Avia Ustanny, Outlook WriterRAPE IS the crime that no one wants to experience. When it happens, the fragile victims are held together by those who have sworn to do so. In every parish, the support system for rape victims includes the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) where the crime is also investigated.
Head of this islandwide network is Deputy Superintendent of Poloce (DSP) Hyacinth Newman-Whiller. Standing 5ft. 9ins. tall, the police officer is 190 lbs of muscles honed in the gym and during long walks.
Self-assurance emanates from the woman, whose head with rippled black hair pulled into a
no-nonsense bun, is bent over desk work from six in the morning.
CAREER
DSP Newman-Whiller believes that she is in the most important phase of her career, yet. Caring for rape victims and investigating the crime which she describes as "almost like murder" consumes her entire day.
Attached to Special Branch for two decades, DSP Newman-Whiller has had more glamorous positions. She served as personal security for the president of Sri Lanka and escorted Winnie Mandela during her visit to Jamaica.
"She was a lovely person, so warm," the police officer recalls.
DSP Newman-Whiller was also a part of the security detail for various heads of state including Fidel Castro, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles.
Newman-Whiller, a 'country girl' from Port Antonio, Portland, gravitated to the force because she said, "I wanted to serve the country. I did not like the idea of teaching so I chose instead to join the force."
FIRST TO JOIN
She was first in her family to do so, although later she was followed by one of her nine siblings.
Born in Port Antonio, the fourth child of to Hermine and Nimroy Newman, she attended Port Antonio Technical and then Titchfield High. Later she attended the St. George's extension school and the Social Welfare Training Centre before acting upon a childhood dream.
She remembers, "when going to school in Portland, I was afraid of the police. My mother threatened us constantly with them (the police). They had nightmares of "corporal" punishment when they did anything wrong. But, in one day and with one act of kindness, this view was changed.
On a day when rain was pouring, Hyacinth and her classmates who were going home from school, were offered a ride home in a police car. The officers also spoke to them.
"I realised that they were not people to be afraid of," she recalls.
She also admired a woman police officer in the town, who she said, "looked so good in her uniform."
She travelled from Port Antonio to Kingston in the back of a Bedford truck with 19 other females who had also applied to enter the force on November 1, 1992. This group of women celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2002, but Newman-Whiller remembers that their first six months in training was nothing to
