A woman enters a minibus and approaches a child dressed in uniform sitting at the back. Immediately, the conductor instructs the mother to ‘take it outside’. The mother and child exchange angry words, and expletives were used. The melee ended outside of the vehicle, the woman hit the child, she retaliated, blood was seen on her clothes and a crowd gathered.
All the above was videoed and shared online by many.
The footage, which circulated widely on social media last month, ignited a national debate over parenting, discipline and the limits of corporal punishment. While many commentators have sought to assign blame either to the mother or the child, child protection advocate Omattie Madray believes the incident exposes a much deeper crisis affecting families and children in Guyana.
“It is always alarming to see violence being perpetrated against anyone,” Madray, Managing Director of ChildLinK, told Kiskadee Watch in an extensive interview.
She said what disturbed her most was that both the mother and daughter were caught in circumstances that reflected broader societal failures.
“The young girl [was] being publicly shamed and violated by her mother under the guise of discipline and the mother, who was left alone to care for her daughter perhaps all of her daughter’s life, clearly [didn’t] have adequate parenting skills, which was seemingly leading to a physical confrontation,” she noted.
For Madray, the incident should not simply be viewed as an isolated family dispute. Rather, it raises troubling questions about the support available to parents, the understanding of positive discipline and the normalisation of violence against children.
Larger issues
Much of the public reaction focused on deciding who was at fault. Some criticised the mother’s actions while others believe the child’s behaviour justified physical punishment.
Madray believes that debate misses the larger issues.
“The public is assigning blame on both sides,” she said. “Of course, in our society where the care of children and the discipline include whipping, the blame is mostly towards the young girl. Most adults embrace whipping and violence as part of discipline.”
She rejects that approach.
“Hitting anyone is abusive, it is violence and it is preventable and should be stopped,” she said.
Madray suggested the confrontation seen in the video may have been the culmination of a pattern of interaction between mother and daughter rather than a single event.
“One has to imagine if this was happening at home—which it no doubt has, given the whole scene—then perhaps the response from the young girl may have been different and perhaps this is one of the reasons the mother felt she could do this whipping publicly.”
She also pointed to the immense pressures faced by many single parents.
“The biggest challenge of single parenting is providing adequate care, which includes being supportive and providing for the child’s every need, being available as much as a child will need a parent and also correcting behaviours.”
At the same time, she said, absentee parents often continue to influence children’s lives without sharing equally in the responsibilities of raising them.
“In many instances the role and the influence of the absentee parent is very disruptive to the child’s growth,” she pointed out.
And the childcare advocate also noted that economic pressures further complicate family life.
“One of the additional big challenges for many families in our society is the lack of adequate income to care for children in both single and nuclear families,” she said.
Lasting
While the physical confrontation shocked viewers, Madray said the lasting psychological damage may come from the widespread circulation of the video itself.
“The public shaming of this young girl is most distressing for her,” she said. “This has further eroded any relationship she had with the mother and has really damaged her self-esteem.”
According to Madray, children subjected to public humiliation often internalise the experience.
“It will make her feel that she is fundamentally a bad person. The shame can instill feelings of worthlessness and that she is a letdown.”
Without intervention, she warned, the effects may extend far beyond the immediate incident.
“The more severe and longer-term impact will be toxic stress that has the likelihood of affecting her development.”
She added that the child may become anxious, withdraw socially or resort to aggression as a coping mechanism.
“The public shaming of children will not result in children learning ‘good’ behaviour but rather it will fuel fear and aggression and in some instances withdrawal.”
Without appropriate support, she said, those responses can become lifelong survival strategies and perpetuate “a cycle of violence.”
Corporal punishment
The viral video has also reignited debate over corporal punishment, which remains widely accepted in many Guyanese households.
Madray acknowledged that many parents continue to regard physical punishment as legitimate discipline but believes attitudes are slowly changing.
“More and more parents are recognizing that teaching their children and guiding them along is most useful in helping children to become self-disciplined,” she said.
Discipline, she explained, is fundamentally different from violence.
“Parents who discipline through teaching and guiding are intentionally aiming to support their children about appropriate behaviour and developing their own self-control,” she said.
Violence, by contrast, she noted, intentionally harms children.
“It includes threatening, screaming, beating, choking, name-calling or hitting a child with something.”
Such behaviour, she argued, often reflects adults’ frustration rather than children’s needs.
“This type of behaviour by adults is really to control and harm a child and also to release their own anger and frustration of not knowing how to discipline.”
She pointed to guidance from the World Health Organisation calling for an end to corporal punishment worldwide.
Children subjected to prolonged physical punishment, she said, are more likely to experience developmental delays, mental health problems, weakened social development, poorer academic performance and continued behavioural difficulties.
Continue to rise
For ChildLinK, the viral video represents only one visible example of violence experienced by children.
Madray said reports of violence against children continue to rise in the regions where the organisation operates.
“We continue to work in the same regions where we have been operating for the past ten years and the figures in reporting have grown consistently year after year.”
For her, the increase in part is due to improved reporting but indicated that prevention efforts have not kept pace.
“A major concern for us is that enough is not being done in preventing violence against children.”
ChildLinK currently operates Child Advocacy Centres in Regions Three, Four, Five, Six, Eight and Nine, providing counselling, reporting assistance and court support for children who have experienced sexual violence.
The organisation recorded 264 reported cases in 2020, excluding hinterland locations. That number increased to 458 cases in 2021 after services expanded to eight locations. By 2025, ChildLinK was working with 906 children, comprising 823 girls and 83 boys.
While girls account for approximately 90 per cent of reported sexual abuse cases, Madray said reports involving boys have also increased, prompting the organisation’s annual Blue Umbrella Day campaign to encourage reporting and challenge misconceptions that boys are not victims of sexual abuse.
Drawing on national child protection data, she said neglect accounts for roughly 46 per cent of reported cases involving children, while physical violence represents about 22 per cent and sexual violence about 24 per cent.
The data also show that mothers account for approximately 39 per cent of identified perpetrators, fathers 22 per cent and step-parents six per cent, with grandparents, siblings, guardians and family friends making up much of the remainder.
Repeated
According to Madray, violence experienced by children often becomes violence repeated.
“Violence begets violence. It’s a learnt behaviour and children learn to be violent based on what they are witnessing within their families and communities.”
She said most violence against children occurs within homes, often with other family members aware but unwilling or unable to intervene.
“Many parents have not learnt or recognized that violence as a form of discipline has not helped their children’s behaviour,” she said.
Instead, she believes parents need practical support in understanding children’s development and learning alternative approaches to correcting behaviour.
For younger children, she recommends techniques such as time-outs, while for older children consequences such as temporarily withholding electronic devices may be more appropriate.
More importantly, she said, parents should establish healthy communication.
“Building a good communication where parents listen and also are listened to” is among the most effective forms of discipline.
Intervention
Madray believes that intervention following incidents such as the viral confrontation should extend beyond punishment.
Professional services, she said, should first seek to de-escalate tensions before helping families rebuild trust.
“The intervention will need to address the many concerns including rebuilding family relationships and expectations, discipline as correcting behaviour and not abusive, setting boundaries and identifying conflict resolution strategies that are workable in the family.”
She said both mother and daughter would benefit from counselling, while the mother should participate in parenting education sessions.
ChildLinK has spent more than two decades providing parenting education and advocating for the prevention of violence against children.
Its programmes include counselling services, parenting education, public awareness campaigns and the distribution of educational materials promoting positive parenting. One of its brochures encourages parents to express love, avoid shouting and physical punishment, listen to their children and prioritise their wellbeing throughout the week.
For Madray, the lesson from the viral video extends well beyond the individuals involved.
The public confrontation, she said, should serve as a reminder that protecting children requires stronger families, better parenting support and a collective commitment to rejecting violence as an acceptable form of discipline.
“Overall as a society,” she said, “we have to strengthen the responses for everyone who needs help to be able to access that help quickly and effectively.”
“There needs to be consistency in deterring the perpetration of all forms of violence against children and a systematic approach of helping children to grow up with adequate parental care to reduce violence against children,” Madray said.
Discussion