07/06/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18yu3s757F/?mibextid=wwXIfr
CITIZEN COMMENTARY
Martina McDonald - Johnson | The video of a mother beating her daughter on a bus has been circulating on social media and, like many people, I watched it. The difference is that when I watched it, I was not thinking about who was right or wrong, I found myself thinking about my own childhood.
I do not know what happened before that video started and I do not know what led to that confrontation. What I do know is that the way the mother and daughter spoke to each other, the anger, defiance, shouting and violence, did not look like something that started that day. And sadly, it looked VERY VERY familiar.
I grew up in a home where being beaten, cursed at, deprived and criticised was normal. I remember my sister being physically harmed more than once in a single day over simple mistakes, like being sent to the shop for one thing and returning with something else. I remember one of my brothers being treated more harshly sometimes because something he said or did reminded our mother of our father during a period when there was a lot of hurt and anger between them.
I remember being compared to others and being told what I had done wrong. What I do not remember is being praised. I do not remember feeling that anything I did was ever enough.
There were also times when we were abandoned.
One of the memories that has never left me happened during A Level examinations. My mother had moved out and left us the day before my first exams commenced, I went home from school and discovered the house empty. When I eventually found her, after walking many hours, she told me her partner did not want children. I was sent to stay with an aunt and had nothing with me except my Queen's College uniform and school bag on my back.
Some time between 3 and 4 am, a male relative attempted to r**e me. I fought him off. I screamed. To this day, I do not know where the strength came from, except that perhaps years of fear, hurt and anger finally found somewhere to go and he was the one who left the room bleeding and I had no physical wounds.
I got dressed and sat on the veranda until the sun rose, then walked to school carrying all of that with me.
I told Ms. Gem Rohlehr (Vogt) about my mother leaving and what I had experienced just hours before. I did not know what I was supposed to do.
She listened and then she said something I have carried with me for the rest of my life.
"You have exams in a few minutes. Today, don't focus on what happened. Focus on what you can do to change it. The only way out is through your education, now go and pass those exams and come see me after, we will talk about your situation then."
I sat my examinations wearing the same uniform, under-clothing, and socks I had worn the day before because I had nothing else. I did not even have a shower before before returning to school.
The first opportunity I got to leave home after finishing school, I took it - I moved out while mom was not at home.
Ms Rohlehr's words became my anchor.
When people look at my life today and see success, I want them to understand that IT WAS NOT created by beatings, humiliation, fear or abandonment. Those things DID NOT make me stronger. When I became a parent, initially, I used to beat my firstborn for the simplest of things because abuse was all I knew as discipline. I'd yell and curse! But, after a few years of being that parent, I sought therapy and THAT helped. Good people helped. Teachers helped. Mentors helped. Education helped.
I also know that not everyone escapes childhood trauma in the same way. One of my siblings carries an official diagnosis of PTSD related to the childhood trauma. He turned to drugs and today also lives with drug-induced psychosis, on the street - even rehab has not helped because it is not designed for persons with his combination of complications. Childhood experiences do not always stay in childhood.
I am sharing this story because when I watched that video, I did not see a monster and I did not see a villain.
I saw two people who need help ... possibly a mother who may be carrying wounds she has never healed from and a daughter who may be carrying wounds of her own.
My mother is no longer here and this post is not intended to speak badly of her. As an adult, I came to understand that she was carrying TREMEDOUS trauma herself. She became a mother while she was still a teenager, had four children before she even knew herself and was trying to survive while raising a family. She was a victim of trauma - sexual assault, abandonment, mental, emotional, financial and other abuses - long before she passed some of that trauma on to us.
Understanding that does not erase what happened, but it does help explain it.
That video reminded me that violence is often the visible symptom of pain that has existed for years. Sometimes the hurt we do not heal becomes the hurt we pass on.
Instead of asking only what happened on that bus, perhaps we should also be asking what happened long before those two people got there, because sometimes what we are witnessing is not a single incident, but generations of pain colliding in public. I do hope there is intervention by the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security
