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Trouble in Paradise

by Rene Freling

Trouble in Paradise

Even before the tragic deaths of British honeymooners Catherine and Ben Mullany in July 2008, Nora Nedden knew all about Antigua’s gang problems. Five years ago, she was attacked and beaten by two gang members in her own home. Now, she’s trying to do something about it.

Few sights sum up Antigua’s enduring appeal quite as well as the view from outside Nora Nedden’s home. A distant bay boasts turquoise waters flowing against a white sandy beach, while a cooling breeze offers gentle relief from the relentless, searing sunshine. The scene may be mesmerising, but a glance over the shoulder reveals the greenhouse where Mrs Nedden was beaten by two members of a gang with a steel bar and a wooden club; an attack which left her with a cracked skull, a broken arm and nose, and head-to-toe bruising. She was 60-years-old when the attack tool place, and considers herself lucky to have survived.
Many would have considered fleeing the island after such a horrific incident, but rather than return to England, her home for more then 30 years, she is now trying to help the kind of youths who attacked her by offering an alternative to joining gangs.
Like the 250,000 who flock to Antigua and Barbuda annually, Mrs Nedden remains enchanted by the idyllic Caribbean island and its easy, relaxed way of life. Around 30,000 British holidaymakers visit the small islands every year and rarely encounter a hint of trouble, so when Catherine and Ben Mullany were brutally murdered here in July on their honeymoon, the shockwaves reverberated across the Atlantic.

Despite these murders being the first major tourist-related incident in the country since 1994, the British press were quick to paint a less than rosy picture. Crime statistics stating that Antigua and Barbuda has a higher murder rate than New York filled the papers.

Few pointed out that several million tourists had visited the islands since the last serious incident, or that the country remains statistically much safer than many other popular British tourist destinations. In Antigua, the most significant problems generally encountered by tourists relate to stolen passports and drugs offences.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the problem of gang culture in the region is getting worse, and the murder rate in Antigua and Barbuda has risen alarmingly over the last 18 months. After just three murders in both 2004 and 2005, the number rose to 19 in 2007. However, these are generally crimes committed by gangs against gangs well away from the path of holidaymakers. Tourism accounts for over half of the country’s GDP, and even the gangs don’t want to see this money evaporate from the islands.
The number of murders may only have increased significantly in the last two years, but the problem of gangs was becoming apparent long before this. Nora Nedden had been growing increasingly aware of the issue for a number of years, although when she retired to Antigua in 1991, things were noticeably different.

“When we first moved here, there used to be older people sitting at the local bar, and if they saw a child with their shirt hanging out or using bad language, they would tell them off or tell their parents. That has totally disappeared. No one dares say anything to any young person these days for fear of reprisals,” she said.

Her eyes were first opened to some of the underlying problems facing the country when she began helping to teach kids in the summer of 1997, following a government request for volunteers. Some of the children were illiterate, even at 15, and afterwards Mrs Nedden continued to help teach a number of those who were underprivileged. She even took some into her home after hearing horrific stories of kids who were in trouble and had nowhere to go.

“We took in a 15-year-old girl who had become pregnant. She couldn’t go back to her family because her father had tried to rape her and her mother was a prostitute. We also took in a girl who was seven when there was an attempted rape. Everyone was pointing the finger at her. We tried to educate the whole village that they should be supportive. After two weeks, things seemed to get a little better.”

If these incidents appeared shocking, worse was to come. Mrs Nedden and her husband, Bill, took in a 12-year-old boy who was being tortured by his brother following the death of their mother and disappearance of their father. After Mrs Nedden contacted Social Services, he was temporarily placed in an old people’s home, but when she then asked if he could be moved, she was told that he would have to go to a training school for delinquents, even though he had done nothing wrong.

The only other option was to take him in, and the Neddens felt they had no choice. It was only then that they began to realise the extent of the gang problems.

“He told us a lot about the gangs in one of the villages: they made eight-year-olds smoke; picked the best ones to be carriers and hid drugs in their cornflake packets to distribute. The kids involved daren’t speak out because they were threatened: ‘We’ll kill your mummy’ or ‘[we’ll] do something to your sister.’ Once they’re involved, they can’t get out. They daren’t.”
After a period of several weeks, the boy began to skip school and was given an ultimatum by the Neddens. “We told him he could stay with us and we would treat him like a son, but if he became unmanageable, he couldn’t stay.”
The boy decided to leave, and stories soon began to filter back about his increasingly violent behaviour back in the village, where he had succumbed to gang life.

The next time she saw him, several months later, he was back at their home along with a friend; both were dressed as ninjas and armed with heavy weapons. He was one of the two attackers who nearly killed her.
They first set about her husband, who had gone outside to investigate some loud noises, but when he came in bleeding, Mrs Nedden went outside to try and talk to the boys. Despite their covered faces, she knew who it was.

“I thought I could go and talk sense to him. This had been like my son for a little while, but they just came at me and started hitting me; one with a metal pipe and the other with a wooden club. I backed up into the greenhouse, trying to shield my head with my arm, but I tripped over the step. They were reigning blows onto me. If the greenhouse didn’t have a counter to put my head under, and if I hadn’t been wearing trainers and jeans, they would have broken my feet and damaged me more. When I realised they weren’t going to stop, I started screaming.”

The boys fled but were picked up by security from a nearby hotel before emergency services came to the scene. “The police arrived while I was being carried out on a stretcher. I had a cracked skull, a broken nose, broken arm and I was bruised from my left shoulder to my left ankle. I was one mass of purple for weeks.”
Thankfully there was no serious lasting damage, but what is more surprising is that Mrs Nedden was not deterred from helping youngsters in her adopted country.

“I will always help young children – they have no choice when they get recruited into these gangs. What older people do is up to them. They can make their choices in life and bear the consequences, but I’ll always help the kids. Always. You have to stand up for the innocent ones who can’t help themselves. I think more people shouldn’t be so fearful of their own comforts. If everyone did that, there wouldn’t be such a problem with these gangs.”

Following the attack, Mrs Nedden spent most of her time building up ‘PAAWS’, a charity which takes in stray dogs and other animals, developing it from an operation run in a back garden to one which has 15 pens and the facilities for forty animals.
Her work with children had to take more of a back seat during this time, as the charity was run almost exclusively by her and her husband. Then, in 2007, she read an article in Antigua’s Observer newspaper, written by a gang member who was trying to change his life having turned to God.

In the article, he talked about some of the rituals of sex and rape which regularly took place, sometimes involving girls as young as 11 and groups of men as large as fifteen.

He also talked about Antigua’s world of drugs and guns which implicated parts of both the government and the police.
Much of the article resonated with what Mrs Nedden’s attacker had told her when he was living in her home, but she was disappointed by the national reaction. “I would have expected an outcry, but nothing happened. That makes you realise how afraid people are to talk.”

In May 2008, she decided to do something about it. She hatched an idea to start a national competition involving the country’s youth; something which could unite and inspire young people and make them realise that joining a gang is not the only option in Antigua and Barbuda. “The aim was to offer young people alternatives to having to belong to a gang. In the [Antigua Observer] article it said that kids join just to belong to something.”

She developed her idea into YOM – Youth on the Move and immediately began to approach both government ministers and the Antiguan media. The reaction from both was encouraging.

The plan was to begin with a national competition for youngsters to build a moving object from scrap materials. On presenting the proposal to the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, he immediately told her to go and see his Head of Education, who helped get the project off the ground. An article soon appeared in the Antigua Observer and Mrs Nedden was interviewed on national television.

Local businesses were keen to lend their support, with the likes of Cable and Wireless and Digicel donating prizes which included bicycles, helicopter trips and mobile phones. The first competition was held in August, and despite an incredibly tight time frame, its modest success signalled an encouraging start.

One of the longer-term goals of YOM is to have cycle tracks built in several villages, and the first of these is now already going ahead. But Mrs Nedden is not stopping there. As well as planning to run YOM as an annual competition, she is now also hoping to get kids involved in table tennis.

“The plan is to make table tennis a national sport. That and the cycle tracks are the next phase. It is important that the kids build their own tables and get involved from the start. They have football and cricket, but there are always some who don’t belong to any of these things, and you just want to make sure that they all get a chance to show what they’re worth. I thought YOM would do that, and the competitions we put on could include just about anyone.”

The government’s enthusiasm for YOM begs the obvious question of why they are not doing something along these lines themselves, but is easy to forget when browsing through holiday brochures that Antigua and Barbuda is a developing country with issues and attitudes a long way from Western Europe. While there is clear concern about the country’s youth and this is being addressed to an extent, the government’s hands are somewhat bound by two other fundamental issues which lie at the root of the problem.

Firstly, the Caribbean is part of the major drug route between South America and the West. Like many of its neighbours, the island is a boating paradise, attracting some of the most expensive yachts in the world, but while having 365 beaches may be a key selling point when it comes to attracting tourists, it makes policing the waters virtually impossible.
Secondly, one of the nation’s historic issues has been corruption, with constant accusations being levelled at the government, and in particular the Bird family dynasty which ruled for half a century. In 2004, Spencer Baldwin’s United Progressive Party ousted Prime Minister Lester Bird, promising change and an end to the mismanagement of the Bird regime, but with corruption so institutionalised, change has been difficult to implement.

One answer was to bring in help from outside the country, which led to the appointment of Gary Nelson, formerly of Canada’s Royal Mounted Police, to head up the Antiguan force. Unfortunately, the conditions encountered by Chief Nelson were much worse than expected, and having struggled with a drastically under-equipped force, he was fired shortly after the arrests were made in the Mullany case. One of his Canadian deputies has now taken over as Commissioner.

More than anything, this highlights the difficulty in bringing a country like Antigua and Barbuda into the 21st century when its equipment, manpower and institutionalised attitudes continue to hold it back. Perhaps the tragedy of the Mullanys will force the government to put even more effort into addressing the issues which the island’s tourists were previously oblivious to. What the country doesn’t need is tourists staying away, especially given the global economic downturn.
Despite these ongoing problems and her own horrific experiences, Mrs Nedden continues to feel secure and remains optimistic.

“I’m sure we’re going to see change because people are waking up to the fact that something is seriously wrong and something has to be done about it. I still walk the dog to the corner in the dark because I don’t feel unsafe. It’s still quite peaceful and there are a lot of neighbourhoods where there’s not a lot of crime. It will be a great pity if people stop coming here because they’ve heard it’s not as safe as anywhere else.”

Statistically, she may be right, but there is bound to be a backlash after an incident as tragic as that of the Mullanys.
Steve Garley, Commercial Director of travel company Tropical Sky, agrees. “Undoubtedly people have traded away from Antigua over the last three months and there will probably be another burst of trading away when the case comes to court and gets more publicity, but in the long term it will not affect Antigua. It remains in my view and the Foreign Office’s view a safe destination,” he said.

The man whose job it is to see that the inevitable drop in the number of visitors is minimised is Harold Lovell, Antigua and Barbuda’s Minister for Tourism. During a recent trip to the Europe, he was keen to iterate that it was “business as usual” in the country.

“My visit to Europe resulted in frank and productive dialogue with our trade partners. The mutual benefits of meeting them personally after an eventful summer and when the global economy is undergoing such change, enabled me to better understand their needs and discuss how we can work together in promoting the destination in the days and months ahead,” he said.

He may have his work cut out. Despite some positive promotion during the recent Stanford Super Series cricket tournament, the island’s problems will be in the spotlight once again when the Mullany murder trial begins later this year. A long period between the arrests and trial will do nothing to help Mr Lovell’s cause, and until justice is seen to be done, the case will hang over the island like a threatening black cloud in an otherwise perfect sky.

In the meantime, as the government continues firefighting, one woman will continue trying to help the country’s long term future. The island which Nora Nedden fell in love with nearly 20 years ago may have changed, and not all of it for the better, but it remains her home and she still sees potential and hope in the nation’s youth. “I still love it here. I love what I’m able to do, caring for animals and helping youth along. There’s a lot of talent here and some really nice, brilliant kids. They’re worth investing in. They really are.”