Warning that “justice delayed is justice denied”, an Anglican priest has complained about the inordinately long periods of time it often takes for people to get justice in Barbados.
And that was true, said Reverend John Rogers, rector of St Luke’s Anglican Church in St George, whether the victim of delayed justice was a former Government worker laid off during the recent wave of job cuts, an underage girl who was raped, or inmates locked up at HMP Dodds waiting for their day in court.
“You have this thing hanging over your head for so long there is really no way to progress in a society like that,” said Rogers, after delivering the sermon at an Independence thanksgiving service in Brooklyn attended by hundreds of Bajans in New York.
Rogers, who is expected to become the next rector of St George’s Parish Church, told the congregation that although Barbados had become a “great” country which had made an indelible mark “on this world”, there were some troubling signs on the horizon and delayed justice was one of them.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” he told the worshippers, drawing on the wisdom of the late Dr Martin Luther King Jr., the United States civil rights icon who said in a 1963 letter smuggled out of an Alabama jail “that justice too long delayed is justice denied”.
After the church service, the cleric told the Daily Nation there were far too many cases of delayed justice in Barbados.
Please read the full story in today’s Daily Nation, or in the eNATION edition.
