The question many continue to ask – why did a British man James O’Rourke receive a reprimand and discharge from a Barbados court for slapping a woman on the ass.
The second question – why the obvious biase coverage by the Nation newspaper declaring the headline Visitor: I was saved by CCTV.
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Indeed DPD, I do not get all the hoop-la, John notwithstanding.
I have been inappropriately touched by black Barbadian men. I have never been inappropriately touched by any white tourist man. They have always been polite, holding doors open, smiling and exchanging jokes. My young niece, my best friend and her beautiful young daughter work or have worked in the tourism industry and they do not speak of any such thing. I am sure it happens but is it pervasive. If it is not then I do not understand what we are doing here.
@DPD at 10:37 a.m. of June 1, 2019 “Dissembling”
Is that the same as telling lies?
I, unfortunately did not have the opportunity to attend a British school.
@Donna at 11:18 a.m. of June 1,2019
Whether or not this bad behaviour is pervasive or not.
Once is too many times.
A respectable middle aged lady, a devoted wife, and a loving mother [I have know the lady for many years] should be free to go about her legitimate business in her own country without fear of being feeled up by complete strangers; and without fear of being re-victimised by being cast as a prostitute by those in the white Bajan community, all of whom know better, and all of whom have been educated out of the labour of working class black women, just like this lady.
Is that too much to ask?
And RIchard Hoad, a white Bajan columnist in yesterday’s Nation tells some foolish story about how his father told his sons that they should touch a woman without consent in order to guage her feelings.
Mr. Hoad is old enough to ask whether his father was a bad behaved man, and wrongly informed his sons about how to approach women.
And the Nation a newspaper founded by a black man who is scarcely cold in his grave was foolish enough to run that foolishness. I would not be at all surprised if the Nation survives Harold’s death by 10 years.
The Nation seems to forget that the majority of their readers are black people, and that the majority of its advertisers are businesses whose companies could not survive for a year without their black customers.
And for all of you who are too dense to understand, for all of you who need somebody to read and spell for you”
Unless a woman is your wife or your steady girlfriend DO NOT TOUCH
And even if she is your wife or girlfriend and you two have had words do not touch either without permission.
You do not own anybody else’s body.
Massa day dun de’d.
More bluntly stated Black men have the same proclivity or depravity in our current times to slap derrieres.
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All men are so moved at one time or another in their lives!!
Most men know how to control the urge.
Think about a 14 year old Emmett Till with raging hormones walking into a store and coming face to face with a 21 year old former beauty queen!!
Whatever his reaction was, whether only a wolf whistle or as Carolyn Bryant swore, inappropriate touching and holding, he is going to be … moved!!
Lets say Carolyn Bryant filed a complaint and stuck to her story, do you think Emmett Till could have walked away without jail time from a charge of sexual assault against a female … who also happened to be white and a beauty queen?
Hardly.
What do you think happens to 14 year old boys thrown in jail with hardened criminals, regardless of colour?
Emmett Till should have controlled himself.
His friends did.
For me the horror is the failure of the court system to punish the murderers.
talk but don’t touch me
Decent men do not walk about feeling-up strange women, nor do decent men seek to justify [however obliquely] or defend such bad behaviour.
Too many have never know, or have forgotten what decency means.
None of you here would be happy if your mother, wife or daughter was so sexually assaulted. None of you would regard it as a minor matter.
Look like there’s inappropriate touching and holding in the rabbit hole..
“Whatever his reaction was, whether only a wolf whistle or as Carolyn Bryant swore, inappropriate touching and holding, he is going to be … moved!!”
To the twistorian, there is nothing inappropriate in Barbados (for a Black woman).
@Simple Simon
Indeed, you have a very simple idea on this issue..
And it is by far, the very best comment/explanation/analysis
👍👍👍👍👍
@VC
” It over-corrects.”
I filed that under words I don’t want to hear if I at in a self driving car at the top of a cliff 🙂
@ Sir Simple Simon President for Life.
I had promised not to come back but my BUDDY De Ingrunt WORD commented.
So I will respond one more time because him.
You are repeating Such simple words Simple Simon, words which speak to the right of any woman not to get “feel up”.
Whether you are white black or red or yellow, no woman is to get felt up.
We, because we black, do not believe that this blackness gives a free pass to Clarence Thomas or Bill Cosby or R Kelly.
What we who are conscious of ourselves, going say though is that, we always going be pretty incensed when a native or a visitor, especially a white on tek dese liberties wid one uh we women.
I need not say why my awareness of the actions of caucasians is so locked on, I have mentioned some of the names that feed that consciousness earlier but less they forget, Till, Biko, Tinney and the rest of us
And to John who has tried to divert the discussion, this is not about Emmett Till [may he rest in peace, and may his killers roast in the eternal unquenchable flame] this is about a respectable middle aged Bajan widow going about her legitimate business, and who was sexually assaulted by a complete stranger, and further it is about white Bajans, and specifically about white Bajan men who have sought to further re-victimise this lady by attempting to cast her as a prostitute.
One of these days you mother will be a widow.
One of these days your sisters will be widows.
One of these days your wife will be a widow.
One of these days your daughter will be a widow
And to John who has tried to divert the discussion, this is not about Emmett Till
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I did not raise Emmett Till!!!
PTL claimed he was killed when Emmett Till was killed … melodramatic but I respect his right to be!!
I have tried to help him with some facts so he can rid himself of the demons Emmett Till’s death caused him!!
… this is about a respectable middle aged Bajan widow going about her legitimate business, and who was sexually assaulted by a complete stranger, and further it is about white Bajans, and specifically about white Bajan men who have sought to further re-victimise this lady by attempting to cast her as a prostitute.
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You still don’t get it.
No complaint, so not a victim!!
No victim not an assault.
No possibility of re-victimization.
Just look at the facts dispassionately and follow them where they lead.
…. and who was sexually assaulted by a complete stranger
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Your conclusion that there was a sexual assault is similar to the conclusion the two murderers of Emmett Till reached.
The difference is you do not have first hand evidence from the person you claim was sexually assaulted.
The murderers were one step ahead of you, they had the first hand evidence which turned out to have been possibly untrue.
If you had such evidence you should go to the Police.
Perhaps the biggest lesson we can learn from the Emmett Till case is “do not take the law into your hands”.
PTL became so emotional that he was prepared to go looking for my imaginary daughters and sexually assault them!!
The murderers of Emmett Till became so emotional that they went looking for Emmett Till.
What is the difference between PTL and the murderers … and you?
SirSimpleSimonPresidentForLife June 1, 2019 3:23 PM
@Donna at 11:18 a.m. of June 1,2019
Whether or not this bad behaviour is pervasive or not.
Once is too many times.
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I am simply stating that you guys are blowing the actions of ONE MAN out of proportion. Some of you are speaking as though he represents ALL tourists who come to Barbados.
Dear Donna:
I don’t know if you feel that strangers have the right to feel up you, but no woman,NONE should be feeled up by complete strangers. An idiot tried that with my mother once, but because she was working as a labourer and had a knife, a tool of her trade on hand, she pulled the knife on the fool and brought him to an immediate Christian understanding.
And John the LIAR is claiming that since there appears to have been no written complaint, that there was no offense. This idiocy about written complaints is EXACTLYi what has got the Catholic Church in millions of dollars in trouble.
The lady immediately complained to the police. Whether or not it was a written complant. It was an immediate and valid complain. John knows, because my taxes helped to pay for his expensive education that verbal contracts and verbal complaints are valid in law.
John ought to be ashamed of himself. Demonising the very people whose labour and whose money paid for his expensive education.
An idiot tried that with my mother once, but because she was working as a labourer and had a knife, a tool of her trade on hand, she pulled the knife on the fool and brought him to an immediate Christian understanding.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I figure your mother must have passed because if she were here I figure she would put you over her knee and roast your backside for giving out her private business.
I know the verbal lashing I would get if I tried a stunt like that giving out my mother’s private business!!
This was a lesson in life your mother gave you first hand.
The lesson is if you have a noise with someone, settle it then and there!!
Your mother has no more of a complaint now than does the lady at the gas station.
You can’t be an avenging angel for anyone in hind sight!!
If you were present by all means speak up, otherwise, just … shut up … for lack of a better way of putting it.
This is a storm in a teacup.
SS
Of what crime was your mother a victim?
Don’t you realise by classifying your mother as a victim you are belittling her?
She was clearly a strong independent person, far from a victim.
Wise up!!
It was not private business. When a man assaults a woman as she is minding her own business and walking along the public road, HE has made it public. My mother’s immediate response was also immediately public, just like the taxi lady’s response was immediately public. I would bet anything that subsequently he hesitated to try feeling-up strange women. My mother did nothing wrong, therefore she has/had no reason to be ashamed.
Women should not keep dirty secrets for men. It enables men to carry on with their bad behaviour. A sharp knife in the guts one time would help to immediately correct some of this bad behaviour.
And for Donna who seems to think that it is no big deal, I hope that you are not so teaching your son, otherwise one of these days a woman may let him have a sharp knife in the guts. Because to have your private parts touched by strangers IS A BIG DEAL.
When he sees strange women, look but don’t touch, except perhaps to shake hands.
The correct way for a man to greet a strange woman is to offer his hand. If she accepts, then you shake hands. This instruction is for those who seem to have been dragged up in caves.
Everybody, women included have the right to bodily integrity. They have the right not to be sold, not to be hit, not to be enslaved, not to be feeled-up. Just as countries have the right to defend their integrity, up to an including nuclear weapons, so do women have the right to defend their bodies. Women need to start going “nuclear” on wunna bad behaved men. teach wunna that wunna don’t own any body except your own body.
And then got the rudeness to turn ’round and start denigrating the honourable lady.
The correct way for a man to greet a strange woman is to offer his hand.
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What is the correct way for a woman to greet a strange man?
Same.
Extend her hand.
If he accepts, then they shake each other’s hands.
Greeting him by slapping him on the bottom, balls or other private part? No, no, no.
People who were not raised in caves understand this.
I cannot count the number of women I met from all over the world for the first time on the hikes over the almost 2 decades of hiking I enjoyed.
Rarely if ever did hand shaking occur!!
The only occasions when hand shaking occurred was if there was a formal introduction.
We greeted each other with a smile and for 3 hours (sometimes more) enjoyed each other’s company.
@John at 3:20
Where did I say that my mother was a victim? Stupseee!!!
She pulled her tool/weapon and immediately rebuffed the devil pretending to be a man.
Do you think that when I go to do my gardening I go empty handed?
Lolll!!!
SirSimpleSimonPresidentForLife
June 2, 2019 9:13 PM
@John at 3:20
Where did I say that my mother was a victim? Stupseee!!!
She pulled her tool/weapon and immediately rebuffed the devil pretending to be a man.
Do you think that when I go to do my gardening I go empty handed?
Lolll!!!
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I took your introduction of your mother’s experience as an effort to support the thesis that black women are victims of white men … the victimhood theory that has been spouted here!!
But if you don’t subscribe to this theory I am very pleased to read!!
Do you understand where PTL fits in to the promotion of this theory?
He is one of the “champions” of an oppressed class, blacks, victims of the oppressor class, whites!!
This is classic Marxist theory, the separation of people into classes or groups and then pitting them against each other.
You may have noticed that PTL asked me why I hate him, PTL and PLT!!
I don’t hate either.
I just recognize them both for what they are from what they promote.
They both crave power!!
You will also have seen that I proposed some really radical theories which I believe to be true!!
Everything I have said I believe to be true.
One of the problems programmed people have is they can’t go off script and often self destruct when taken to new ways of thinking.
They often can’t deal with it and accuse the purveyors of new ideas as liars, racists and every invective they can muster.
Whoever appears to support the new ideas are also slated for destruction.
PTL for example, ended up attacking Freedom Crier who happened to support some of what I was saying and got creamed!!
She committed a crime as he saw it.
Words to the wise!!
There are two reasons I shared some of my rather radical ideas.
The primary reason was that I think people should at least have an opportunity of seeing another side of history.
The second reason was to see how these ideas might be received!!
I actually enjoyed the conflict, it made my beliefs even stronger!!
I was forced to analyse and understand why these ideas were so vehemently opposed and as you see, I think I know why!!.
I need to say I acted independently …. you can leave Freedom Crier alone.
I’ve never said a word to the semi-literate Freedom Crier.
Sear Simple Simon,
I object strongly to a woman of any colour being molested by a man of any colour. If the man did as you believe then he was indeed out of order and should have faced consequences. I do not know the lady and therefore cannot vouch for her veracity. I was under the impression that the man was cleared by CCTV footage. Maybe I misread the newspaper report. What was the reason for the man being released? Are you suggesting that the court afforded him some sort of privilege?
What I am saying to you is that you guys are taking this one incident and behaving as though it is a pervasive problem that needs to be addressed. I am not aware that it is.
And as for the maligning of the lady’s character by the white people in this country, I was not aware of that but if they are, I don’t really think you are adequately addressing it.
In short, you guys are all over the place and coming across as excessive. Better to keep cool and calm and logical.
The issue is whether the magistrate dispenses a fair sentence to line up with her rebuke the day before sentencing, question about the release of the CCTV video to clarify and how can the accusation being propagated by some there was interference. Some on the blog have decided to run riot with the issue like crap running from a baby botsy.
And FYI my son has not only been taught to respect women’s bodies but quite often passes on the lesson to his peers even quite recently in a whatapp message to a boy shown to me by my best friend.
Did anyone ask if O’Rourke was inebriated when he slapped the woman on her backside? I think he was.
Guests of all inclusives are likely to drink a lot.
David,
The emotional excesses have even resulted in the misreading of my very clear comments and to insinuations that I, OF ALL PEOPLE, am okay with sexual assault and that my son is therefore in danger of becoming a perpetrator.
What person of sound mind could come to any such conclusion after reading my many posts on many many topics over the years?
SMH.
@ John June 2, 2019 10:54 PM
“I took your introduction of your mother’s experience as an effort to support the thesis that black women are victims of white men … the victimhood theory that has been spouted here!!”
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“There are two reasons I shared some of my rather radical ideas.
The primary reason was that I think people should at least have an opportunity of seeing another side of history.
The second reason was to see how these ideas might be received!!
I actually enjoyed the conflict, it made my beliefs even stronger!!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sir John, you always present yourself as a keen student of recent history especially within the Barbadian context.
There is ample evidence to ‘support the thesis that black women have been victims of white men’ in the West for a few centuries.
Just look around you and see the large number of ‘coloured’ people in Barbados and other places in the so-called New World.
How do you think this genetic phenomenon arose? Through consenting miscegenation in which European men took enslaved African women to the altar in the various Catholic and Anglican churches built with black slave labour?
Would you honestly claim- as an expert on the period of enlighteningly ‘benign’ chattel slavery in the Caribbean and the Americas- that black women were not victims but consenting adults in becoming bed wenches to the Massa and his male heirs to the African harem?
If you as a coloured boy at HC pretending to be a white man had read the well-researched ‘documentaries’ by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner you would not be so misinformed about what it means to be a black woman living on a plantation of yesteryear or even today called the tourism belt aka the modern Nig**er yard.
@ Donna,
Good on you for teaching your son to treat women with respect.
John,
Quite true that the divisions were created in a quest for power and control. The horse, however, has already bolted and only a Supreme Being can catch it and bring it back.
In the meantime we can do no more than attempt to counteract the effects of the division.
We who have been designated as “black people” would be willing to sing Kumbayah but ain’t nobody else singing it with us.
And so……..
But John,
These divisions, those of class, race and gender, AS WE ALL KNOW, were around way way before Marx was even born. In fact one can find them laid bare in your BIBLE. But anything, no matter how absurd, to support your TWISTORIAN narratives, I suppose.
So, not classic Marx but classic John, I suggest.
@David
Some on the blog have decided to run riot with the issue like crap running from a baby botsy.
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The issue really is what happened between the arrest and the “acquittal” of the charges, one day the magistrate is in full indignation and the next day he is rolling over and playing dead and the accused is claiming that he has been cleared by a review of the closed- circuit images. If the tape cleared him why did the Police arrest and charge him? Even if an arrest was deemed to be correct due to the accusations why didn’t the Prosecution review the tape before presenting a case before the judge? As for the “botsy running” you should know that Bajans do not trust the legal system when it comes to the dispensation of justice when it comes to Black and White people, perhaps it has to do with historical antecedents.
I leave you to ruminate on how the law would respond if a white female tourist had accused a black taxi driver of slapping her on the behind.
@ Sargeant who wrote ” I leave you to ruminate on how the law would respond if a white female tourist had accused a black taxi driver of slapping her on the behind.”
The taxi driver would be at Dodds on remand pending sentence.
@Sargeant
We are saying the same thing.
@Donna
It is not what i believe. The man admitted to the court that he struck the lady, but claimed it was a joke. It may have been a joke for him, but clearly the lady did not find it funny.
Sensible adults do not walk about hitting others, unless in immediate self defense. At no point has the man or his defenders claimed that the woman struck him first or threatened him by her words or her actions.
HE HD NO RIGHT TO HIT HER.
If he had hit my ma he may well have gone back to England on a stretcher, and then we would be having a completely different conversation.
If it has not yet done so,the British Foreign Office needs to inform British subjects that they must not go to foreign lands and strike the people they find living there.
The sun has long since set on the British Empire. Not so great Britain no longer rules the world.
I have gone to England many, many times and never once has it occurred to me to hit anybody, there not even in my “drunken machismo” to quote the recently Austrian Vice Chancellor. Lolll!!!
Dear Donna: Glad to hear that you are raising a proper man. Would that all parents did the same.
@Hants at 8:57
You raising the “drunken machismo” excuse now?
Alcoholics [drug addicts, sexual assailants] should stay in their own countries.
Sensible adults, who are not alcoholics can travel because they know when enough is enough. I mean nobody sticks an IV in their arm and pours in the alcohol.
Nothing as off putting as bigable men behaving like pissy l’il boys.
Simple Simon,
Then you need to cut out the emotion and be more surgically precise. If the problem is the Court’s preferential treatment of white people or white tourists, then deal with that issue. If the problem is the actions of that particular tourist, then deal with that issue. If the problem is the attitude of white British tourists in general then support with evidence and deal with that issue. If the problem is the white Bajans’ attack on the lady, then deal with that issue.
You guys are all over the place.
PS. The man did have an explanation as to his guilty plea. Don’t know whether it’s true or not .
We who have been designated as “black people” would be willing to sing Kumbayah but ain’t nobody else singing it with us.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Who designated you as black people?
I am the least emotional person you could ever hope to know.
This particular issue is as I stated in an earlier issue, part of a continuum.
Simple Simon,
From reading the posts from Hants over the years I doubt that he would think that drunkenness is any excuse for sexual misconduct. I think he is trying to find an EXPLANATION. Explaining does not mean excusing. This is what I mean by being overly emotional. Hants has been posting here for years. He is a cryptic person. I would ask him to expand rather than assume and attack.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.