Apples and Oranges, a J Nicholson
By Judie O’Sullivan
I take this opportunity to respond to a column written by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs A J Nicholson that was published in the Sunday Observer on January 15, 2017. In his piece, the former minister essentially questioned the moral grounds of the Government’s strong response to the case of Heather Murray, the principal of Hampton School, who is now embroiled in a moral dilemma, and who has been asked to answer questions by the Ministry of Education stemming from her appearance at the court hearing of a Moravian pastor accused of molesting a minor. The premise of the former minister’s cynicism is that hardly anyone showed any such strong moral concern for the victim in the case involving the Jamaican pilot who served a five-year sentence in Qatar for sexually abusing a minor. I categorically reject the former minister’s assertion, and I would urge him to desist from comparing situations that bear little similarities and to provide an objective and accurate assessment of both scenarios. As a justice of the peace and a parent, I unequivocally condemn all acts of misconduct committed against all minors and believe that all sex offenders must face stiff penalties once there is evidence that sufficiently establishes the guilt of the accused. In the case involving the convicted pilot, I made no presumption of his innocence of guilt before carefully reviewing the details of the case. In fact, I did not know the convicted pilot and it was through sheer coincidence — some would say an act of God, in the form of a change in my travel route and a delayed flight, that I got involved in the case. After having conducted my own investigation, based on the desperate pleas of his friends, family and loved ones, I concluded that there were sufficient grounds to doubt the credibility of the circumstances that led to his conviction. In my investigation into the case, I have travelled to Qatar where I met with officials of all three courts involved in the case. I also visited the headquarters of Qatar Airways, the prison where the pilot is serving his sentence, Doha Christian Fellowship Church of which he was a member, and the community in which the pilot lived. I also met with several of his friends who attended the court hearings. Having received a copy of the court transcript, it was established the alleged victim was a virgin and that the charges were later reduced to mistrust of minor, and not rape, after no physical evidence, such as DNA or trauma to the victim, could be furnished to establish the case for rape in the courts. The hearings also failed to produce evidence of a “confession” that the accused was said to have given. The mother of the alleged victim also fled the country and did not show up for the trial hearings out of the fear of being charged. It was also discovered that the alleged victim was Trinidadian, and not Qatari, as I had previously thought, and that she was upset that the accused pilot had jeopardised a relationship between her mother and father. It was, therefore, clear from my investigations that the case against the accused pilot had some serious credibility concerns which compelled me to solicit the involvement of the foreign ministry to intervene on his behalf. Based on the facts surrounding the case involving the convicted Jamaican pilot in Qatar, I cannot fathom how the former minister could have then made such an irresponsible and ill-conceived comparison. The records in the sex allegations case against the Moravian pastor indicates that he was caught by police officers in a compromising act with a 15-year-old minor in his car on Wednesday, December 28, 2016. Later a second charge was added against the pastor by the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse after it was alleged that he had been sexually involved with the victim’s older sister when she was 15 as well. Heather Murray, who had turned up at the pastor’s court hearing to allegedly show support for the accused’s wife, is now rightly under scrutiny from the Ministry of Education to determine if her actions indicated an error of judgement and conflict of interest in her capacity as principal of an all-girls institution and also an employee of the State. I must say that I am not surprised by Nicholson’s latest comments. It has become quite evident that in his former capacity as minister of foreign affairs he was convinced that the accused pilot was guilty and thus deserved his conviction, even though the alleged victim failed to produce even a shred of reliable evidence against him. Indeed, Nicholson’s repeated actions and utterances related to the case corroborate my conclusion. I distinctly recall his demeanour when I sought to get the foreign ministry to intervene on the pilot’s behalf based on the desperate pleas from family, loved ones and friends. On a telephone call I made to discuss the case, Nicholson himself was very abrupt. I made several trips and phone calls to the ministry which also proved futile. Attempts to arrange meetings with the former prime minister and Nicholson proved equally futile. All this time, I received full support from Edmund Bartlett, who was the then Opposition spokesperson on tourism and foreign affairs. It would appear that the former minister is quite upset that others did not adopt the same approach towards the plight of the distressed Jamaican citizen. In closing, as someone who was also falsely accused and judgement awarded against, I have first-hand experience of injustice. It is for this reason that I strongly affirm that it is the State’s obligation to honour its commitment to justice for all by ensuring it carries out due diligence and ensures that due process is guaranteed for all its citizens, including nationals detained abroad, and especially minors. The State must never drop the ball on this commitment. It cannot be that we only value our foreign-based citizens for the remittances sent back to develop our nation, but abandon them when they have found themselves in unfortunate situations. That must never be the modus operandi of the State towards it citizens. The pilot was sentenced to five years, but served less than three years, and I must thank Bartlett for setting the standard in this regard. I thus urge the former minister to re-evaluate his stance on this issue and recognise the folly of comparing apples with oranges.
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