分类： society

A resident of Hothersal Turning has been ordered to be held at Dodds Prison ahead of his sentencing, after he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting an out-of-country visitor in Bridgetown. In court proceedings, Jeffrey David Yearwood acknowledged the incident, which unfolded while he was impaired by a combination of illicit drugs and alcohol, as a serious mistake.

The case was heard before Acting Chief Magistrate Douglas Frederick at the No. 1 District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court, where the details of the attack last Friday were laid out. According to official testimony, the female tourist, a Canadian national visiting Barbados, had stopped for a drink on Fairchild Street before making her way to Freedom Park, the location where Yearwood approached and attacked her.

The victim immediately resisted Yearwood, pushing him away and calling out for assistance. Witnesses at the scene noted Yearwood appeared heavily intoxicated, with heavily slurred speech that confirmed his impaired state. Bystanders stepped in to detain Yearwood until the victim could contact local law enforcement to take him into custody.

Prosecuting Sergeant Reginald Blackman told the court that during a formal interview with police following his arrest, Yearwood admitted he had consumed both marijuana and cocaine in addition to alcohol before the incident. When given the opportunity to address the court, Yearwood pleaded for leniency, framing the attack as an out-of-character mistake driven by his intoxication. He described himself as a family man with school-aged children who need supplies for the upcoming term, saying he did not want to let his family down. Yearwood requested he be released on personal bail or receive a fine rather than pre-sentencing detention, noting he held no passport and could not be considered a flight risk.

However, Magistrate Frederick rejected these arguments, making clear that intoxication is never a legal defense for violent, violating acts against another person. “It is no defence for a man to get drunk and do these types of things,” Frederick told the defendant. The magistrate emphasized that sexual and indecent assault are extremely serious offenses; only recently were such cases reclassified to allow magistrate’s courts to hear them, he noted, as historically they were reserved exclusively for High Court proceedings due to their severity.

Frederick acknowledged that while intoxication can be considered as a minor mitigating factor during sentencing, it does not excuse the harm done to the victim. “You have also said that it was not you, in the sense that you were intoxicated or under the influence of drugs or whatever, but let me tell you for your knowledge that intoxication is really not a defense to these types of matters. [Being] under the influence of drugs or drink is no defense,” he added.

The magistrate also noted that Yearwood has a prior assault conviction dating back to 2021, reinforcing that he poses a current threat to public safety. After ordering a full presentence report to inform his final sentencing decision, Frederick ruled Yearwood must be held in pre-sentencing custody to protect the general public. “It seems as though there is a need for a type of intervention, because you are obviously a clear and present danger to the society to be walking about doing these things,” he said.

Yearwood will remain at Dodds Prison until his next scheduled court date on September 10, when his sentencing will be finalized.

As the Atlantic hurricane season progresses, a senior Barbadian community emergency management official has sounded a stark alarm over widespread public complacency, warning that this dangerous lack of urgency could significantly weaken the island nation’s overall ability to withstand and recover from major storm events. Speaking Thursday, Selwyn Brooks — liaison officer for the country’s Community Resilience Programme, which works hand-in-hand with local district emergency organisations (DEOs) across the island — emphasized that building robust national disaster resilience must start with individual action and local community engagement, rather than relying exclusively on government-led initiatives.

“There is still an unacceptably high level of complacency among the public,” Brooks cautioned. “National resilience does not originate at the government level. It grows from the ground up, starting with individual preparation and local community capability. When more community members master key emergency skills and build preparedness habits, that collective effort is what strengthens the entire country’s ability to bounce back from disaster.”

Brooks’ call to action comes as emergency management teams across Barbados have ramped up training and outreach efforts in recent months, aimed at equipping both first responders and ordinary residents with the practical skills needed to respond immediately after a severe weather event. These sessions have focused on high-priority, life-saving capabilities including basic first aid, emergency tarpaulin installation for damaged roofs, and the safe operation of chainsaws to clear blocked roadways. The Barbados Statistical Service has also rolled out specialized damage assessment training open to both emergency personnel and general community members.

According to Brooks, training is an ongoing, adaptive process that is adjusted to match the unique needs of each community and depends entirely on broad public participation to succeed. “Our goal right now is to engage and recruit more community members to join our preparedness efforts,” he explained. “We are already ramping up preparations even for next year’s hurricane season. That will be our next major outreach initiative, launching by the end of this month. It will support readiness for the current season, but its core focus is building long-term capacity for 2025 and beyond.”

Insights from a recently concluded national conference on community resilience are already guiding these new outreach campaigns, helping emergency officials develop a flexible, constantly improving emergency response framework, Brooks added. Behind the public training sessions, technical teams have been working steadily to strengthen critical communication infrastructure, which is often one of the first systems to fail during a major hurricane. Radio emergency teams now conduct weekly coordinated network exercises to refine operator protocols, test equipment reliability, and map geographic “blind spots” where radio frequency coverage is weak or non-existent. Regular testing ensures that operators can perform under pressure when a disaster strikes, and lets officials address gaps in coverage before a storm makes landfall.

While current meteorological forecasts predict that this year’s hurricane season will see slightly below-average storm activity across the Atlantic, emergency officials are stressing that the public should not dismiss this prediction as a reason to skip preparation. Even slow-moving, low-category tropical storms can trigger catastrophic damage across the island through prolonged heavy rainfall, widespread flash flooding, soil saturation that causes widespread landslides, and fallen trees that block critical evacuation routes and cut off access for first responders.

When asked directly whether Barbados is currently fully prepared for a major storm this season, Brooks noted that disaster preparedness is never a fixed, finished goal, and readiness levels shift dramatically depending on the intensity of an approaching storm system. “If you ask if we are fully prepared for a Category 3 or Category 4 hurricane, I would be honest and say we still have significant challenges to address,” he said. “We have made solid progress to get to where we are today, but there is always more work to do to strengthen our capabilities.”

Emergency management leaders across the country echo Brooks’ assessment, identifying widespread public indifference as the single largest barrier to effective preparedness. They stress that consistent individual vigilance and personal preparation is the most critical factor in reducing storm-related damage, protecting lives, and speeding up recovery after a disaster.

What began as a routine tropical vacation for California native Rufiena Jones in 2022 evolved into a life-altering mission that is redefining how members of the African diaspora engage with Caribbean history. What Jones expected to be a relaxing getaway quickly shifted when she uncovered a critical, under-shared chapter of African diaspora history rooted in Barbados — and left the island knowing she had to return to share that story with others.

“The day I landed, I knew I was meant to come back, and I knew I was meant to bring other people with me,” Jones shared in an interview, reflecting on that first fateful trip. Now, on her eighth visit to the Caribbean island, Jones has turned that personal calling into the Sankofa Wellness Project, a heritage tourism initiative launched in 2022 that will soon rebrand to Sankofa Heritage Travel. Unlike standard beach-focused tourism, the project frames Barbados not just as a vacation destination, but as a vital stop for people of African descent seeking to reconnect with their ancestral history, cultural identity, and collective roots.

Jones argues that Caribbean nations like Barbados are often overlooked by diaspora communities prioritizing West African countries such as Ghana and Senegal when tracing their ancestry — an oversight that leaves a major gap in understanding the full scope of the transatlantic slave trade and the cultures enslaved Africans built after crossing the Atlantic. “If we want to understand our past as descendants of Africa, we can’t leave the Caribbean out,” she explained. “We must come here. We must experience the culture here and hear the stories here because this is a major part of that history.”

Before her first trip, Jones herself shared that same gap in knowledge. It wasn’t until she encountered an atlas two years before her first visit that she learned just how many enslaved Africans were trafficked to Barbados, a statistic rarely taught in mainstream education. Further research revealed that Barbados was one of Britain’s earliest and most influential slave societies, whose plantation system became a model that spread across the entire Caribbean. That discovery fundamentally reshaped her understanding of the island’s central role in Black Atlantic history.

“I didn’t know Barbados had such a rich history,” she said. “We don’t necessarily learn that. So to be here, the way that it feels here, the way that I can feel and sense this deep, rich African connection… I know that there’s a story here that needs to be told that the diaspora needs to hear and engage with.”

A former Fulbright scholar with nearly a year of teaching experience in Thailand, Jones has long viewed travel as a tool for cross-cultural understanding, but she says Barbados offered a unique, visceral connection she never found elsewhere. Though she emphasizes she is still learning and does not identify as a professional historian, Jones has identified distinct African influences woven into every layer of Barbadian life, from music and movement to language and community structures, that have persisted beneath centuries of British colonial rule.

A lifelong dancer with decades of experience studying Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Haitian, and traditional West African dance forms, Jones has centered that cultural insight into the itineraries she curates. The Sankofa project brings small groups of visitors to the island for key cultural events, including the annual Barbados Food and Rum Festival and Crop Over, a historic harvest festival that marks the end of the sugar cane growing season. Her programming blends guided historical tours, immersive community experiences, and cultural excursions designed to help participants deepen their understanding of their ancestral roots, with the Emancipation Day and Crop Over season featuring prominently in trip schedules due to its historical significance.

Jones welcomed her first official group of 11 clients to Barbados in November 2025, alongside two representatives from the Barbados Association of Southern California who won their trips through Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc.’s We Gatherin’ Southern California initiative. She returned earlier this year with three more California travelers to experience the 2025 Crop Over festival.

Jones’ long-term vision extends far beyond Barbados. She hopes to grow the initiative into a interconnected travel network that links the Caribbean, West Africa, and African diaspora communities in the United States, including the Gullah Geechee people of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. “I want to keep expanding it,” she said. “I want to keep people coming to the Caribbean so that after that we can go to West Africa and see those cultural connections and then also go to the south of the United States… It’s one big story.”