Yvonne Webb

Mod­er­a­tor of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Rev Bren­da Bul­lock, has blamed a lack of re­spect and rev­er­ence for life for the spate of mur­ders in the coun­try. "No­body re­spects any­one any­more and that is why we are los­ing the so­ci­ety," Bul­lock said in an in­ter­view af­ter ad­dress­ing stu­dents at the open­ing of the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church Va­ca­tion Bible School, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day. In her ser­mon, she lament­ed there were not enough he­roes for young peo­ple to em­u­late and sug­gest­ed that may be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the lack of re­spect. She called on the young peo­ple to be good and do good so they too could be every­day he­roes.

She said: "Some­times the very peo­ple we put on a pedestal, af­ter a while we dis­cov­er they have clay feet and they fall down. "When the per­son who you put con­fi­dence and trust in be­trays that it is very dif­fi­cult to trust an­oth­er per­son and you lose some­thing that nev­er comes back, once it is gone." Bullovk said the coun­try did not ar­rive at that state overnight. She said: Gov­ern­ment can't solve the prob­lem on its own. No one agency or in­sti­tu­tion can solve the prob­lems.

"We (adults) have to set the ex­am­ple, be the ex­am­ple. We can­not tell some­one not to do some­thing, if we our­selves are guilty of do­ing it. They are not go­ing to lis­ten. We have to live what we preach." She called on par­ents to cre­ate a re­spon­si­ble en­vi­ron­ment for their chil­dren and to teach them right from wrong, so they would not grow up to be crim­i­nals. She said: "From ear­ly, there should be con­se­quences for ac­tion. Even from a child­hood per­spec­tive, if your child does some­thing wrong there should be pun­ish­ment.