Here are several incredible examples of the pussy pass, sexist chivalry on display in our criminal justice system.

Firstly, this female ‘professional caregiver’ was employed to look after a 4-month-old baby at the baby’s family home. The father returned unexpectedly to find the nanny had gone out leaving the baby alone and unprotected. The father waited there all morning, for 2 hours and 20 minutes, before the nanny returned. The nanny subsequently apologized publicly but was full of excuses that simply showed she deliberately left her post intending from the outset to stay away for the significant time it would take to complete a number of items of personal business. After sentencing she showed her level of contemplation and remorse by stating “I don’t want to say any more about it”. The maximum penalty for the crime of ‘Abandoning a Child Under 6′ is 7 years’ imprisonment, but this nanny was convicted of ‘leaving a child unsupervised’, presumably section 10B of the Summary Offences Act 1981, for which the maximum penalty is a $2000 fine. Even assuming the lesser charge was appropriate, this woman received a fine of $200, one tenth of the maximum fine available, the same as you would be fined if you drive your car when its registration/licence fee has expired. Surely this woman’s offence was at the top end of this offending because of the duration that she abandoned the child with aggravating factors including the fact that she was employed as a professional caregiver and the young, totally dependent age of the baby? Ok, if a caregiver had left a 9yo child for a couple of hours with a phone number and instructions for dealing with emergencies, one could accept that as being at one-tenth of the maximum gravity of an offence of this kind, but what, other than the female gender of this offender, made her sentence so lenient?

How do our Courts treat men for the same offence? This man was fined $1200 for leaving his children in a truck for 30 minutes, when he left the truck intending to be gone for only 5 minutes. This man was fined $750 for leaving a baby in a car outside a pokie bar while he went in to gamble; no information was available about the duration he left the baby, but he said he was filling in time while waiting until his partner finished work.

Another pussy pass this week was given to Dale Wickham who was sentenced to 12 months’ home detention for killing her husband. She was charged with murder and the jury rejected her claim that she killed her husband in self-defence, but it still found her guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. The partial defence of provocation was no longer available, so the jury must have found a way of believing that she did not intend to kill him. But hang on, she went to her (separate) bedroom to get a loaded shotgun, came back into the room where her husband was, pointed it at him at close range and, at some stage after taking the safety catch off, shot and killed him. Initially she told police that she had killed him ‘because he had tried to throttle me again’ and she had ‘had enough’. Well, this throttling was alleged to have happened a short time earlier and she had already called the police, so surely her statement was an admission that the killing was done as a consequence for her husband’s alleged misbehaviour? That’s murder not manslaughter. The jury’s decision appears to have been an act of compassionate chivalry that no man in similar circumstances could ever expect. And even then, 12 months’ home detention for manslaughter?! A man could expect a similar level of punishment for illegally storing a loaded shotgun contrary to the Arms Act (um, why wasn’t she charged for that?) and simply pointing it at someone. Wake up men, wake up people! Our legal system is trivializing the killing of men by women using any disproportionate force.

The third pussy pass this week is simply and utterly beyond belief. A 23yo woman, Jessica Louise Jane Bollen, participated with two male co-offenders in a crime spree along the length of the West Coast of the South Island. They had together hatched a plan to do this whilst in Tauranga and travelled all the way to the West Coast to carry it out. They broke into numerous vehicles and stole items of value, and into a lodge where they stole tourists’ suitcases. When their car was searched Ms Bollen’s travel bag contained cameras and other stolen items. She lied to police, claiming she was a hitchhiker who had been picked up locally, then she changed her lies to claim she had been an ‘unwilling member of the group’ who did not take part in the thefts and did not know how the items (which just happened to coincide with her keen hobby of photography) came to be in her bag. In Court, she then claimed that she had been scared of one of her travel companions and had been unable to ‘escape’ from him! Yeah right, all the way from Tauranga, on the Cook Strait ferry and down to the southern West Coast there was simply no opportunity for her to ‘escape’. Her claims were highly inconsistent with the admission made by the younger of the two co-offenders who had been dealt with in the Youth Court. The other co-offender had already been imprisoned. So was this adult woman held accountable for her thievery? Certainly not! She was discharged without conviction, leaving her able to resume work as a certified security guard and still realize her ambition of becoming a policewoman. Don’t believe me? Here it is.

How much are men to endure of this nonsense?