By Kemol King
Imagine, a young girl in Guyana, molested by a male relative, finds the courage to speak out about the abuse, but family members surround her. They try to convince her to stay quiet.
“Don’t bring shame on the family,” they say. “He has a whole life ahead of him. Think about what this will do to all of us.” The pressure is heavy. The focus shifts from her pain to protecting the perpetrator’s future and the family’s reputation. This plays out far too often in this country.
It is part of a broader social ill called rape culture.
Many believe that this same instinct for hush hush handling showed up in the debate over the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill 2026. The government first proposed a closed sex offenders registry, pointing to broad-based consultations and similar practices in other countries.
The Guyanese people pushed back strongly on social media. They rejected the idea of keeping the registry hidden. The President responded by sending the bill to a Special Select Committee and saying that he supports a publicly accessible registry. This responsiveness is positive. It shows that public outcry can impact policy decisively. And the society was correct to make its voice heard. But the society has a lot of work to do about its victim-blaming ways and how it reinforces a culture of silence.
The quick assumptions on social media when girls go missing demonstrate this: “she too fast” or “she gone wid man.” People will defame a young woman before they even know her.
That habit is disgusting and dangerous. What happens when it turns out something bad really happened to her, this woman or child that you thrashed without even knowing her story?
When older men pursue schoolgirls, too many voices call the girls “fast.” That label excuses the predatory behaviour of the perv and shifts blame onto children who are simply being young or reaching for things beyond their age. The responsibility lies first and foremost with the older man to hold the line. He knows better. At least, he should. It is not to say that we must not teach our girl children to be responsible.
But we must not reframe the problem to place the overwhelming burden of responsibility on young women and girls.
The culture of silence runs deep inside our families. Our churches. Our places of work. They keep sexual violence quiet through private settlements and avoid the police and courts. This protects reputation without addressing the harm to victims, and leaving offenders free to repeat.
These patterns show sexual violence thrives not only from weak laws but from everyday ways of thinking and behaving.
A public sex offenders registry could make situations like the hypothetical one above even harder in some ways. Families already pressure victims to stay silent to avoid shame. Public registration would add visible stigma to the offender and the entire family. Relatives might fight even harder against disclosure, fearing bullying, harassment, or social fallout for everyone involved, including innocent children who share the name. Other countries have seen this collateral damage, as argued by the government when it faced pushback for proposing a closed registry.
This is not an argument for a closed registry. It is an argument for the need to be constructive and nuanced when seeking out solutions to sexual violence and rape culture.
We must weigh both sides honestly. Guyana does not need to do something because every other country does it. But it should strongly consider the considerations that made a closed register a standard in many different parts of the world.
Any open registry in Guyana would need strong safeguards: clear tiers for the most dangerous offenders, public education on responsible use, and education to prevent vigilantism. Even then, a registry alone will not fix the deeper culture
A public registry deserves strong consideration precisely because it challenges our culture of silence. It would let people search a name, see the offences, and take precautions to protect children. It could add more stigma to where it belongs and has the potential to deter crimes in a society where hush hush handling has shielded offenders for too long. The public outcry shows it; many want this openness.
