The petition at the end of this post, asking for longer sentences for perpetrators of crimes against children, desperately needs more signatures. Please have a look at it.
I too have noticed the length of sentences for crimes against children seem to be too short, at least here in Australia, I'm wondering if that is because children are too young to vote? I don't know why it is, but I know it needs to change.
6 comments:
Do you think sentences for perpetrators of child violence should be lengthened?
Any cruelty to those more vulnerable than ourselves is just awful. I dread to think what some children endure and unfortunately this can go on to impact their treatment of others and indeed their own children.
Psychological problems are difficult to punish in some ways especially when it's a victim just growing into a culprit.
Having said that, if it was my child who'd been molested, attacked or worse, I'd probably feel pretty murderous!
I guess that's why we have a judicial system to protect ourselves from ourselves sometimes.
We had a case in this country a few years ago where a Mother (Karen Matthews) and her boyfriend, pretended her daughter had been abducted because they thought they'd get a shed load of money out of it. Apparently they dreamed it up off the back of the Madelaine McCann case which had lots of fund raisers set up in the quest to find her.
The police found the little girl stashed in the bottom of a divan bed about 3 weeks later round an Uncles! She was thankfully still alive. What on earth did they intend to do with her in the long run had the police not found her?! They were clearly severely compromised in brain function......Well, the Mothers just been released from prison after serving 4 years. Some think that's a ridiculously small sentence. I think the woman was a half wit and easily led after watching a documentary about her life. Mitigating circumstances do have to be taken into account to some degree.
I think wanton violent cruelty to children should definitely be severely punished though, but then again, I'd apply the same sentences to people who are cruel to animals.
The problem is that that little girl will have the effects her whole life, and it will probably affect her spouse and kids too, so four years seems way too short in that context.
I can hardly look at those pictures....and the same with animals...I can't even imagine the damage to a child's psyche. They say most abusers were abused themselves so it is a perpetuating problem passed onto the next generations. There needs to be more mental help and discussions to bring these people out in the open. I imagine there are parents that are overwhelmed and don't have proper coping skills that could use support and help if they reached out, but I am sure they are in denial or ashamed. Perhaps classes in how to cope with toddlers, teens etc need to be more common. I know as a young mother I could have had more parenting skills.
Now, that being said, this is totally different from purposely abusive child predators. I have a hard time even thinking about them...yes....they need long jail time with therapy.
Yeah, the whole paedophile thing is thankfully beyond most of our understanding, but again, often said to be learned behaviour. These creeps often prey in environments where they have access to children too like Boy Scout networks and the Church.
Famously we had a celebrity called Jimmy Saville in this country who spent his entire life working for the BBC as a TV presenter and big charity raiser who because of his charity work was also given the keys to a children's ward at a hospital! Following his death, he was found to have been systematically sexually abusing children his entire adult life. There had been many allegations along the way, but they had always been ignored by both the police and BBC, for whom he hosted a long running programme called Jim'll Fix It, which was about making dreams come true for children.
Once he was dead, accusations started to flood in and they had to start an enquiry. The scale of people that had turned blind eyes over the years was truly shocking.
Thankfully times have changed now and when accusations are made, children are listened to.
Woke up to a newsnap on my iPad screen this morning - Mother jailed for drugging her 9 year old daughter then locking her in the car and setting it on fire! It was because her husband had just been awarded full custody in their divorce. MIND BLOWING! She got 18 years with no chance of parole.
Now that is a kind of insanity I cannot and will not even try to understand. Horrifying.
I just can't get my head around that.
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