A Caymanian Journal Forum session on domestic and sexual abuse heard that silence, fear and weak systems could allow abuse to continue in the Cayman Islands. The panel discussion, titled Silence. Abuse. Responsibility. Change., took place during the Forum’s two-day programme and brought together Baroness Shaista Gohir OBE, Chrisanne Atkinson and Kiara McLaughlin for session two on the first day of the two-day forum.

The discussion asked what allowed cycles of abuse to continue and what was needed to break them. It also examined the pressures of speaking about abuse in a small, close-knit community, where survivors may fear being identified, not believed or forced to live alongside people linked to the harm.

A difficult conversation in a small community

The Caymanian Journal said it created the Forum to look beyond headlines and address issues that often went unreported or unexplored. The session on abuse fitted that purpose. It created space for local and international voices to challenge assumptions, examine responsibility and ask questions that are often avoided in public.

That setting mattered. Speakers returned repeatedly to the tension between privacy and protection in Cayman. Public reporting on sexual offences, especially where children are involved, must protect victims. But the panel also warned that protecting a survivor’s privacy was not the same as allowing abuse itself to remain hidden.

The Forum suggested that Cayman had to find a way to preserve dignity and safety for survivors while building a culture in which speaking about abuse did not carry greater consequences than committing it. The discussion also showed how much responsibility rested not only with the person causing harm, but with families, institutions and the wider community.

Three women, three perspectives

The panel brought together three women with different experiences. Baroness Shaista Gohir OBE drew on more than two decades of advocacy and policy work. Chrisanne Atkinson, outreach coordinator at the Cayman Islands Crisis Centre, spoke from the perspective of support, prevention and trauma-informed care. Kiara McLaughlin brought lived experience as a survivor who spoke openly about abuse, disclosure and recovery.

Each speaker approached the issue from a different perspective, highlighting factors they said could allow abuse to continue beyond the actions of the perpetrator, including silence, social pressure, inadequate responses and systems that did not always work as intended when a survivor came forward.

When silence becomes part of the cycle

McLaughlin said that in a small community people were often raised with the message that “we don’t want people in our business.” She recalled the pressure to keep family matters private and said that could make disclosure feel dangerous.

“Why you want people knowing our business? Why you want people to know what going on in their family? Let’s keep it here. Let’s keep it within the families,” she said.

She said that mindset taught people not to speak out.

“Instead of taking that risk, you just say nothing,” she said.

McLaughlin was careful not to blame older generations, saying they had often passed on what they had been taught. But she said the result was that victims could come to believe silence was safer than seeking help.

McLaughlin also described the self-blame that followed abuse. For a long time, she said, she questioned whether she could have changed what happened if she had acted differently. Over time, and with therapy, she came to understand that her actions could not have changed another person’s motives or intentions.

“We need to come out of this mindset of, ‘If I did things differently, it probably would have never happened,’” she said.

Atkinson challenged another familiar question: why does the victim not simply leave? She said the focus should shift to the person causing harm.

“What is the perpetrator doing that makes it unsafe or difficult for them to leave?” she asked. “Domestic abuse is fundamentally about power and control.”

Atkinson said fear of being found, fear for children and fear of retaliation could all keep victims trapped. She said the responsibility therefore stretched beyond the relationship itself.

“It’s our responsibility as a community, as an organisation, to create a space where persons can then come out, feel safe to disclose the situation,” she said.

Family, faith and the pressure to stay quiet

Gohir widened the discussion beyond the abusive relationship. She said women often faced pressure from relatives who wanted the family to stay together, even when abuse was present. In some cases, she said, family members focused on the partner being a “good father” or said divorce was not something that happened in the family.

She said the same pressure could come through culture and faith. Some victims were told to pray and be patient, while others were made to feel that the shame belonged to them rather than the perpetrator. Gohir said faith leaders needed to step up and challenge those views, rather than reinforce them.

The language used to describe abuse also mattered, she said. Gohir pointed to examples in which violent acts were softened in headlines or framed around the emotions of the perpetrator. She argued that the plain truth should be stated directly, because language could either place responsibility on the abuser or shift attention away from the harm done.

Laws, systems and what happens after a report

A major theme was the gap between having laws and having systems that worked. Gohir said coercive control could be hard to recognise, even for the person experiencing it. She gave the example of a man asking for receipts after a shopping trip, not to check what had been bought but to work out how long it had taken a partner to travel between shops and whether she had gone anywhere else.

She also described a case in which a woman reported coercive control to police and was told it was not abuse. Gohir said her organisation later had to push for the matter to be taken seriously.

“You can have all the legislation in the world, but if people don’t understand it and they don’t implement that legislation, that’s not going to help the victim,” she said.

That warning had direct relevance in Cayman. The island has had domestic violence legislation since 2010, now contained in the Protection from Domestic Violence Act (2021 Revision). But the Forum raised the question of whether the protections on paper were being experienced in practice. Atkinson said there had been discussion about updating the law so it better reflected abuse as a pattern of behaviour rather than only violence as a one-off act.

McLaughlin gave the discussion a local human face. She said she was contacted every year when the person who attacked her sought early release. “Every November I get an email,” she said. Last year, she said, she was sent a form asking her to recount what had happened and answer the question: “Do you forgive this person?”

She said the process forced her to relive what had happened again and again. “It’s not a right system,” she said. “Definitely something does need a change.”

Her experience underlined the panel’s wider point: a process could meet an institutional requirement and still leave a survivor carrying the burden of repeated traumatisation.

What Cayman should do next

The panel also looked ahead. McLaughlin called for better response times, saying support should not take weeks to arrive when someone had reached the point of asking for help. She said she had once contacted the Alex Panton Foundation and received a call back within minutes, with therapy arranged quickly, while a government therapist contacted her weeks later.

Atkinson said more education was needed, including early conversations with young people about teen dating abuse and the signs of unhealthy behaviour. McLaughlin agreed that children needed to be taught sooner rather than later.

“We just need to educate our young children,” she said. “It’s not a conversation that we have.”

Audience discussion also turned to the possibility of a sexual offenders register in Cayman. One audience member said she had been working with Deputy Speaker Pearlina McGaw-Lumsden MP and others on the issue and noted that research had recommended such a register years ago. The Forum also heard that constitutional issues would need to be addressed.

Gohir said abuse must be challenged before it became violent.

“Challenge misogyny before it becomes violent,” she said. “And that has to start at school.”

She said it could not be a one-off lesson and had to be repeated regularly.

Taken together, the discussion pointed to a clear message for the Cayman Islands. Abuse could remain hidden in a small community, and survivors could still fear disclosure. That meant the response had to be broader than sympathy alone. It needed better response times, clearer laws, stronger education, more effective services and a culture that did not protect silence over survivors.

The Caymanian Journal said the Forum reflected why it was created in the first place: to ask difficult questions, report without fear or favour and create space for issues that too often stayed behind closed doors. In a small island community, the session argued, that work was not optional. It was part of the duty to the public.