There is a house, part brick I think, on the western side of Regent Street, near its corner with King Street, where Channel 5 used to be. The lower flat is like a half-basement, a strange structure because Belize City is too low to accommodate basements. They would be flooded out repeatedly.

That half-basement lower flat has grilled bars which are still visible. It is a place where African slaves were confined in chains. It is the only such evidence which remains visible from Belize’s slavery days.

When I was about 7, I began to attend piano lessons at that said house under the tutelage of a lady named Helen Craig. She taught me by ear, so I mostly had fun. An elderly, light-skinned lady who used to be a teacher, Miss Hilda Foreman, lived in the house with Miss Helen.

But, at Saturday morning piano lessons, there was very often a middle-aged, bespectacled, Creole gentleman who would sit there with Miss Helen watching me.

Miss Helen went to live in the States after a couple years, so that was the end of that. It was several decades later that I discovered that the middle-aged gentleman was considered, or known, as a homosexual by many Belizeans. And it was also decades later that I was made to understand what those grilled bars represented.

My older readers will know that sometimes I bring up a subject after several decades of silence. That is because sometimes the matter is so explosive that innocent people might be very seriously hurt.

Within the space of the decades between the mid-70s and the mid-90s, three sensational murders took place involving the same prominent Belizean businessman. First, he was the murderer, or “manslaughterer,” if you will; then his eldest son was murdered in his presence about a decade later; and another decade later the businessman himself was murdered one stormy night on a feeder road off Mile 12 on the Western Highway (now George Price Highway).

It is a series of events which has intrigued, puzzled, and bothered me for a long time. For example, the young man who murdered the businessman’s eldest son had witnessed his father murder his mother when he was a child in a Belize District village.

The troubled, tragic businessman was a distant relative of mine, incidentally. But, one reason I could never discuss this story was because there were too many innocent children involved in the scenario.

Still, in my whole life, I have never heard of a high-society life in Belize so troubled and tragic over a period of decades. The prominent businessman was, incidentally, one of Belize’s greatest organists.

Over the decades, I have come to wonder if he had experienced some molestation by a pedophile when he was a child. He was a handsome person, and bisexual. I think there are bisexual males who want to be straight, but who were molested as children and suffer a kind of sexual identity confusion. Just a personal opinion.

There is a lot more to this story, and there are many older Belizeans who know of the tragedies. But those tragedies have never, ever been discussed publicly.

If it is the case that the said businessman was molested as a child or youth, then someone like me must be grateful that such never happened to me. I was totally innocent. Children are totally innocent. That is why Jesus the Christ saved his harshest words of condemnation for those who “scandalize the little ones.” Pedophilia is the worst sin of all. This, I believe.