Disproportionate sentencing
I could have posted this under one of the other pussy pass posts but seriously this is more than sick enough to warrant its own post.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11129272
The teenage girl was sentenced to two years intensive supervision and 200 hours community work for six charges, including uploading the images to the internet.
She is also subject to conditions around not associating with children or having access to devices capable of connecting to the internet or taking photos.
Justice Ellis told her she hoped the teen understood how lucky she was to be given the chance to redeem herself.
“The harm you caused this little girl and her family will never be over. Unlike you, they do not get a second chance.”
Given the nature of this offence and the age of the victim (10 years)
Johann Daubeck, 19, and his girlfriend, whose identity is suppressed, were sentenced in the High Court in Auckland today by Justice Rebecca Ellis.
Daubeck was sentenced to seven years in prison with a minimum period of imprisonment of four years.
He had pleaded guilty to sexual violation by rape of a child under 12, sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and one charge of making an intimate visual recording.
If the co-offender had been male – no way!
What I have also found interesting is sentencing involving animals. Compare this – story here.
A Rotorua woman has been sentenced to four months’ jail after her pitbull attacked a toddler and tore a large section of skin of the child’s forehead.
Philomena Mathews appeared for sentencing before Judge James Weir in the Rotorua District Court.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/222638/teen-couple-sexually-abused-child,-posted-it-online
Comment by Downunder — Tue 24th September 2013 @ 6:35 pm
I noticed this one too. The female co-offender probably doesn’t deserve an equal sentence, but I’m surprised she got name suppression.
Note that Daubeck does have a previous conviction for this kind of offense, and he also raped the girl twice on his own:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11129272
I think he was lucky to get only seven years.
Comment by JohnPotter — Tue 24th September 2013 @ 9:39 pm
We agree, Downunder. No male who committed the offences done by this woman would ever get such a light community sentence, little more than a ‘helping’ sentence, or name suppression when publishing the name would not identify the victim.
Of course, she cannot be prosecuted at all for rape which is one of our gender-specific crimes applying only to men (with the exception perhaps of those women who have had an artificial penis attached). In NZ, a woman cannot rape a man according to our law.
However, the sexual acts this unnamed young woman committed almost certainly met the criteria for sexual violation which is equivalent to rape (rape being a subcategory of sexual violation). Indeed, the judge pointed out that her offending carried a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment, this being the penalty for both sexual violation and rape. No male offender over the last few decades will have avoided a significant prison sentence or at least home detention for this offence, but for a female offender, no worries. And this female offender also posted photos of the sexual acts on the internet, possibly more harmful than any of the sexual acts the couple committed. While we agree with John Potter that for various reasons her male co-offender appropriately deserved a more severe sentence, what she received was another unbelievable example of gender favouritism in the Courts.
Note that most news articles on the case avoided mentioning the female offender’s actual offences except that she posted the photos on the internet. Note also that the Herald article referred to the female offender as a “teen” and a “teenage girl”. Well actually, the male offender was a teenage boy, but you wouldn’t think so from the tenor of the articles or the disparate treatment towards the co-offenders by this judge. Note also that the judge was female.
Note also that that the judge referred to the female offender’s history of sexual abuse and ‘significant psychological problems’ in justification of the incredibly light sentence. Yet the male offender also had a history of sexual abuse and was described as wanting to receive treatment for his offending that obviously resulted from his own psychological problems.
And of course we won’t hear any indignation from feminist groups or from that Sentencing Trust that rarely says anything sensible. Groups complaining about lenient sentencing only seem to care if it’s men who appear to be treated mercifully. The latest stupidity from the Nonsensical Sentencing Trust is a call to stop allowing insane people to be found not guilty. This call of course came accompanied by false claims about mental illness and about the legal finding ‘not guilty on the grounds of insanity’ which is actually a very high threshhold and difficult even for very disturbed people to meet. Yet we have never heard any concern from this self-righteous lynch mob about the sentences that are consistently the most inadequate ones, that for female offenders.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Tue 24th September 2013 @ 11:29 pm
Fred & Rose West as well as Ian Brady & Myra Hindley come to mind. We, society, are just wired to believe that the female of the species are blameless. Females are treated like children, with a coating of innocence and gullibility. Even when, as in the case of the above, they encourage and assist the male to commit these crimes many believe that the real villain is the male. This link is an interesting look at some females convicted of pedophilia. As it is with the men, some look the part some don’t.
Comment by triassic — Wed 25th September 2013 @ 11:33 am
MoMA’s comments are spot on in the technical sense. The problem is that they take the caughts too seriously. This may be a big mistake.
The profit media in NZ are on fairly hard times and greatly reduced market incomes have forced them to viciously trim non profit returning deadweight costs, such as investigative journalism. Even page 3 girls cannot compete with free reddit gonewild. (Surely the upskirt men must be market-unaware fools, when better product is to be had free?)
The police and prosecution services are paid by public spectacle, not for getting it right. They do what they are paid to do – fit people up and jail them, like press gangs. Technical professional investigative skills are not needed, they just get in the way, they are a barrier and nuisance, not a modus operandi.
Maybe these legal workers have value problems as suggested by the nomenclature pussy pass. From the number of complaints about legal work paid for by GSTless pussy, then they do seem to have “hard” values. Apart from the GST and paye, does it really matter?
Sure, the legal workers need protection, but I am not that worried about them.
I suggest that our social caught problems relate to the incentives that these people are paid under. Competence at investigation or identifying public interest just doesn’t come into play.
The real game is the spectacle. Choreographing the fall guys, keeping them in line until the noose is tightened and they realise the real game when it is too late. Keeping the tunes in line with PC public prejudices, rather than public interest.
If the fall guy complains that the game has changed, everyone laughs as the cruelty climaxes to its slimy peak. In the end, every laughing inactive idiot is the loser.
One clear example of prejudice driving the choice of fall guy: Kaitlin Hunt Another? Evgeny Orlov
A Canadian example of pussy pass out of control – Karla Homolka. The man never murdered until he worked with her, he is in jail and she is outside getting on with life. It seems she learned her lesson, history will tell. Main thing is, the public know that A murderer is in jail, so they can relax in their befuddled stupidity.
Who murdered the road worker a few months back?
Who suffered more, David Dougherty, or the girl that he supposedly raped? This isn’t the important question, the important question is that those police are still out on the loose.
If we want society to get better, we do need to aim much higher.
Lets focus on the incentives that these non-market clowns work under.
The caughts are slowly getting better at professional risk management. This should be supported and encouraged to get better still. This involves seeing behaviours and offences as they really are and responding appropriately.
Good quality media reporting would be an essential part of this, but I admit I am not financially supporting them enough.
MomA’s initiatives should be supported.
Life is a horror movie Hard Candy
Cheers, MurrayBacon.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Wed 25th September 2013 @ 12:19 pm
Great commentary on our justicecorp system Murray. Very cynical and we’re not knowledgeable enough to judge the accuracy of your expose, though much of what you say rings true.
Regardless of such overriding issues, we believe that favouritism, protectiveness and assumptions of goodness and naivety concerning females compared with blaming, abuse and assumptions of badness concerning males are a fundamental problem in law enforcement and justice, and indeed in the attitudes of society generally. Surprisingly, this gender inequality has been fuelled by feminist misandry although it existed in moderated form prior to modern feminism.
We will call out gender inequality when we see it. The case of Daubeck and his unnamed girlfriend is a blatant example.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Thu 26th September 2013 @ 1:15 pm
Another somewhat similar drop dead gorgeous example, from Wikipedia: Debra Lafave – Too pretty for women’s jail
Whenever the apparent punishment seems too severe, then both judges and juries may find it unconscionable to convict, as we see in the case above.
Note how the prosecutor was soooo-ooo-ooo concerned about the pressures on the victimised non complaining boy, that he scuppered the trial. I am not trying to make light of the impacts onto the boy, but to me it looks more like the prosecutor couldn’t reconcile such a pretty lady being wasted in jail.
I suspect that the boy was soooo-ooo-ooo horrified at what his actions had done to the teacher, that he didn’t want the prosecution to proceed, so this gave the prosecutor an easy out.
We see the same reluctance to assist the prosecution in quite a few sexual abuse or incest situations, where maybe the mother or father of the child doesn’t want the prosecution to proceed because of the future impacts onto the family. Similarly for the child.
These pressures to not make a complaint can be used by the perpetrator, to put pressure on the victim to not complain…. These pressures may cause more harm than the apparent offence, in many situations.
If our responses to such crimes were more proportionate and careful, then maybe we could get the opportunity to tackle a much higher proportion of such offences.
Roman Polanski was faced with a withdrawal from a plea bargain, after it had been agreed and in the uncertainty of what was happening, he escaped from USA. He lost faith in the USA justice system. From too lenient, it suddenly looked as though it was going to become too harsh. The Samantha Geimer post doesn’t make these points clear, so you need to read up on the background.
The idea of “let the punishment fit the crime”, is thousands of years old and alas, still surprisingly new?
The death penalty was removed in countries that aren’t “cruel and unusual”, as both judges and juries were refusing to convict, knowing the possible consequences of such a decision. Sympathy is a powerful and deep emotion.
Cheers, MurrayBacon.
Comment by MurrayBacon — Sat 28th September 2013 @ 3:11 pm