Sascha Wil­son

On Valen­tine’s Day when peo­ple were cel­e­brat­ing love, the Pres­by­ter­ian Church lit can­dles in mem­o­ry and ho­n­our of vic­tims of crimes.

Con­demn­ing the over­whelm­ing vi­o­lence in the coun­try, Rev Le­tra Ja­cob said two mem­bers of their con­gre­ga­tion lost their loved ones to crime.

Dur­ing her ser­mon at the Susumachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church, in San Fer­nan­do, Ja­cob said a mem­ber’s sis­ter dis­ap­peared af­ter she went to trans­fer a ve­hi­cle at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice while an­oth­er mem­ber wit­nessed his moth­er be­ing mur­dered.

Nei­ther of them, she said, has got­ten jus­tice.

Not­ing that the Pres­by­ter­ian Church has al­ways been vo­cal about so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic is­sues, she ques­tioned, “Is any­one lis­ten­ing.”

Re­call­ing a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle where An­drea Bharatt’s fa­ther ques­tioned whether the killers have a heart, she said it ap­pears that they do not.

“Our na­tion is in griev­ing and pain. Our na­tion is still cry­ing,” she said.

Call­ing for ac­tion, she said, “The time is now that good sense must pre­vail in do­ing what is right to pro­tect the chil­dren, the women, and the peo­ple of this na­tion. In the en­vi­ron­ment of vi­o­lence against women, most re­cent­ly con­sumed with the grief over the death of Ashan­ti Ri­ley and An­drea Bharatt, while we note a col­lapse, in­deed, in the jus­tice sys­tem, a col­lapse in the sys­tem that al­lows mon­sters to roam our streets and our com­mu­ni­ty, we must un­der­stand that we can­not achieve jus­tice for women and chil­dren alone.”

She said the whole sys­tem is in dis­ar­ray.

“A so­ci­ety must want jus­tice at its core for every­one and we have seen peo­ple com­ing out to light can­dles and vig­ils that were held not just in the name of An­drea Bharatt but in the names of those who have gone and the hurt that men and women feel in their homes.”

How­ev­er, she said, ed­u­ca­tion for boys and leg­is­la­tion alone will not solve the prob­lem. Ja­cob called for a safe and re­li­able trans­porta­tion plan for the trav­el­ling pub­lic.

“Our women and our girls seem to be most vul­ner­a­ble when they have to trav­el, be it for their jobs or oth­er­wise and the Gov­ern­ment needs to con­tribute to the pro­tec­tion of our women as they trav­el on the na­tion’s road, be it night or day.