Echoes of Eventide

The physical and emotional abuse of residents of The Golden Age Home at Vineyard Town, recently highlighted by this newspaper, though shocking, will hardly have surprised many people. Jamaica has a poor record of treating its most vulnerable citizens, including the elderly and poor, with decency and respect.

But as calloused as many of people have become by this national indecency, well-thinking Jamaicans will have been shamed by what was revealed, and especially because of the institution at which it happened. There is in this behaviour at The Golden Age Home a sense of wilful mocking.

Indeed, many readers of this newspaper, including several of the governors of the Vineyard Town facility and bureaucrats of the government department that oversees such institutions, can't claim to be too young to recall from 30 years ago, or of the antecedents of The Golden Age Home.

In the ideologically divisive period leading to the turbulent general election of October 1980, a state-run old people's home, Eventide, was set ablaze, some believe deliberately. More than 150 people died.

The deaths of those old, mostly infirm people became mired in indecent attempts by the gangs of Gordon House, the two political parties that have alternated in power, to take ownership of their legacy. It was to be spun for partisan advantage. It mattered little to the gangs of Gordon House that Eventide was a horrible place and that its residents lived in worse than Dickensian workhouse wretchedness.

If any good came of the Eventide affair, it was the construction by the Government, with private-sector support, of The Golden Age Home. Edward Seaga, the then prime minister and leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, which currently forms the Government, portrayed the new home as a clean break with the nastiness of Eventide.

naked and neglected

Three decades on, there are the images of naked and semi-dressed old people crawling around the institution's floors, wallowing in their bodily waste. Of a comforting toy, a doll, being maliciously withheld from an obviously disturbed woman. Of her being 'ridden' by staff for the entertainment of the crowd.

It is a cruel joke that a manager at the facility would seek to explain this abuse in the context of a shortage of staff and in protection of the residents. "They are adults, but they are babies ... ."

The governors were concerned about what was revealed and ordered an investigation. A report has been submitted.

The board's action is, at best, an embarrassing admission of incompetence and an insult to the victims. They should have known how badly the home was being managed.If they didn't know, they failed in their responsibility to the residents.

No one has apologised. Nor have there been resignations.

Decency will, hopefully, prevail.

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