The Editor, Sir:

Two events on February 19 left me chilled to the bone and brought home just how vicious a society we are living in - one I witnessed and the other I saw on TV news.

The event I witnessed was one street boy beating a smaller one in Half-Way Tree Monday night. He was punching him and kneeing him in the chest while the smaller boy was doubled over. Of course, there was a nice little audience of street boys and other spectators.

I am tryingand failing to imagine what that boy did to deserve such treatment. The smaller boy ran off and on to a bus and was followed by the others. I don't know what transpired after, but I sincerely hope that someone intervened before he pummeled the child any further.

These boys are seriously in need of care and protection and the number seems to be growing daily.

The second, even more bone-chilling event, was a news item showing a two-year child who had been doused with caustic soda by a woman, her father's ex-lover, I gather. Words cannot express how I felt (and still feel) on seeing that newscast. Any sane and civil person should cringe at the sight. How one woman could be so vicious to a child (a baby) I'm sure is beyond the realms of anyone's understanding.

Yet it happened. And a child is totally disfigured. Surgery can help but she will never be the same child.

The pain that that child is feeling! I did not hear what happened to that woman but I hope that she was caught and I am thinking of all kinds of punishment that would not be legal but I sincerely hope she is persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. She deserves a fate worse than death for what she did to that child, but ... the law will prevail.

I am, etc.,

SOPHIA JARRETT BRIDGE

waterfordres@hotmail.com

Waterford, St. Catherine

Via Go-Jamaica