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Following the arrest of the suspected assailants of 14-year-old sacristan Carlo Sacedon Mangitngit, three incidents of teen violence have drawn a lament from Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal who called on Congress to review the Juvenile Justice Act.
Two violent clashes between the Bloods and Crips gangs that occurred last Tuesday. A former Crips gang member named Jeffrey Maloloy-on Jakosalem was sleeping on a wooden bench by the roadside when he was shot several times by someone known only as ?Erap.?
Earlier that day, a Bloods gang member named Kenneth Veloso and a teenage girl were shot down also by the roadside presumably by rival gang members. The following day, an 18-year-old named Emmanuel Limpangog was waylaid after he attended Veloso's wake.
Limpangog was in an Internet cafe in barangay Tejero, Cebu City when he was shot by two men. The victim, who is still in critical condition, was not a gang member but Veloso's cousin yet this didn't deter the assailants from shooting him several times.
In calling for a review of the Juvenile Justice Act of 2006, Vidal said the country's youth had a low appreciation of the value of human life as evidenced by the spate of teenage gang violence.
To be fair, while these three incidents may have occurred within days, one trusts that the violence between these two gangs is more or less curbed by the Cebu City police who also have their hands full dealing with robbers and hoodlums.
But Vidal does raise a good point about the law?s unintended effect.
While the law in itself is considered a landmark legislation for dealing with youthful offenders, there is valid concern that it goes ?too soft? on young violators already hardened beyond years of street thuggery.
The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, while not exactly perfect, places the responsibility of rehabilitating wayward youths in the hands of the State, which exempts them from trial and criminal liability.
The framers of the law, principally its author Sen. Francis Pangilinan, believes juvenile delinquents or youthful offenders are still ?redeemable? and can thus change for the better.
In this regard, Vidal answers the question himself about the law's effectiveness and relevance. He said the Church itself should take the lead in instituting programs aimed at reorienting the youth to respect and value life.
But it is a shared responsibility with other groups, no less by the parents, schools, the community and the mass media, whose images and soundbites have become a de-facto babysitter and companion to the young, who are spending more time texting and surfing the Web than actually talking to their parents.
In short, the Church and State should strengthen families in order to nip youth violence in the bud.
