TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains recollections of abuse, including childhood abuse and physical violence that may be triggering for some individuals.
Fluffy chicks skip across Shelly-Ann Crossdale’s toes, as she stands in a corner of her chicken coop reading lines from a book she has been writing for years. The page of the blue exercise book marked ‘My Life’s Story’, is illuminated by a single bulb.
Shelly-Ann is a chicken and cash crop farmer making a living in the hills of St Thomas with four of her six children and partner. She farms and sells chicken meat, coffee, cucumber, corn and tomatoes on three plots of land.
The peace and pace of her current life is a far cry from the tumult of her earlier years. But the book she is writing is stirring the memories, good and bad. It’s why she says she must often stop, to ease the surge of pain.
The most painful of the memories that dips her voice to a whisper, starts in the inner-city community of Waterhouse in Kingston’s capital city when she was still a teenager.
It was the late 1990s and she was serially abused by her adult live-in boyfriend and baby’s father. On that fateful day as he chased her in their house with a screwdriver, she told herself, ‘Mi nah run no more’ (I’m not running anymore). So, when he stabbed at her with the screwdriver, she stabbed him back and ran for her life, without looking back.
Frightened and alone, the then-17-year-old hid in a gully before begging a neighbour to hide her in a backyard shed. When the angry mob discovered her, “I gave up right there”. As the mob kicked, shoved and cut her, one woman spoke up and said, ‘let the police handle it’.
It was the sister of her boyfriend, who then informed her: ‘He’s dead’.
“I fainted”, Shelly-Ann says, lapsing into silence.
Charged for murder, she spent five months in the remand centre before a life-altering intervention. “His son spoke on my behalf, and (told the court) it was self-defence”, she says. Unbeknownst to her, the attack was witnessed. “The case was dismissed, and I did not get any sentence”.
Two years later, after taking construction, bar and other odd jobs to feed her newborn son (she was pregnant with the deceased’s child unbeknown to her), and sleeping on friends’ couches, “I heard I could stay at my grandparent’s house, and I started farming”. This was 2001.
She saved some money and started with 50 chickens in a coop she built with her daughter. “That helped my kids through high school” she says. But theft caused the business to run down.
Hearing about the European Union-United Nations’ Spotlight Initiative-funded business and life skills training programme for domestic violence survivors, Shelly Ann enrolled so she could acquire skills to rebuild her chicken business. “I told them (my vision is) to extend the chicken business, do my cash crops and get a vehicle where I can get to distribute,” she said.
The women’s economic empowerment programme implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi Country Office in Jamaica in partnership with municipal corporations in Clarendon and St Thomas trained 80 survivors like Shelly Ann.
With financial support from Spotlight Initiative, she purchased 250 chickens, spray pans to fertilize crops and seeds – an important input for women farmers like Shelly-Ann who account for roughly 32% of registered farmers in Jamaica.
“The grant helped me a lot. With 250 chickens, I got 500 and 600 pounds of chicken meat. Before, I used to harvest on average 200 pounds of chicken meat. That’s a threefold increase in production. - Shelly-Ann Crossdale Spotlight Initiative beneficiary
“It helped me a lot,” she says of the grant. “With 250 chickens, I got 500 and 600 pounds of chicken meat. Before, I used to harvest on average 200 pounds of chicken meat.”
That’s a threefold increase in production from her modest chicken enterprise.
Shelly-Ann says she was most impressed with the business planning guidance and budgeting training which is helping her to assess the true earnings from her business. “I never knew (for example) that you should deduct costs for phone cards and taxi fares used in the business. “So, it helped me a lot to kind of understand how to run the business and make the business productive,” she says.
The training programme helped me to understand how to run the business how to make the business productive. I never knew (for example) that you should deduct costs for phone cards and taxi fares used in the business. - Shelly-Ann Crossdale, Spotlight Initiative beneficiary
The book she is writing will one day unveil the journey to her hard-won victory. It starts, she says, when she was a little girl.
“I was sexually abused from when I was five. My stepfather tried to (rape) me, but it didn’t happen because I ran ... I was on my own from about age 14, boxed (moving around without support) from one place to the other, (experiencing) every abuse you can think of", she recalls. While living in Waterhouse with her aunt, she forced her to cook, clean and wash for the entire household. But the folks at St Patrick’s Foundation tested her and found that she was far more advanced than the teaching being received. She later moved to Ocho Rios to live with her father before returning to Waterhouse.
It was then that her aunt forced her to co habit with a working adult male who showed her interest. She was 15 years old. He was the sole breadwinner and she cared for the home and their first-born child. Her life of abuse under his thumb was built on a foundation of exploitation and abandonment.
Jamaica's Child Protection Family Services Agency (CPFSA) received 9,800 cases of abuse against children in 2020. Sexual abuse accounted for 20 of these reports. The children’s registry reported an average of 700-800 cases monthly for 2021.
Fast forward to 2023 and Shelly Ann continues to channel her pain into her book while forging new paths to express her personal vision. “One of the things I achieved which I can be proud of is I sent myself to nursing school and got my diploma in practical nursing. My Children say 'mummy mi proud of you. You never give up'.”
She has similar words of encouragement for those in abusive relationships: “Don’t give up and keep towards the goal because even now I tell myself I’m not finished yet. As long as I can afford it and mi a work towards it, I’m going to get the CXC subjects and move on to either enrolled Nurse or Registered Nurse. I’m not stopping”.
© 2026 UNDP Multi Country Office in Jamaica
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