
Courtney Menzies
"And you don't think they provided her with the proper, maybe some counseling or something like that to try and help her?"
Micheal Miguel, Father of Deceased
"I don't think so because from the counselor from BDF right now is talking sketchy. I know she didn't get the real.. because you said, the two culprit they said that did this thing, it's a sergeant and a next high man. But that's the thing right. They said they would deal with us, but that can't bring back my daughter. I want to see justice because I feel like one of the guys they said did it, I hear that how he even beat her up on camp, belittled her on the camp, so I really want to get into this deeply and see what I could do for my daughter because it's not going so."
Courtney Menzies
"So here at the Medical School, though, they didn't store your daughter's body properly?"
Micheal Miguel, Father of Deceased
"It doesn't look so because when we reached here this morning and they're taking the autopsy, before they took the autopsy, they called me in to ask me to identify the body, I had to really look again to see if it was my daughter because she was so bloated, so fat, and I had to look at her good and I had to take two time and I saw a tattoo that I know and it was like that I knew it was her, because it was really bloated and dark."
We did ask the Minister of Defense for a comment - but he says - out of sympathy to the family, he would prefer to wait until after the funeral:
Florencio Marin, Minister of Defense and Border Security
"Firstly, can you wait until we have funeral of the sergeant first before we get into the issues. The little I will share with you is that the BDF is in communication with the family but I'd rather, out of respect for the family, and respect for the sergeant, let's put her to rest first."
Courtney Menzies
"But are the police investigating anything in relation to this incident?"
Florencio Marin, Minister of Defense and Border Security
"The police are involved."
Reporter
"How important is it for the BDF to focus on the mental health of these soldiers?"
Florencio Marin, Minister of Defense and Border Security
"Again, we are always speaking with the general where we're trying to see if we can get more psychiatry help for our soldiers. You know, perhaps even pastoral help for them and as well, not necessarily in the psychiatry part but we also talking about some kind of financial literacy help as well because the soldiers are trained for warfare, not for these other issues, but they have a life to live, some of them have families and they need to know how to be able to manage in particular since they spend a lot of time away from home."
We'll keep following the story.
