Fay­ola K J Fras­er

As the first black woman in Cana­da to build a haven for abused women and chil­dren, Dr Roz Roach, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Dr Roz’s Heal­ing Place, is a pi­o­neer­ing fig­ure in the field of so­cial work and com­mu­ni­ty em­pow­er­ment.

Ded­i­cat­ing her ca­reer to sup­port­ing and heal­ing women and chil­dren who have ex­pe­ri­enced forms of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, she has not lim­it­ed her trans­for­ma­tive work by coun­try bor­ders, ex­tend­ing her ef­forts to her home coun­try, T&T.

Us­ing the per­form­ing arts lens to in­flu­ence pop­u­lar cul­ture away from vi­o­lent art, she has al­so cre­at­ed Sis­tas Call­ing, which will de­but in Trinidad in Oc­to­ber. The play de­buted orig­i­nal­ly in Toron­to, Cana­da, as a the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion that spoke to break­ing the trend of vi­o­lence and abuse, and the pow­er of heal­ing.

Sis­tas Call­ing is not sole­ly a pro­duc­tion, how­ev­er, as it al­so seeks to im­ple­ment pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns, pre­sent­ing a se­ries of events lead­ing up to the stage pro­duc­tion in Oc­to­ber, in­clud­ing 5k races, and pub­lic lec­tures.

Born in Arou­ca, Trinidad, Dr Roach mi­grat­ed to Cana­da in the late 1960s, where she con­tin­ued her ed­u­ca­tion and be­gan her work as a reg­is­tered nurse. Re­call­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties she faced as the on­ly black, for­eign and non-flu­ent French-speak­ing nurse in Mon­tre­al, she al­so strug­gled as a wit­ness to the painful re­al­i­ties of vi­o­lence that she faced every day. De­scrib­ing one night that ig­nit­ed a pas­sion in her to serve oth­ers, she re­mem­bers a bat­tered woman com­ing in­to the hos­pi­tal with a bro­ken jaw and col­lar­bone, “and I felt so dis­tressed and bro­ken. I was an­gry, and my anger turned in­to a firm re­solve to seek ways to help peo­ple.”

Seek­ing to fur­ther pur­sue her ed­u­ca­tion af­ter grad­u­at­ing with a Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Ap­plied So­cial Sci­ences, Dr Roach turned her fo­cus to a new area: psy­chother­a­py. Her views on West­ern phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals were, how­ev­er, great­ly shaped by her work as a nurse, where she had seen the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal treat­ments and had sig­nif­i­cant scep­ti­cism about pre­scrib­ing med­ica­tions that could cause more harm than good.

Bold­ly chal­leng­ing the sys­tem, she went to the head of the de­part­ment to ex­press her con­cerns and was re­ferred to a course of study on Trans-Cul­tur­al Psy­chi­a­try. As one of four peo­ple en­gaged in the course, she pur­sued a study ex­plor­ing ill­ness and heal­ing at the in­ter­sec­tion of cul­ture and how treat­ment could be de­rived from a cul­ture’s tra­di­tion­al prac­tices ver­sus West­ern phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Dr Roach fo­cused her the­sis work on the Caribbean and came home to T&T, al­so trav­el­ling through var­i­ous Caribbean is­lands “ex­plor­ing how we use re­li­gion, bush, rit­u­als, any­thing to heal the way our great-grand­par­ents used to do it.”

Up­on com­plet­ing her de­gree, she was of­fered a role at the gen­er­al hos­pi­tal in Toron­to to head the Trans-Cul­tur­al Psy­chi­a­try De­part­ment. Al­though she re­ceived var­i­ous of­fers from around the world, she felt con­fi­dent that the role was a good fit for her and close enough to come back and forth to T&T to pur­sue both work and play.

As the on­ly black, fe­male psy­cho­an­a­lyst in the province, she was re­quired to vis­it women’s shel­ters to as­sess what could be fund­ed, and she be­gan to feel the same com­pul­sion to help bat­tered women that she had felt as a nurse in the ear­ly 70s. What ce­ment­ed this nig­gling urge was up­on leav­ing work one day, when a child ran to her and clung to her skirt, beg­ging for her help as his moth­er was up­stairs be­ing abused in the home.

“Peo­ple thought I was crazy to leave an es­tab­lished pri­vate prac­tice, but I knew I need­ed to do some­thing,” she mus­es, and she took the leap away from a com­fort­able ca­reer to build shel­ters for women who had been abused. Six-and-a-half years lat­er, she had raised five mil­lion CAD for this project and opened Dr Roz’s Heal­ing Place.

Dr Roz’s Heal­ing Place is a not-for-prof­it char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion that opened its doors in 1983, pro­vid­ing emer­gency cri­sis care to women, chil­dren and youth in abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, help­ing them re­cov­er from vi­o­lence and trau­ma through an in­te­gra­tive and holis­tic ap­proach.

Seek­ing not on­ly to de­liv­er cri­sis sup­port, the cen­tre works to­wards the erad­i­ca­tion of vi­o­lence against women and chil­dren lo­cal­ly, na­tion­al­ly and glob­al­ly. The cen­tre pro­vides ser­vices such as emer­gency hous­ing, sup­port ser­vices and re­fer­rals, coun­selling, job train­ing, life skills de­vel­op­ment, and ed­u­ca­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties.

Sis­tas Call­ing is a trib­ute

to Mar­cia Henville

On her var­i­ous vis­its to T&T, the vi­o­lence she wit­nessed in her home­land weighed heav­i­ly on her, and she could not ig­nore the call to act. Be­com­ing a tire­less ad­vo­cate for the rights of women and chil­dren, she set up an­ti-vi­o­lence cam­paigns, lob­bied pol­i­cy­mak­ers to­wards change, and en­gaged in train­ing for me­dia out­lets on how to re­port on GBV sen­si­tive­ly and re­spon­si­bly.

Sis­tas Call­ing is a trib­ute to Mar­cia Henville, a friend she had made in T&T, a jour­nal­ist who was trag­i­cal­ly mur­dered by her hus­band. Dr Roach re­mem­bers Henville as a friend that she hoped to help but was not able to sup­port in time. In ef­forts to con­tin­ue the fight for women’s safe­ty on be­half of Henville, Roach amped up ef­forts to­wards a safer T&T for women and chil­dren.

UN Women cel­e­brat­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day yes­ter­day un­der the theme For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equal­i­ty. Em­pow­er­ment, which calls for ac­cel­er­at­ed ac­tion to­wards a fu­ture where all women and girls live in safe, eq­ui­table en­vi­ron­ments with none left be­hind.

For Dr Roach, this theme un­der­scores her ef­forts so that no woman has to live in fear. She ad­vo­cates for a “new psy­che and un­der­stand­ing” across the re­gion and the world, es­pe­cial­ly in Trinidad, where Car­ni­val cul­ture, mu­sic and ed­u­ca­tion can un­der­score a cul­ture of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty.

Roach calls for lead­ers “not to be­come de­sen­si­tised, avoid and ig­nore the re­al­i­ties of women and girls be­ing raped and killed,” and to do away with vic­tim-blam­ing men­tal­i­ties.

Pos­tu­lat­ing the im­por­tance of a top-down ap­proach to the is­sue as well as a grass­roots ap­proach, her view is that the most im­por­tant ed­u­ca­tion on how to treat women fair­ly and not pro­mul­gate abuse must start in homes and com­mu­ni­ties and be fur­ther built in­to ed­u­ca­tion­al cur­ric­u­la.

Last month, her pi­o­neer­ing work was recog­nised as she re­ceived the Ter­ry James Trail­blaz­er Award giv­en by the Toron­to Po­lice Ser­vice, which recog­nised her many years of dogged pur­suit of the mis­sion to break dam­ag­ing cy­cles of vi­o­lence and abuse.

Called a “true hero with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, who is com­mit­ted to build­ing, strength­en­ing part­ner­ships, con­stant­ly ad­vo­cat­ing for and em­pow­er­ing those in her midst” by Toron­to Po­lice Ser­vice Board Vice-Chair, Dr Roach was al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed by the T&T Em­bassy in Cana­da, which praised her ef­forts to dri­ve waves of far-reach­ing im­pact in Cana­da, T&T, and world­wide.

Sis­tas Call­ing will make its in­ter­na­tion­al de­but in T&T on Oc­to­ber 25 at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain.