Progress towards justice for Roger & Margaret's hopes for 2018

Hello everybody, my name is Margaret Pratt and I’m talking to you again today to give you an update on the status of Justice for Roger.

This campaign has been extraordinarily successful, not just in raising awareness of Justice for Roger but also of the number of other people murdered in St Lucia.

Since Roger died there have been 145 more homicides. For an island as small as St Lucia that’s an incredible statistic and one I think we all reflect on with great sadness.

One of the reasons that the campaign this year has been so successful is that it struck a nerve and raised awareness of violent crime. Raising that awareness amongst the population and having them campaigning on our behalf, backing us, is so valuable in taking the campaign for justice for Roger forward.

We get thousands of visitors to the site every month. Most of the visitors are from the US and from the UK and Ireland, big components of St Lucia’s tourist trade.

But the thing that pleases me most is the traction that the campaign has got in St Lucia itself.

I’ve had really positive feedback from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office about their visit out to St Lucia last month and their discussions with Daarsrean Greene.

The advice that’s been given is that it’s a really bad idea for me to go out to the island until the trial. The reason that I’ve been given for that, is that if I’m there and I’m high-profile, or even if this campaign appears to be very high-profile, the judges might take a stance that says the defendants can’t get a fair trial.

I understand and respect that argument, on the other hand I also know that this campaign has been instrumental in getting the case to the stage it’s at in terms of its court life. That’s really not so very far, but it would be even less far had we not made the progress we’ve made over the past year.

I want to thank everyone for their support and for their encouragement. I’d like to end by wishing everyone a very happy Christmas and a very happy, prosperous and successful 2018. Let’s hope that happiness and success is mirrored by a result for the Justice for Roger campaign. Thank you all so much.