The Dangers  of Silence on Domestic Violence : What Are They Afraid Of?

 The Dangers  of Silence on Domestic Violence : What Are They Afraid Of?

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026 

A woman reported that she was assaulted. The matter went before the court. Evidence was heard. A Magistrate found Daniel Seeram guilty of assault causing actual bodily harm to his former wife and remanded him pending sentencing. His subsequent challenge to that remand order was rejected by the High Court. The court has spoken.

Yet Seeram has not presented himself to face the consequence of that conviction. He remains free, while the country is left without a clear official explanation of his custodial status, the authority under which he remains at liberty, or what steps are being taken to enforce the orders of the court.

But perhaps the most deafening feature of this entire disgrace is not only the apparent failure of custody. It is the silence of the women and institutions that have repeatedly claimed to stand at the frontline of the national fight against domestic violence. 

Where is the Minister of Human Services?

Where is the Minister of Home Affairs—herself an attorney and a woman, with responsibility for the agencies whose cooperation is essential to the enforcement of court orders and lawful custody?

Where is the leadership of the Guyana Police Force? Where is the Guyana Prison Service? Where is the Chancellor and the institutional leadership of the judiciary? Where are the women’s legal associations, women-centered civil-society organizations, survivor advocates, and the international partners and donor agencies that have financed campaigns, workshops, policy papers and programs on gender-based violence?

No one is asking any institution to interfere with a pending legal process. No one is asking them to decide Seeram’s guilt; the Magistrate has already done so. No one is asking them to dictate a sentence; that remains a matter for the court.

They are being asked to stand for justice.

They are being asked to say that a remand order is not optional. They are being asked to insist that a convicted man cannot remain outside custody without a transparent, lawful explanation. They are being asked to recognize that justice for survivors does not begin and end with workshops, press releases, orange ribbons, televised speeches and ceremonial declarations during observance months.

Justice is tested in the hard cases—when the accused is influential, politically connected, employed by the state, or useful to the powerful.

That is where the real courage lies.

A country cannot claim to be confronting domestic violence while becoming mute when a survivor’s case reaches the point of consequence. It cannot lecture women about reporting abuse, coming forward, trusting the police, trusting the courts and using the mechanisms established for their protection—then stand silent when the system appears to falter after a conviction is secured.

What are women who are presently enduring violence expected to conclude from this spectacle? What should a woman contemplating a police report believe when she watches a convicted state official remain unaccounted for, apparently beyond the ordinary reach of custody? What assurance can be offered to a survivor who has been told, repeatedly, that the law will protect her?

The message, unless decisively corrected, is brutal: report the violence, endure the investigation, relive the trauma in court, wait through delay and public scrutiny—then watch power, access and official silence make accountability negotiable.

That is not protection. That is abandonment.

The failure to publicly demand clarity is not neutrality. Silence in the face of apparent unequal treatment carries its own meaning. It tells survivors that their pain becomes inconvenient when it collides with political relationships. It tells ordinary women that the systems celebrated in glossy reports and grand presentations may operate differently when the alleged perpetrator is connected to the machinery of state.

This is why the silence is such a shameful indictment. Every ribbon-cutting ceremony, every donor-funded initiative, every ministerial address and every declaration of concern for women’s safety is hollow if institutions cannot summon the moral strength to stand with one victim when it matters most.

There can be no serious national campaign against domestic violence without a serious national commitment to consequences. And consequences cannot depend on party colours, proximity to the executive, title, rank, or usefulness to those in power.

The hard question, therefore, must be asked: What are they afraid of?

Editor’s Note: The Precedent We Are Creating

The precedent being set by this unfolding matter is not confined to one victim, one convicted man, or one court order. It reflects a nation increasingly rich in promises but dangerously poor in deliverance

For years, women have been urged to report abuse, seek protection, trust the police, use the courts, engage support agencies and believe that the system will stand with them. But what happens when a woman does exactly that—when she endures the reporting process, the scrutiny, the trauma of a trial, and ultimately secures a conviction—only for the public to be left asking whether the convicted person has submitted to the custody ordered by the court?

What lesson are young women meant to draw from this?

A girl watching this spectacle may conclude that abuse is simply something to endure. She may decide that seeking shelter in the institutions designed to protect her is useless—like a bite without teeth. She may learn, long before she should, that speaking up brings exposure and pain, while influence and connection may soften the consequences for the person who hurt her.

That is a dangerous national lesson to teach.

It risks cultivating a culture in which women resign themselves to violence as an unavoidable condition of life, rather than seeing it as a wrong that the state is duty-bound to confront. It also sends an equally destructive message to young men: that violence against women can be rationalized, minimized, delayed, negotiated, or insulated from consequence when one has the right access, the right friends, or the right political value.

Guyana already confronts a deeply troubling reality in which too many complaints by victims of domestic violence are met with delay, disbelief, indifference or inaction. If this episode is allowed to pass without clarity and accountability, it will deepen that existing culture. It may encourage police officers—consciously or otherwise—to begin making their own judgments about which women deserve urgent protection, which complaints are worth pursuing, and which alleged perpetrators are too connected to be treated like everybody else.

Then the law becomes unequal long before it reaches a courtroom.

The national consequence is severe. A country cannot build a genuine culture of protection for women while allowing visible uncertainty around the enforcement of orders in a domestic-violence case involving a connected official.

It cannot spend public funds and donor resources on campaigns against gender-based violence, then fail to demonstrate that a woman’s right to justice survives beyond the moment she gives testimony.

Justice must not be a performance staged for observance months, donor reports, ribbon cuttings and official speeches. It must have force when it is inconvenient. It must mean something when the accused is powerful. And it must be visible enough for every young woman in Guyana to know that if she seeks help, the law will not abandon her at the moment accountability is supposed to begin.