标签： Saint Lucia

A major scandal has unfolded in Saint Lucia’s cultural community, as three women have come forward with shocking allegations against Dezral Long, the current holder of the coveted Power and Calypso Monarch title and 2025 Road March champion, accusing him of secretly capturing voyeuristic images of them in public and sharing the explicit photos in a large X adult content community.

The women, all unaware their photos had been taken and distributed until one discovered her image online by chance, shared their account of the ordeal in a joint official statement provided to local media outlet St Lucia Times. After the initial discovery, the group began investigating the account responsible for the posts, and uncovered even more non-consensual images of other women in their friend circle — none of whom had given permission for their photos to be captured or shared. One of the affected women was a tourist visiting Saint Lucia, who told reporters her planned relaxing vacation was instead ruined by the traumatic violation.

The images, which were first brought to public attention via leaked censored screenshots shared by an Instagram user, reportedly focus explicitly on women’s intimate lower body areas, often taken from behind. The screenshots link the account that posted the images, @juliusintuition, to Long, with evidence of account activity stretching back to 2021. The account was part of an X adult community that boasts more than 110,000 members.

Following the circulation of the screenshots, Long issued a public apology via his Instagram Stories, taking full accountability for his actions. In the brief statement, he wrote: “This is a public apology to [names omitted] for snapping and posting voyeuristic images of them to a public forum. It’s abhorrent and I take full accountability and consequence. Also apologizing to all friends, family and business for being involved in such a situation. I hope I can be forgiven. Thank you for your time.”

Beyond the immediate harm done to the women who have come forward, the group says they are deeply concerned that dozens more unknowing women may have their own non-consensual images posted on the platform. All affected women have reported ongoing feelings of violation, intense anxiety, disgust, and deep embarrassment in the wake of the discovery. One victim, who does not even reside in Saint Lucia, saw her leisure vacation to the island turn into a traumatic experience that has left her long distressed.

In their full statement, the women emphasized that their decision to speak out publicly is not intended to stir up unnecessary drama, but to push for meaningful accountability and draw attention to a pattern of behavior that demands serious intervention. “Women should be able to enjoy a day out, attend events, or even visit our island on vacation without worrying that someone may secretly photograph them and share those images online for sexual purposes,” the statement read.

Long, who also works full-time as a school teacher, is currently scheduled to defend his two cultural titles at upcoming national competitions: the National Soca Monarch contest on July 10, and the National Calypso Monarch competition on July 11. St Lucia Times has attempted to reach out to Long for additional comment beyond his initial apology, but has not received any response as of press time. The women have confirmed they have compiled screenshots and other supporting evidence linking the account to Long, and are calling for a full, thorough official investigation into the incident that matches the severity of the allegations.

More than six weeks after a 21-year-old Saint Lucian woman was gunned down in the Bois d’Orange neighborhood, her grieving family is grappling with an unbearable tragedy: the young woman, Kiokya “Kiki” Inglis, remains trapped in a vegetative state, her future irrevocably altered in a single night of violence.

With the full consent of Inglis’ family, local anti-violence advocacy organization Voices Beyond Violence has stepped forward to share graphic, unflinching details of the young woman’s condition. The group’s goal is twofold: to jolt the public into recognizing the catastrophic harm of gender-based violence across the island, and to pressure authorities and communities to keep this high-stakes case from fading from public view.

The shooting unfolded on the night of June 4, 2026, when Inglis was shot multiple times before being rushed by emergency responders to the Owen King European Union Hospital. Upon arrival, she was categorized as critically injured. The Royal Saint Lucia Police Force initially confirmed that one suspect had been taken into custody shortly after the incident; that number has since risen to two people held in connection with the attack, though the full sequence of events and ultimate assignment of responsibility remains under official investigation. As Voices Beyond Violence representative Angel Foster emphasized when speaking with local outlet St Lucia Times, only law enforcement investigators and the judicial system can reach a definitive conclusion on what occurred and who is legally accountable.

Foster laid out the devastating scope of Inglis’ injuries for the public: she was shot in the head, abdomen, and spine, leaving her completely dependent on medical intervention for basic survival. Diagnosed in a persistent vegetative state by her treating physicians, Inglis requires a feeding tube to receive nutrition, cannot walk, cannot initiate independent movement, and is unable to speak. While medical teams are preparing to discharge her from the hospital in the coming weeks, Foster confirmed that her condition remains extraordinarily serious, and doctors cannot offer any guarantee of long-term improvement or recovery.

The harm of the attack extends far beyond Inglis herself, tearing through her entire family. Her parents, sister, and closest friend have all been left shattered by the sudden turn of events. Foster shared that the family describes themselves as “devastated and heartbroken,” noting that even speaking about Kiki’s condition is an almost unbearable burden.

Beyond fighting for Kiki’s care and visibility, the family is demanding formal justice. They want local law enforcement and judicial authorities to acknowledge the severe gravity of the attack, and they hope sharing their story will draw renewed attention to the repeated crisis of gender-based violence in Saint Lucia. Foster also voiced frustration that the case has garnered far less public and media attention than it warrants, pointing out that the shooting occurred just two weeks after another high-profile fatal act of gender-based violence: the May 20 killing of 24-year-old Joy St Omer, whose estranged husband currently faces murder charges for her death.

“It is shocking that what happened to Kiki came only a fortnight after Joy’s death,” Foster said. “We are deeply disappointed that this pattern of violence against women keeps repeating itself on our island.”

Voices Beyond Violence has committed to continuing its advocacy work on three core fronts: pushing for stronger legal and social protections for women across Saint Lucia, demanding consistent accountability and justice for survivors and victims of gender-based violence, and building broader public awareness of the scope of the crisis. For their part, Kiki’s family continues to hold out hope for a medical miracle, but they are asking the public to not let the public forget what happened to their daughter — a young woman whose life changed in an instant, and whose future now hangs precariously in the balance.

Last Friday marked a landmark milestone for cultural preservation and community development in Laborie, as officials and local stakeholders gathered for the official inauguration of two upgraded community assets: the Iconic Laborians Centre and the Anse Kawet Crafters Gift Shop. Hosted at the existing Papel Craft Centre, the opening ceremony celebrated the transformation of a once-modest underutilized space into a contemporary, interactive hub dedicated to celebrating local heritage, amplifying community storytelling, and fostering shared regional pride.

This transformative initiative was brought to fruition through a collaborative cross-sector partnership under the umbrella of the Community Business Revitalisation Project, bringing together local community organizations and international stakeholders. The project received core financial backing from Taiwan’s Ministry of Agriculture, paired with widespread grassroots support from the Laborie community that anchored the development process from concept to completion.

At the core of the new Iconic Laborians Centre is a permanent tribute to 13 distinguished local figures who have left indelible, lasting impacts on the Laborie community and beyond. The honorees include Dame Calliopa Pearlette Louisy, the 13th Governor-General of Saint Lucia; former politician Sir Allan Fitzgerald Louisy; and prominent community leaders, educators, artists and public figures Rudy Thomas John, Joseph “Ives” Simeon, Dr Donatus “Keith” St Aimee, Dr Emsco Remy, Rick Wayne, Hilary Mervyn Darcheville, Yves Renard, Dr Velon Leo John, Pascal Watson Louis, Agatha Jn Panel and Desmond Collymore.

Louis Tsou, project manager for the Community Business Revitalisation Project, emphasized that the redevelopment went far beyond cosmetic upgrades. “This special space has evolved from a basic display room into a modern cultural venue that is well designed, interactive and full of stories,” Tsou explained. To move beyond static exhibits, the upgraded centre integrates both physical and digital storytelling tools to deepen visitor engagement. A standout innovative feature is the addition of QR codes next to each honoree’s profile, which allow visitors to access audio recordings of biographical and personal stories, bringing the legacies of iconic Laborians to life in an immersive format.

The project also prioritized long-term operational sustainability, with a community-funded donation system installed to support ongoing maintenance and programming, ensuring the centre can serve the community for decades to come.

Parallel to the centre’s redevelopment, the Anse Kawet Crafters Gift Shop also completed a full renovation, repositioning the space from a simple retail outlet to an extension of the site’s cultural experience. Visitors can purchase handcrafted local goods while learning about the region’s artisanal traditions, tying craft production to the broader community history celebrated at the centre.

Augustine Dominique, executive officer of the Laborie Development Foundation, reflected that the project’s journey to completion stretches back nearly 10 years. “Nearly a decade ago, the Dame Pearlette Louisy Legacy Committee… envisioned a space for the stories of our most distinguished sons and daughters to be preserved and celebrated,” Dominique shared. The founding vision was always to create a permanent tribute to local trailblazers whose work transformed the Laborie community and extended its influence far beyond the region.

“ The centre was conceived as a beacon of identity and heritage,” Dominique said, noting that the decade-long effort came to fruition through “careful planning, community efforts and international cooperation.” He described the finished space as “a gallery of memory and meaning,” designed to ensure that “large stories will continue to be told and [local trailblazers] celebrated” for generations.

Government representatives echoed the importance of the new centre, noting that cultural preservation requires ongoing engagement beyond the walls of the venue. Alva Baptiste, Saint Lucia’s External Affairs Minister and the representative for the Laborie constituency, stressed that passing these legacies on to younger generations is the most critical step to ensuring they endure. “We must continue to tell our young people about these great icons that shaped our lives,” Baptiste said. “Placing them in a room is good but continuing to speak about them will allow their legacy to live on.”

For decades, the specific names and cases change, but the grim, recurring headlines about gender-based violence (GBV) in Saint Lucia have stayed the same. Reports of women murdered by current or former romantic partners, children forced to grow up surrounded by routine domestic abuse, and survivors who suffer in silence for years before seeking help — or choose never to report their abuse at all — have become normalized.

Despite sustained public outcry and repeated demands for systemic intervention, GBV remains a pervasive, devastating public crisis across the small Caribbean island nation. Even as experts acknowledge that official records are far from complete, the available data paints a troubling picture of a problem that is far more widespread than most citizens and policymakers recognize.

Data collected in 2015 from three key Saint Lucian institutions — the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, the Department of Gender Relations, and the Women’s Support Centre — recorded 419 reported cases of violence committed by current or former intimate partners per 100,000 women across social service agencies. That same year, the now-defunct Division of Human Services and Family Affairs recorded 1,268 reported cases of violence against girls per 100,000 girls. Gender-based violence advocates widely agree that these official counts represent only a small fraction of the total actual incidents that occur across the country.

This pattern of underreporting aligns with global research, which consistently finds that most victims of intimate partner violence never come forward. Common barriers include fear of violent retaliation from abusers, economic dependence on perpetrators, deep-seated social shame, worries about losing custody of or endangering their children, and widespread lack of trust in the national justice system to hold abusers accountable.

The most alarming finding comes from 2020 United Nations research on global gender-based violence. The UN Global Database on Violence Against Women ranked Saint Lucia among the countries with the highest recorded femicide rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. The database estimates that 4.4 out of every 100,000 women in Saint Lucia are killed as a result of gender-based violence. Femicide, defined as the intentional killing of women specifically because of their gender, is most often committed by intimate partners or family members. Notably, Saint Lucia’s legal system does not currently recognize femicide as a distinct criminal offense, but international bodies continue to track these deaths because they almost always follow long histories of escalating domestic abuse and coercive control.

For a small island nation with a total population of fewer than 200,000 people, this high ranking — which places Saint Lucia alongside far larger nations also grappling with endemic violence against women — is a sobering wake-up call.

Ironically, one of the single biggest barriers to addressing the GBV crisis is the lack of comprehensive, standardized national data. Without regular, nationwide prevalence studies, policymakers are forced to rely on fragmented data from police reports, hospital admissions records, and social service agency case files, each of which captures only a partial view of the full scope of abuse.

UN Women confirms that Saint Lucia continues to face significant gaps in gender-disaggregated data, especially regarding violence against women. These gaps make it nearly impossible to accurately track long-term trends, measure the effectiveness of existing intervention programs, or understand the true scale of abuse across the country. Researchers warn that without reliable, complete data, the country is stuck in a reactive cycle: authorities only intervene after violence has already escalated into fatal or life-threatening harm.

Global research consistently confirms that femicide is almost never a random, unforeseen event. Joint research conducted by UN Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that women murdered by intimate partners almost always experience months or even years of escalating abuse before their deaths — including physical violence, repeated threats, stalking, emotional abuse, and coercive control over their daily lives. The two UN agencies characterize femicide as “the most extreme and preventable form of violence against women,” noting that targeted early intervention by families, communities, and state institutions can save lives before violence turns fatal.

Campaigners against GBV argue that framing the crisis solely as a law enforcement issue ignores the deeper structural and social roots of the problem. Systemic gender inequality, harmful cultural social norms, economic disempowerment that leaves women dependent on abusers, childhood exposure to domestic violence, and inadequate support services for survivors all create an environment where abuse can go unchallenged and escalate.

While Saint Lucia has made incremental progress in recent years — strengthening domestic violence legislation and expanding support services through organizations like the Women’s Support Centre and the Department of Gender Relations — advocates emphasize that prevention work must begin long before a survivor feels forced to contact police. They are calling for targeted increased investment in public education to challenge harmful norms, expanded accessible counselling services for survivors and at-risk communities, evidence-based early intervention programs, improved systematic national data collection, and stronger legal accountability for perpetrators of abuse.

As advocates often note, official statistics can only ever tell a small part of the story. Behind every police report is a survivor who has endured unthinkable harm. Behind every court-ordered protection order is a family grappling with crisis. And behind every femicide statistic is a woman whose death was likely preceded by clear, unaddressed warning signs that could have led to intervention if systems had been in place to act.