The Tribune

By JADE RUSSELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

jrussell@tribunemedia.net

A WOMEN’S rights advocate has blamed negligence and personal bias for police failures in domestic violence cases and called for a complete overhaul of the system after a young mother said officers at East Street South Police Station refused to take her complaint.

Alicia Wallace, director of Equality Bahamas, said the country has long been plagued by ineffective policing and that successive governments have failed to address it.

“This is not a new reality,” she said.

Women United president Lisa Bostwick-Dean, whose organisation works with the Royal Bahamas Police Force, said the force had made efforts to improve its handling of domestic violence cases, but some officers were still failing in their duties.

Their comments come after the RBPF launched an investigation into claims by Lewratta Farisien, 23, that officers at East Street South refused to take her complaint after she was allegedly beaten by her son’s father and his aunt on October 1. She alleges that instead, officers warned her that her boyfriend, a police officer, could be arrested and that she could lose custody of her two-year-old son.

Ms Farisien said she later filed her complaint at Carmichael Road Police Station. She claimed her son’s father’s family had connections at East Street South. Her son’s father and his aunt were arrested on October 15 and charged yesterday with causing harm. Ms Farisien has also alleged that once the pair were charged, officers she believed were from East Street South repeatedly came looking for her.

The RBPF has said its investigation will establish the facts and determine whether any policies or procedures were breached.

Ms Wallace said the problem went beyond the leadership or management of individual stations. She said every station should follow standard protocols for receiving complaints and acting on them, with specific procedures for cases involving gender-based violence, domestic violence and violence against children.

“One or two trained officers is obviously not sufficient for any police force or police station,” she said. “Women in this country are violated many times over from the interpersonal violence to the structural violence encountered thereafter, and this is a national failure.”

Ms Wallace said Equality Bahamas was still pushing for the Gender-Based Violence Bill to be passed. She described the Protection Against Violence Act, 2023, as “nonsense”, saying her organisation had repeatedly warned that it would not change the legal or social conditions affecting women and girls.

The Act requires anyone dealing with a victim of violence in a professional capacity to treat them with compassion and dignity, and it covers violence between people who share a child. It also requires an officer who receives a complaint to take a written statement, signed by both the officer and the victim, and to help the victim get medical treatment where necessary.

In July 2023, several women’s rights groups, including Women United, opposed the bill before Parliament passed it. They argued that it lacked key protections contained in the Gender-Based Violence Bill, which advocates had worked on for more than a decade.

The Protection Against Violence Commission is meant to coordinate national efforts against gender-based violence, monitor data, manage shelters and ensure victims receive support and protection. It was not appointed until February 1 this year, nearly three years after the law was passed. Women United has since complained that the 2026/27 draft budget did not appear to contain a specific allocation for the commission.

The RBPF opened the country’s first standalone Domestic Violence Unit in April 2025. However, Ms Wallace said a centralised unit could not deal with a nationwide problem when victims faced barriers to reaching it.

“We have, numerous times, insisted that the Domestic Violence Unit would not be sufficient in addressing a nationwide issue,” she said, “in a country where the people most marginalised have limited transportation options and need to be able to go to a police station in the vicinity of their homes.”

Ms Bostwick-Dean described Ms Farisien’s allegations as alarming. She said they sent a troubling message about how seriously domestic violence is taken and about public trust in the police, and that a child should never be caught in the middle of a threatening situation.

She commended officers at Carmichael Road for promptly helping Ms Farisien and taking her complaint. She said the contrast between the two stations, with one allegedly showing compassion and care and the other failing to, pointed to a deeper problem.

“Every once in a while, it seems you encounter some bad actors, and it’s incumbent upon the force to deal with them so that the public confidence can be restored,” she said.

Ms Farisien detailed the alleged attack on Facebook and shared two videos of the altercation. By press time, the posts had been shared more than 4,000 times and had drawn over 3,800 reactions and nearly 1,000 comments.