Tears and tributes as Neisha, mother laid to rest

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Tears flowed freely at the Mt St George Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist (SDA) Church yes­ter­day as the close-knit com­mu­ni­ty bade farewell to Dea­coness Neisha Roberts and her moth­er, Ir­ma Roberts.

Neisha was found bru­tal­ly stabbed to death at her Mt St George home on Ju­ly 1. Her for­mer com­pan­ion, who was ar­rest­ed hours lat­er af­ter dis­em­bark­ing the Galleons Pas­sage, has since been charged with her mur­der.

A week af­ter Neisha’s killing, her ail­ing moth­er died af­ter suf­fer­ing a mas­sive stroke.

The dou­ble tragedy has shak­en both the SDA com­mu­ni­ty and res­i­dents of Mt St George, a com­mu­ni­ty un­ac­cus­tomed to such vi­o­lence.

On Wednes­day evening, res­i­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed in a walk against crime, be­gin­ning on the street where the Roberts fam­i­ly lived and end­ing at the SDA church. A joint fu­ner­al ser­vice for both women was held yes­ter­day.

De­liv­er­ing a trib­ute, Sis­ter San­dra of the Mt St George Women’s Min­istry said Neisha’s trust­ing and car­ing na­ture may have con­tributed to her death. How­ev­er, she stressed that the for­mer MTS em­ploy­ee should not be blamed, say­ing her kind­ness had been abused and ma­nip­u­lat­ed.

She al­so echoed com­ments made by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, who re­cent­ly called for re­flec­tion on the pres­sures placed on sin­gle peo­ple by the church and wider so­ci­ety. She ques­tioned whether the church and so­ci­ety were pro­vid­ing safe spaces for peo­ple to ex­press their fears and emo­tions with­out fear of judg­ment.

She not­ed that many peo­ple, both in the church and wider so­ci­ety, ex­pe­ri­ence lone­li­ness re­gard­less of whether they are mar­ried or sin­gle.

“These fac­tors, cou­pled with so­ci­etal ex­pec­ta­tions of be­ing in a re­la­tion­ship at a par­tic­u­lar age, where they say it is time to have a man or a woman, cre­ate a silent but con­stant pres­sure for per­sons in the church and out­side the church to seek com­pan­ion­ship and en­ter re­la­tion­ships that may even harm them, and we have ev­i­dence in Neisha’s case.”

She said no one—even with­in the church—is per­fect, but vouched for Neisha’s char­ac­ter, de­scrib­ing her as a woman who was wide­ly re­spect­ed in Mt St George and neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

“She did noth­ing to de­serve her body to be bru­talised,” she said, while call­ing for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Neisha Roberts Women’s Res­cue Fund to as­sist oth­ers fac­ing sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.

“If there were a safe space to say, ‘I feel lone­ly, I am afraid, I don’t trust this per­son, help me,’ Neisha might have been alive to­day.”

She said the church con­tin­ues to grap­ple with the re­al­i­ty that some­one as­so­ci­at­ed with the in­sti­tu­tion was ca­pa­ble of com­mit­ting such a crime.

How­ev­er, she added, “As we mourn their lives, I am re­mind­ed that the heart of men is evil and des­per­ate­ly wicked.”