Notes from a small island

Notes from a small island
A weblog by Jonathan Ali

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

Roy Dubay, the charlatan who passed himself off as a psychic and then duped a woman into having sex with him, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment yesterday, the Trinidad Express reports.

'Justice Alice Yorke Soo Hon told Dubay when he fooled the woman, a librarian, “you acted like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You led her to the slaughter”.

'Justice Soo Hon also questioned how the woman, who the court was told was well educated, could have fallen for the rape plot saying, “it is difficult to understand how she was so gullible, naive, so careless for her own safety”.

'The judge said she could not understand the victim’s gullibility, since she was a librarian, had five CXC subjects and three A-level passes, was ready for tertiary level education, and seemed an intelligent person.'

I may not have the credentials of the learned Madame Justice, but I'd like to venture a guess, and it has nothing to do with formal education, which Soo Hoon erroneously equates with intelligence. Our nation continues to labour under the yoke of religious superstition. From the Prime Minister's office go down, our blind, irrational adherence to superstitious mumbo jumbo is yet another stumbling block to our progress. Usually the results are largely harmless (if annoying), resulting in such things as Venezuelans with supposedly clairvoyant abilities making the front pages of the newspapers with their predictions for the year to come (and it's about that time again, folks, get ready - will we be informed yet again that a senior politician will meet his demise?). Too often, however, the results are far more tragic, as in this case.

posted by Jonathan | 12:11 PM 0 comments

0 Comments: