July 17, 2020 – The Tribune

Equality Bahamas founder and co-director Alicia Wallace featured in Our News on July 17, 2020.

From The Tribune:

A PRINCESS Margaret Hospital policy preventing parents from seeing their newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit is “unusual and cruel,” says Alicia Wallace, director of the human rights group Equality Bahamas.

She said many NICUs around the world have implemented strict COVID-19 policies that protect the health of everyone while allowing babies to experience the long-term benefits that come with spending time with their parents, including “reduced stress and increased likelihood of babies gaining weight.”

 

Jun. 9, 2020 – Eyewitness News

Equality Bahamas founder and co-director Alicia Wallace featured in Eyewitness News on June 9, 2020.

From Eyewitness News:

NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Equality Bahamas Director Alicia Wallace renewed calls for urgent policies to make reporting sexual assault and rape easier following a recent wave of rape and sexual allegations on social media.

Last week, dozens of Bahamian women began recounting stories of inappropriate behavior and unwanted advances.

Among those stories were allegations against a local youth activist, who was accused of inappropriate predatory behavior.

“We have always known that these things were happening,” Wallace told Eyewitness News in a recent interview.

“It’s just easier to ignore when nobody was talking about it.”
[…]

But Wallace insists that the problem lies in the difficultly for victims to report incidents.

“They don’t make it easy,” she said, noting that she was speaking from personal experience.

“It doesn’t seem that the police are getting training specifically on gender-based violence, domestic violence, and sexual violence because of the way people are treated when they go as if they are the perpetrator.

“You have a lot of people who are being silent about what’s happening to them for years and years.”

Wallace contended that social media has given many traumatized victims a way to open up and build community.

She stressed the challenges for women to come forward, given the element of victim-blaming that tends to come into play.

She said she believes that skepticism and disbelief drives other survivors to want to share their stories to know that they have also been through a similar experience,

“It’s been incredibly frustrating and saddening to read all of these stories and to have it confirmed that people are not reporting,” the human rights activist continued.

“For many reasons they are afraid. They don’t want to go through the process. They don’t think that people will believe them or these things are happening to them when they are minors and they don’t know how to tell their parents what is happening to them.”

Wallace noted that The Bahamas has bot been doing a good of protecting its children and must start having age-appropriate conversations about “touching, how to say no, how to say stops, how to talk about what makes them feel comfortable”.

But Wallace acknowledged that the conversation has reached this point of recognition before, pointing to the “Life in Leggings” movement which tackled gender-based violence in the Caribbean.

“It’s really up to us, up to the appropriate government agencies and up to NGOs to make sure the conversation don’t die down and that action is taken,” she said.

“The primary concern is for people who have shared their stories have support.

“We don’t know what they are going to face as a consequence of sharing that story.

“It’s not free. It doesn’t come without a cost. We need to ensure that there are resources in place for their mental health, physical safety, ensure they have safety plans that include social media, ensure they have access to counseling.”

She said reporting must be made easier – even if it can be done anonymously.

“The burden can longer just be on the people who experience these things.”

 

Mar. 9, 2020 – The Tribune

Equality Bahamas featured in The Tribune on March 9, 2020.

From The Tribune:

Equality Bahamas held its third annual International Women’s Day March and Expo on Saturday. From Eastern Parade to The Dundas on Mackey Street, participants chanted, “What do we want? Equal rights! When do we want ‘em? Now!” and “My body, my choice.” Several drivers responded with horn honks and words of encouragement along the way. The march focused on bodily autonomy and many of the signs were about consent, marital rape, and the right to choose. All participants were given whistles with a disclaimer attached. It advised them that whistles are not magic, they cannot be trusted to prevent rape, and the burden should not be on women to end violence against them.

Participants in the march were greeted by Equality Bahamas volunteers and other supporters. The Tiny Talk Speaker Series began immediately upon arrival and included student Caden Smith who started Bahamas Red Nose while in elementary school, Phillipa Dean from the Dignified Girl Project, Orchid Burnside from Cat Island Conservation Institute, and Denise Major from The Empowerment Group. Throughout the day, there were numerous workshops and activities including yoga sessions by Cosmosis, self defence by Bahamas Judo Federation, backyard farming by Chiccharney Farms, information on the Sustainable Development Goals by the SDG Unit, and rapid HIV testing by the HIV Secretariat.

Following the speaker series, Equality Bahamas announced the launch of its #Strike5ive campaign for the criminalisation of marital rape. It calls for the issue to be taken off the back burner and properly addressed. Director Alicia Wallace said, “There is no need to create a new category of crime. The definition of rape needs to be changed. Delete those five words — ‘who is not his spouse’. It’s not complicated.”

May 3, 2019 – The Tribune

Equality Bahamas founder and co-director Alicia Wallace featured in The Tribune on May 3, 2019.

From The Tribune:

The BCC’s statement also drew the ire of women’s activist and Equality Bahamas Director Alicia Wallace, who said it is “dangerous” for the organisation to continue to make “reckless, ill-informed statements about sexual violence in its attempt to control women and their bodies.”

[…]

Ms Wallace also critiqued the BCC for its reference to sexual assault.

“It is not only unfortunate, but dangerous that the [BCC] continues to make reckless, ill-informed statements about sexual violence in its attempt to control women and their bodies and use violence against women as a justification for its heavy-handed approach to constraining cultural expression,” she told The Tribune yesterday.

“Rape is completely unrelated to appearance or behaviour and is only caused by perpetrators and those who perpetuate rape culture, including people who victim blame and try to leverage fear of sexual violence to limit women’s access to public space.”

She added this is not the first time the BCC has “contributed to a dangerous environment for women by excusing sexual predators through the incorrect assumption that rape is about sex and men are incapable of controlling themselves.”

Instead of making such statements, Ms Wallace called for religious institutions to provided safe houses and resources for victims and to engage with relevant civil society organisations.

Nov. 20. 2018 – Eyewitness News

Equality Bahamas founder and co-director, Alicia Wallace featured in Eyewitness News on November 20, 2018.

From Eyewitness News: 

 

“Pretty much anywhere that you can think of, where women visit, sexual harassment happens there and we have largely helped people to determine how to intervene,” Wallace said.

Wallace’s desire to lead the Hollaback movement in The Bahamas came in 2013, when a friend was very adamant about ending the experience of sexual harassment in public spaces.

Wallace was also fed-up with some of the comments of men while in public spaces, so she reached out to the international Hollaback organization and looked  at ways to launch the initiative in The Bahamas.

“I went to the website and saw that they actually trained young people to run their own organization, so I signed up immediately and I was sold from the beginning. I signed up for the training, did a few months of training in New York City, and I joined at the time with about 82 cities around the world.

“It is truly a global organization and it was really a great experience to be a part of this training programme, to join this community of people who were fighting something that people here [in The Bahamas] are trying to convince you does not exist or is not a problem.

“So, it is a sort of empowerment for other people to validate your experience and say yes, what you are experiencing is problematic, yes it is trauma causing,  and we do need to do something about it to bring it to an end.”

Wallace said Hollaback Bahamas has done some training on bystander intervention and they have also advised persons of how to deal with sexual harassment.

“It is in the workplace, but they actually don’t want to take it to human resources; or they work in a small business where there isn’t a separate human resources department so there really is nowhere for them to go with the complaint other than the owner or the manager,” Wallace explained.

“Sometimes that owner or manager is the person who is the perpetrator, so a lot of what we do [at Hollaback Bahamas] is helping women to figure out exactly how to navigate it [sexual harassment] without having to report it to HR if that is something they are not comfortable with doing.”