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Alpuche also commented on the heinous murder of mother of two, Yanira Novelo.  The 23 year old was found in a canefield on the San Lorenzo road in Orange Walk yesterday.  Her son was found the day before, walking on the San Lorenzo road with a wound to his left rib cage.  It was the little boy's fourth birthday, but instead of a party, he spent it escaping from the men who had abducted and killed his mother.

It’s an unbelievable trauma for a child to endure and today we discussed it with the CEO of the ministry responsible for the protection of children:…

Judith Alpuche - CEO, Ministry of Human Development, Social Transformation & Poverty Alleviation
"That's really a horrendous heart breaking case on so many levels and frightening on so many levels and we were just talking about childhood trauma and how that impacts children. So from our perspective what you see even on the news is a very supportive family and so our role in that case would be to support the family, to support this child in whatever ways needed."

Reporter
"So counselling for the child?"

Judith Alpuche
"Counselling that's needed, I know there needs to be an assessment. The first thing would be looking at how does the child heal physically from it. So, from that perspective, whatever support that the family needs but right now what that child needs is to be supported by people who love him and so our role then is to support those people who love him."

Jules Vasquez
"Some traumatic wounds, very difficult to recover from when your mother is killed on your birthday; a lot of people in society feel we've lost our moorings that my goodness, you're killing a mother and her child has to run for his own life while his mother is being killed or after his mother was killed. What happens in society when you see that women and children are being victimized? It's not just well the known actors or the gang boys, those kinds of things."

Judith Alpuche
"It is a whole different level and it's very scary because then we all become, I guess we were all vulnerable before and with cases like these you feel your vulnerability. Counselling is an issue for Belize, mental health services is huge issue. There has been a discussion in the public domain over the past weeks and I think that its somethings that we're hoping will spark things to move forward because we do have a lot of people who walking around wounded, dealing with trauma in most unhelpful ways."

The little boy is stable and recovering.  His mother was stabbed five times to the chest area.