Dear Source:
For animal or humans, the process of bringing cases to trial in the Virgin Islands is crippled. Breakdowns are rife in the prosecutor's office whether it be prosecutors who don't show up for murder trials or do show up, only to be shown to be ill prepared to adequately present the case. The long-suffering judges must spend their time eternally frustrated in trying to keep their dockets organized.
Once again, the lack of communication within the so-called "Justice department" of the Virgin Islands publicly reinforces the conception of a banana republic. It is a shameful, embarrassing mess.
As a caring human being co-existing on this beleaguered Planet Earth with all creatures, I find it is doubly hard to see the innocent ones–living and dead, those which cannot speak for themselves, young children and animals whose implicit pleas for justice are simply ignored through inexplicable bungling by those who are assigned and charged with their protection and/or prosecution.
The writer was right; mal-treatment of animals and young children is typically found in the early years of abusers.
"To advocate the rights of animals is far more than to plead for compassion or justice towards the victims of ill-usage; it is not only, and not primarily, for the sake of the victims that we plead, but for the sake of mankind itself. Our true civilization, our race-progress, our humanity (in the best sense of the term) are concerned in this development; it is ourselves, our own vital instincts, that we wrong, when we trample on the rights of the fellow beings, human or animal, over whom we chance to hold jurisdiction." – Henry Salt, 1892.
Margo Rose
St. Thomas
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