JAMAICA
The Guardian (UK)
Kate Chappell in Kingston
Friday 10 March 2017
Early one Sunday in January, a group of women arrived at a church in the rolling, green hills of rural Jamaica. They were not there to worship, but to show support for a young victim of sexual abuse: a 15-year-old girl, who had allegedly been raped by the church’s pastor a few weeks earlier.
The 14 activists entered the church and sat in silence, but angry words broke out when they were approached by a different pastor; the confrontation culminated with him being struck in the head by a tambourine.
The incident marked the beginnings of the Tambourine Army, a new organization to fight gender-based violence across the Caribbean, which this weekend will mark its arrival with a protest in Kingston. In what is believed to be the largest-ever protest against gender-based violence in the region, similar marches will be held in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, the Bahamas and Guyana.
“We want to change the culture we have of assigning blame and shame to survivors,” says Latoya Nugent, co-founder of the Tambourine Army. “We want to place it at the feet of perpetrators and change the current narrative.”
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