THE POLICE are seeking the public’s assistance in locating Carl McDonald Robinson.

The 59-year-old of Parish Land, Christ Church has been missing since he was discharged from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital yesterday afternoon.

He suffers from Alzheimers and diabetic seizures, and when last seen, was wearing a brown polo shirt, long black pants and black sandals

Robinson is 5 feet 11 inches tall and slimly built with a dark complexion. He is bald to the top of his head and the remainder of his hair is white. 

He is known to frequent the Marhill Hill, Fairchild Street and Suttle Street areas in Bridgetown.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Carl Robinson is asked to contact the District B Police Station at 437-4311, or the nearest Police Station. (PR)

The National Organization of Women (NOW) in conjunction with the Bureau of Gender Affairs is celebrating 16 Days Of Activism to end violence against women between November 25 and December 10.

Today the SUNDAY SUN speaks to a woman about her experience and how she survived.

Sheron Fenty will always remember her wedding day back in 1987.

Not because it was her special day and the start of what was expected to be a life of joy and happiness with her then husband. 

Instead, it was the start of a life of abuse, fear and isolation from friends and even family.

It was the night the life of “outbarrassment” started for this young woman.

“I didn’t expect to get curse out on my wedding night. I just couldn’t believe it because this was supposed to be my day,” she said, sitting on her couch at her home in Deacons Farm, St Michael.

For ten straight years, Sheron was physically abused. Then after the violence, she was verbally and emotionally abused.

All this by the man with whom she had exchanged vows.

Sheron, now 49, shared her story with the SUNDAY SUN last week, following the death of 22-year-old Krystal Lovell of St Thomas, who was reportedly stabbed to death. Her former boyfriend Jerrick Tudor was taken into police custody and was later charged with murder.

Tears came to Sheron’s eyes when she read this story, as well as the others that told of women dying at the hands of partners who abused them.

Sheron knows only too well that she is fortunate and blessed to be alive today to tell the tale of her survival.

She recalled meeting her then husband when she was about 16 years old. From then, they became friends.

This former student of Combermere now “cracks” her brain trying to search for the signs of abuse that she may have missed back then.

“I remember he didn’t want me wearing certain clothes that would show my skin. I just felt he was protective and that it was all part of him loving me. I realized too that he didn’t want me to go anywhere, and I couldn’t really talk to anyone.” she recalled.

Early in the marriage and when she was pregnant with one of their three children, Sheron knew something was just not right.

Tears are welling up in her eyes as she speaks.

“Right now I am very angry. Not angry with him but angry at myself right now because I allowed myself to stay in that. All that time an inner voice was saying to me, ‘This isn’t for you’.”

As the tears dry, Sheron said she had to try to forgive herself over the years.

She has also blocked out a lot of the good in her life. That’s because there has been so much bad, she explained, forcing a smile.

Sheron has been chased by her husband through Brandons and Deacons as he brandished a collins.

“He would just run after me with a collins. I run to so many houses. So many people open their doors to me in the dead of the night,” she said.

But the collins wasn’t the only weapon. Her then husband also chased her with knives, hammers and ice picks.

Though fortunate that she was never injured in the numerous chases, Sheron was bruised for life.

She remembered one night when he held the collins to her throat in the road, threatening to end her life there and then.

“I did nothing at all to him. The abuse could have happened any day or any night. We would start out good in the day and in the night all hell would break loose.

“I was constantly living in fear. I would watch the clock when I knew he was coming in from work and my body would tighten.”

She breaks down again.

“I wonder why I allow people to do these things to me even though I know it is not right,” she reflected.

She spoke about being locked out of the house and crying and begging to be let back in. One time her abuser even punched her on her left breast.

Sheron was isolated and alone.

“These incidents make you isolate yourself because you don’t want people to see you go through these things,” she said.

She admitted that in the initial stages she was suicidal. Then, she started to think of “100 ways to get rid of him without going to prison”.

When she moved from Brandons to Deacons in 1995, Sheron thought things would get better.

Instead, they got worse.

She even bought a knife for protection when she was pregnant with her last son.

She also got the courage to take out a protective order against him in 1993.

Sheron was slowly letting go of the fear that had gripped her for so many years.

In 1997, that fear finally went and that was the year she put her husband out of the house.

Sheron recalled how she mustered the courage to stab her husband in his left hand.

Ironically, the following year he got a more dangerous stab wound that brought him to his knees, even to the point of needing daily care.

Despite the abuse she suffered, Sheron still tried to help. She said she did it because this was the father of her children.

That’s when the emotional and verbal abuse had started, she said.

The physical violence had ended because her husband realized she was no longer afraid of him or his threats.

Sheron had to seek counselling to help her through the years of abuse she suffered between 1988 and 2002.

“I told myself this life is not for me nor my children. I wasn’t going to be soft anymore. On October 23, 2002 I decided I had enough. I wasn’t standing for that anymore. He destroyed me emotionally.”

That was the end of that chapter in her life.

Sheron, who is back on her feet and getting her life together, recognizes that she did the best she could with the little resources she had.

Her three children, now 29, 25 and 20, have been her rock through it all, she said, smiling.

They are her pride and joy and she loves them with all her “blood”.

Sheron said she has a lot to be thankful for.

“I lived to tell the tale. I still hurt when I see these things happening. When I see the ones who didn’t make it, it brings tears to my eyes.”

She even had some advice for women who are being abused.

“We deserve better. We are not possessions. Don’t allow anyone to treat you in a way that you wouldn’t want for yourself.”

Now, sitting relaxed on the floor of her small living room and showing pictures of her wedding day, Sheron said she had not spoken to her former husband since 2002.

She is now getting the chance to live and enjoy her life.

“I made sacrifices. I wanted my children to have the things I never had. I wanted to live. The things you can dead and leave you can live and see,” said a smiling Sheron.

At the age of 15, Trevor Hassell decided he wanted to be a medical doctor. The signs had gone out three years earlier when, as a student at Harrison College, he reached out to assist a member of staff suffering an epileptic seizure, while the other boys had run away.

It was in this school environment that the passion to serve and to help was fostered and especially influenced by his involvement in scouting and cadets.

Asked who is Trevor Hassell, during a SUNDAY SUN interview at his Christ Church home last week, the new Knight of St Andrew described himself as “someone originally from a very humble family; from a large family, very much a product of my time, from a father who valued and treasured significantly the importance of education, who himself never had that formal education, who left school at 13 years of age and started work and at his death left a thriving local company, Eric Hassell and Son Ltd which exists to today and is now being led by a third generation member of the family”.

Expanding further on the definition of himself, the noted cardiologist said: “My reputation is more that of a doer rather than a talker. My late father had an expression ‘words don’t mind who use them’ and I think that tends to get to who Trevor Hassell is. I am someone who prefers my actions to speak for themselves rather than, to use the popular local expression, ‘indulging in a lot of long talk’.”

His actions have spoken loudly, the noise resonating locally and regionally. He has influenced the career of many a young Caribbean doctor as mentor and tutor; fostered and encouraged the development of medical sub specialties at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, particularly cardiology, and has become one of the best known voices in the campaign for healthier lifestyles.

Now in his 70s he has partially retired from medical practice, yet within the last decade he has remained busy seeking to bring national attention to the need for healthy living by Barbadians, with his tireless campaigning.

The goals were hardly defined when Hassell headed off to the University College of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica to study medicine at age 17. He was at that time simply determined to fulfil his desire to be a doctor. However, six years later when he qualified, his goals were clear. With Barbados’ independence imminent, he was confident that he wanted to have a role in health and education in building an independent Barbados.

“What I was very certain about from the very outset was I wanted to make my contribution in Barbados and the Caribbean. Yes, I had ample opportunity to make my contribution out of the region, but it was always my aspiration to make my contribution in Barbados and the Caribbean.”

He could have remained in Jamaica or gone elsewhere to practice, but Sir Trevor said: “Even at that young age I recognized that in larger communities there were significant human resources available, so another cardiologist from Barbados would not make much difference. I felt however that in the Caribbean and in Barbados the presence of another trained physician or cardiologist would make a significant difference.”

Like others in his group he returned to the newly-opened Queen Elizabeth Hospital. “I saw a need to seek to develop medical sub-specialties in Barbados and in my own instance I sought to develop the sub-specialty of cardiology,” he said.

Over the ensuing years, both as cardiologist and someone trained in internal medicine, he fostered, encouraged and led the development of many sub-specialties at the QEH. The cardiac unit and the provision of a wide range of cardiac services are developments at the QEH and medical success stories for which he can take some credit.

Sir Trevor identifies himself in his formative years as “very much a city boy”. Captain Eric Hassell and his wife in the early years raised their eight children.

“For me growing up was a fun time facilitated by a healthy environment and enriched by scouting and family experiences that allowed me to develop and flourish.”

In co-founding the Heart and Stroke Foundation, community outreach was part of Sir Trevor’s intention. “As a relatively young doctor I recognized the need and importance of the active involvement and participation of laypersons and members of the community in general in the process of health care and provision of medical services. That was one of the things that motivated me to be a co-founder of the Heart Foundation of Barbados.”

“I have for many years had an interest in public health and recognized early in my career that it was not good enough as a physician to simply treat disease; there was need for physicians to seek to prevent diseases from occurring,” he said.

Sir Trevor has succeeded in directing the national focus to chronic diseases, arguing that they represented a threat to national development. He is strongly of the view that effective tackling of chronic diseases would have many health and non-health economic and other benefits, including the saving of foreign exchange, greening of Barbados, positively impacting climate change and assisting the development of local agriculture.

Even though he has retired, the mission of contributing to the reduction of chronic diseases nationally and regionally remains his passion. He is currently chairman of the Chronic Disease Commission in Barbados and is also president of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition, a chronic disease civil society alliance and he plans to lead and develop the latter organization to bring about meaningful change in the region.

“I do not wish this interview to come to an end without sharing my dream of the Caribbean becoming a no-tobacco zone, and a healthy lifestyle region,” he stated.

Retirement affords Sir Trevor the opportunity to again be the family man, an aspect of his early life that was overshadowed by professional commitments. Married for 48 years to Lucinda, Lady Hassell, a nurse and administrator, and the other half of the “Hassell team”, he is now making up for those years when she had to be the dominant figure in the home.

“It is absolutely true that she has been for all those years and more, and continues to be very much the wind beneath my wings.”

He spoke specifically to that aspect of Lady Hassell’s contribution when the question was posed about a public perception of him as an aloof doctor.

Sir Trevor took a rare step out of his well-guarded private life to explain: “My wife so often makes the comment that during the period when I was very actively engaged in the practice of medicine, if a patient died unexpectedly, or there was some unexpected medical problem, when I came home at the end of a demanding and long day she often shielded me from the demands and needs of our children because I was so adversely affected by the day’s medical challenges.

“That apparently aloof doctor was a parent with a responsibility to young children looking to their father for guidance but, having them to be denied that guidance often due to his having to provide care and support for patients and their relatives. Perhaps that example more than the many words will help you to understand the aloofness.”

He further pointed out that as a very senior physician “with a tremendous responsibility” and “a wide range of responsibilities at the highest level”, one often had to manage oneself and one’s relationships well and part of that was perceived as aloofness. Does that mean that all those years Trevor Hassell was not a caring physician? Not at all.”

Instead, he sought to create an emotional distance between doctor and patient for as he pointed out “physicians are least able to assist their patients if there is a high level of uncontrolled emotional involvement”.

With that kind of pressure now behind him, there is a lot of time to make up to his “three uniquely special children”, and he certainly further compensates as the grandfather who “dotes” on his grandchildren.