February 17, 2012Dear Sir,By the time I had finished reading the letter from Sheelagh Cooper in today’s Royal Gazette, referring to Noet Barnett’s sentence, I was reduced to tears. What a wonderful, compassionate letter explaining to the Judge, this young man’s background, from about six years old on. Now we see him being led from the courthouse, on his way to serve a prison sentence of 25 years. To think as Mrs Cooper describes him as “ A beautiful child with bright eyes and a wonderful innocent smile”. What have we done to this beautiful child to lead him to be an attempted murderer? Or what have we not done?A young boy traumatised at the death of his father. Day after day ignoring his desperate plight. Sleeping in a one-bedroom apartment shared with his family, failing in school, lost to the world around him. All of us, responsible to one degree or another, went home, I suspect, to a good meal and a warm bed, and perhaps some companionship, someone to talk to, and forgot about him and left this beautiful child out in the cold, probably literally! Hurt and bewildered as you can imagine, the boy grew up to be the man, unable to read or write, and passed into Dellwood School, with no tools. Did anyone other than Mrs Cooper see and understand this tragedy unfolding before their eyes? Now off to CedarBridge, and once again, nobody sees the need, or sees, but does nothing about it! “Well yes,” we will hear, “he slipped through the (famous) crack”, which must be overflowing by now.Where were we? Where was that basic compassion and decency, that we all, in our various degrees of responsibility and shame, should have had that we left this child, now a young man, to fend and fight for himself with not a vestige of equipment at hand? It would be like sending a young boy out into the woods like Romulus and Remus, two twin boys found by a mother wolf in the woods, who nurtured and suckled them back in 753BC. Did we do as much for this boy, this child, this man, over the years? What a lesson! How many more have to go down before we wake up? As parents, as teachers and as board members of caring organisations, as committees, as governments, when are we going to identify with “There but for the Grace of God go I”?By next week, will we have forgotten and moved on to our next mistake? As I went to sleep the other night, I thought of the man in his cell, and felt as Mrs Cooper indicated. Should we be in that cell instead? It is too late for him, and in the harshness of his tragic life, he is left to pay the price of 25 years for our sins. This does not mean we forgive him for the crime, but our prayers should go out to him and hope that we could be forgiven. He will have a very long time to consider this, but my hope is that he will get the education in prison that he was denied, maybe learn a trade, and by the time he is released, he will be able to read and write, and get a job, so that some of the things he has suffered will not be in vain. I would finally like to thank Mrs Cooper for that wonderful letter sent to the judge, and to say how fortunate we are to have such a guardian and administrator in our midst.DIANA WILLIAMSPembroke