REVEREND Dr Devon Dick is defending his stance that he was not referring to any employee at Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) during his sermon on Sunday, when he shared that he had a counselling session with a woman who defrauded a bank of a significant amount of money.

He was speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday against the backdrop of a news report which indicated that while he did not identify the woman, family members of the former SSL employee worship at the church and are long-time members of the denomination.

The news report gained much public reaction, some of which pointed to Dick breaching confidentiality by disclosing information about the counselling session during his sermon.

“There was an explanation [from the news report] that it was with the SSL person but I have never spoken to any SSL employee, CEO or director present or pass. I wasn’t talking about that at all,” Dick told the Observer.

During his sermon, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good’, on Sunday, Dick explained that last December he was asked to counsel the woman who defrauded a significant amount of money from a bank.

Further, he said that after speaking with her, “she said to me that she took the money, to help some relatives with their personal expenses”.

Against that backdrop, the churchman said whenever females defraud a financial institution of money, it is usually for a ‘noble cause’, while men who steal from the bank normally show off, profile with it and floss.

He then urged the congregation to avoid bad means to get good ends.

“It was a different case and as I said from last year December in which this person who took some money from the bank, has already confessed to the bank, and I was just trying to make a point that she said it was to help relatives,” Dick explained to the Observer.

“Then I asked the question, ‘Does the end justify the means?’ because you have this ‘robin hood’ culture where you take from the rich to give to the poor and I also gave example of the movie John Q with actor Denzel Washington, in which he didn’t have the money to get surgery for his son and he held the people hostage, and the doctors agree to do it free,” he added.

He described the report as misleading, noting that the SSL’s employee’s mother was not present at the sermon and is not a member there.

“They had the story that she was in church, [but] she wasn’t in church. They had the story that she was a long-time member of the church, [she has] never been a member of the church. It was very misleading,” said Dick.

“It was just emphatic. The funny thing about it, assuming that I was speaking of her [SSL employee] and I wasn’t, it would be a confession by her about it, which is in the public domain,” he added.