Gender bias in sentencing
The following is an excerpt from the daily 3 news e-missive detailing lead stories to be seen on 6:00 pm news.
Woman jailed after drug-fuelled sex with 14-year-old
27-year-old Nelson woman Kursty Anne Hunter has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for supplying a 14-year-old boy drugs and having sex with him. The boy’s parents say they fear his childhood has been ruined forever.
I have just watched the item and was forced to utter a derisory laugh upon learning at the end of the item that the perpetrator had been granted leave to apply for home detention!
Applying artistic license here is the same scenario with a role reversal from a gender perspective:
“Man jailed after drug-fuelled sex with 14-year-old 27-year-old Nelson man K A Hunter has been sentenced to 12 years in jail for supplying a 14-year-old girl drugs and having sex with her. The girl’s parents (and lawyers and teachers and MP’s and psychiatrists and Police and doctors and anyone else who comes to mind) say they fear her childhood has been ruined forever.” Footnote: An application for home detention was declined with a stern admonishment from the judge for bringing the court into disrepute by making such submission. Instead a non-parole period of 10 years was ordered.
Now that’s more to the point.
See the post by Hans on Pauls-news
Comment by Alastair — Wed 19th September 2007 @ 7:12 pm
sorry Alastair, but some of us cannot access Paul News as he bans various people who he does not like .
No wonder the men’s movement is an ineffective white elephant as no cohesion and solidarity exists amongst the ranks .
Comment by dad4justice — Thu 20th September 2007 @ 6:23 am
Peter is right I cant find it on Google emailed to be added to list but no response!!
Comment by Mike — Thu 20th September 2007 @ 7:58 am
Here is my post from Pauls News. It more or less says the same as Mike’s posting.
From the many cases I have been involved in, a male first offender who committed this crime would be imprisoned for at least four years, and probably around six years. This offence carries a maximum prison term of 20 years. I note that this woman was convicted of “unlawful sexual connection” whereas a male in a similar situation would probably be charged with multiple offences including rape (defined in NZ so that only men can be convicted of it), indecent assault, indecent acts etc. I note also that the media article referred to the woman being jailed for a “sexual affair” and for “having a sexual relationship with” the boy. This kind of language would never be used for a male offender, but terms such as “repeatedly raping” and “sexually abusing a 14-year-old” would. The media would also be likely to report much more extensively on the case, front page, and to describe how and where the man met his victim and other information in order to warn the public of the modus operandi.
Hans
Comment by Hans Laven — Thu 20th September 2007 @ 10:23 am
18 months??,
What a joke!!.
Still, I suppose it’s better than the usual sentence of Community Service, metered out to female paedo-philes.
Yes Hans, it is strange how the language contrasts between the two descriptions.
True equality at work, no less.
Comment by MikeT — Fri 21st September 2007 @ 3:34 pm
Noting the possible mental dysfunction this 14 year old boy will come out with from a result of what happened to him. When he grows up and becomes “male offender” of “unlawful sexual connection” .. wonder what sentencing he will get?
Comment by Hellen Clark — Fri 21st September 2007 @ 4:03 pm
Internet predator jailed for sex abuse of teen girl
A predatory paedophile who stalked a 14-year-old girl on the internet and manipulated her into a sexual relationship has been jailed for at least six years.
Comment by Paul Catton — Sat 22nd September 2007 @ 8:08 am
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4210175a12.html
Comment by Paul Catton — Sat 22nd September 2007 @ 8:12 am
Thanks for that one Paul, quite a good example. Actually, the guy’s sentence was for almost 8 years (7 years 9 months) with a minimum parole period of six years. He is described as a “predatory pedophile”, a “parent’s worst nightmare”, and he was charged and convicted with numerous offences even though the actual number of offences against the 14-year-old was much lower than in this case of our female offender. However, the male case you have alerted us to appears to be an Australian one, and it would be good to highlight a recent NZ case to show the gender bias.
Comment by Hans Laven — Sat 22nd September 2007 @ 11:31 am
We come back to the point on being proactive. It is possible that Hans is right to observe that the difference between country of sentencing will mitigate the effect and that a New Zealand case would be better to quote. Surely there will be a New Zealand case of this nature? From a coalition perspective, surely we have an ability to access this information. There must be some sentencing cases of adult makles having sexual contact with a minor aged 14? Or are we simply hopeless?
ONce we have a case then proactively we can bring this disparity to the attention of the media, and, of course, to the attention of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner. If the Judges are functioning in a manner that is ionconsistent with the behaviour we expect from others, behaviour that is consistent with our human rights obligations, then it is an issue that must be brought to the attention of teh Commissioner – and as soon as possible!
If we can get the argument into a short sharp set of paragraphs we should be able to post it on Vince Seimer’s Site.
Anyone keen?
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Sat 22nd September 2007 @ 1:23 pm
Woman who had sex with boy spared jail
The first woman in New Zealand convicted of having sex with an underage boy has been spared jail because of an administrative mistake.
http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?l=1&t=103&id=2210
At least it seems to be taken more seriously
Comment by Paul Catton — Sat 22nd September 2007 @ 3:20 pm
No, she was not sentenced to jail for being a predatory paedophile, but only a caring community-based sentence. She faced the possibility of jail only because she repeatedly breached the modest terms of that limp-wristed sentence. But Probation obliged her by failing to deal with her properly. At every point in the criminal justice system she gets an easy ride. Is this for any other reason than her gender?
Comment by Hans Laven — Sat 22nd September 2007 @ 5:16 pm
As one of the moderators of the new pauls-news, as well one of the moderators of the old list, I am compelled to respond to the comments of dad4justice.
We have never banned anybody from either list because we do “not like” them. We have banned people for various reasons, but that has never been one of them.
Comment by Darryl Ward — Sat 22nd September 2007 @ 10:15 pm
Yes various reasons Darryl , Steve Flynn turned out to be a nice bloke eh ?
It is sad that the word trust is not a word taken for granted and gospel in the Fathers Rights Movement .
Comment by dad4justice — Sun 23rd September 2007 @ 3:47 pm
Darryl,
this is the wrong message to write to your comment. Your writing against the rules.
Benjamin.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Sun 23rd September 2007 @ 3:49 pm
D4J, the individual to whom you refer is not and has never been a list owner or moderator. Attacking the list in a public forum is not an appropriate way of dealing with an issue with any particular member of that list.
Ben, sorry, but I do not understand your post.
Comment by Darryl Ward — Sun 23rd September 2007 @ 11:04 pm
This case is not the first. Refer to Briar Dravitski, sentenced in December 2005 was noted as the first. Only an administrative error saved her from Jail.
Regarding pauls-news and speaking as another of the moderators, I am not aware of anyone ever being banned.
Comment by Alastair — Mon 24th September 2007 @ 12:20 am
Alastair et al,
There were a few people banned from the old Paul’s News, about 5 or 6 over about 5 years from memory. The list had rules, as the new list does also, and members were expected to abide by though rules. dad4justice likes to suggest that he was banned because I do not like him. But I don’t know whether I like him or not as I don’t actually know him. In fact, I don’t know most of the other members of Paul’s News either.
But dad4justice broke rules over and over, and he had warnings and temporary bans and each time he promised not to repeat the offence, but then he did again and again. We were very patient with him, but in the end the decision had to be made. It was nothing personal, as I said, I don’t know dad4justice so I can’t say that I like or dislike him. But I always hoped dad4justice could abide by the rules and remain a contributor to the list, but he chose his own destiny. Now, after about 3 years or so he still rants on the Net from time to time as if he is not at fault.
Like Darryl, I too could not understand Ben’s post.
Mike,
Paul News is a private list, it is not in any search engine. That has nothing to do with Peter’s (dad4justice) comments though. If you want to join up and participate, please email Darryl – see http://www.dward.tk for his address. (I assume that’s okay to mention Darryl, given that you linked to it in this forum first.)
As for Kursty Anne Hunter’s 18 months jail sentence, it is sickening.
Regards
Paul R
Comment by Paul Robertson — Mon 24th September 2007 @ 11:05 am
The URL for pauls-news is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pauls-news/ and if your interests are more to CYF cyfstalk.org You have to join both and unlike PANIC and others have rules and are moderated
Comment by Alastair — Mon 24th September 2007 @ 12:44 pm
You folk are rule makers and moderators. You observe due process. Yet what have your messages got to do with the original post?
You don’t comprehend me because your not thinking past your own brains. Other people have brains as well – and the unfortunate thing for people like Pete and me, where we are at the front line, trying to get the moderates and moderators to think beyond themselves, is that they quite simply don’t. Our frustration boils over and we get kicked off lists or it becomes trendy to recognise that you cannot comprehend what is being said.
Slow down guys. The purpose of a collective body should be to accomodate each other in unity. What I said was very clear. If you want to play by rules then read them and use them. But Darryl you have no authority to slag off on Pete on a page that Mike put up about adults having sex with minors.
Some of the above will be clearer than all.
Respectfully,
Benjamin Easton,
(of a) fathers’ colaition.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Mon 24th September 2007 @ 1:17 pm
Ben
Please read my post.
If you do so, you will learn that I was not “slagging off” ANYBODY.
Your suggestion that I am “slagging off” people, when I am not, is defamatory.
Kind regards
Darryl
Comment by Darryl Ward — Mon 24th September 2007 @ 1:49 pm
Fair enough,
I don’t have a problem either where you were not “slagging off” Pete, where I concede that you were not, or for my point, because you have succesfully navigated away from he point I am trying to bring to your attention, that you miss, that I may be defaming you.
In the proceedings of that defence (mine) I suggest that the point I am raising on behalf of Jim Bailey, Pete and others like myself whose frustration is compounded by the moderates downplaying the serious nature of what we collectively fight by kicking off the most extreme elements who are our resource and not our curse.
BTW, if you have a reply to this can you find a more appropriate thread by which it should be sent, and I will answer.
Benjamin.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Mon 24th September 2007 @ 2:07 pm
This is funny in a way. (the above comments)
Benjamin, you are incredibly different in real life than you are on the net. But don’t worry, most of us are, I have learnt.
I personally think the people that come to this site as in the readers or visitors are new to the laws and the ins and outs of feminist hard ways towards men. And I must say that it took me a long time to understand and I was asking questions at the time and hogging a lot of the attention. Maybe the key is to remember what you were like when you first found out about this stuff. Keep it real simple.
Dad4justice,
You have been through shite and yet shite wouldn’t be a worthy word to use for what you have been through. So you lost the plot. Big deal, when this is over for you, we can get together and laugh. I bet my ex husband would enjoy it also. It really is insanity and you are not supposed to cope. You just can’t. You are only human.
But I have noticed change in you and even noticed kiwiblog has your site now linked to theirs.
Maybe it is time for you to re apply to pauls-news. They were only protecting everyone else and their hard work; I am sure when you were out of control.
There should be no bad feelings on this. We are all in this together and in time everything will fall into place.
Comment by julie — Mon 24th September 2007 @ 4:27 pm
I’m led to believe, and haven’t yet had chance to advance this that Judge Mrfitt has sentenced in a case of an adult woman with sex on a 13 year old boy. Does anyone know anyhting of this case? And: besides the value it holds, if there is a discriminatory descrepancy in sentencing, I can use the information where compiling evidence in separate proceedings relevant to exposing the injustes that should be exposed if they exist that are absolutely repugnant to justice.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Wed 26th September 2007 @ 11:15 am
Alastair’s database might be a very useful resource for you Ben. Good luck. Paul
Comment by Paul R — Wed 26th September 2007 @ 11:26 am
The full details are in the Violent females database held in the files area of pauls-news. It was december 2005 in New Plymouth. The detail is sickening
Comment by Alastair — Wed 26th September 2007 @ 11:57 am
After yesterday’s positive start, its end turned shocking. I feel exhausted and in some, if not many ways defeated.
My history relative to protest has been to step outside of the system as best I can. I have not used the Family Court except on three occassions where this exhaustion accompanied with severe depression for not having contact with my son and daughter has led me to apply for the protection order against me lifted. There was no violence in my relationship with my children or my former wife. The alleged violence in the supporting affidavit against me was at worst that “he shouted at me for 15 minutes in fron of witnesses”. Which is bizarre in itself because it would be hard to shout at anyone for 15 minutes unless you were contender for the Guiness Book of Records for shouting at people. What witnesess? The only time I can remember shouting at my former wife where it would have been a first was on an occassion where I turned up after my message seeking to take my son to a footbal game, on impromptu basis wasn’t collected by my former wife, and so when I turned up unannounced at the former family home to collect my son, I was denied for not having prearranged the declaration (many would factor that this necessarily better be request), that I wanted to take my son to the game. I got the full bodied reponse to not having organised the event properly and responded – needless to say I went to the game on my own. And needless to say, that because I stuck to my principles that there was never any violence in the relationship to justify the order that the and on the grounds that there was no threat of violence, nor do the children believe that there was or could have been or would in the future be violence the order was not lifted. Judge Kendall threatened Jim Bagnall during the case in paranoid delusion mistaking a little toy truck he was carrying for my nephew, who I looked after regularly, given that I am a trained early childhood educator, for a microphone – which I invariably interupted with my nephew on my hip in Court (the object of debate, where Kendall said the Family Court was no place for a child) reminding him that the Family Court wasn’t about children its primary purpose was in focus to preserve the role of authority above families for the Family Court – by leaving. It didn’t help the depression and the order remains, but I was right. Judge Kendal had no interest in teh children at all. His interest was in protecting the instiution of the Family Court against people like me.
So step out of the system I have. I still have an order agaisnt me for seeing my children. I have made numerous applications with CYFS and before the Courts, both criminal, for breaching the order, in order to bring the charge before Court, administrations and various officials, such as the Human Rights Commission and the Ombudsman. I have walked from parliament to parliament, Waitangi to Wellington, and will cycle back up there from early October to late, been to prison for some 60 days, been on two separate hunger strikes, the first of these without water, seriously dehydrating my body and I beleive adding to retina damage that will in the future render me blind in at least one eye; and have lived on the streets of Wellington for some total of six months, living under a pier, in the first 3 month period, and in a duct in a large carpark on the harbour between two large cardboard boxes during the latter. On one occassion I went down to Christchurch supporting Muriel Newman’s shared parenting bill and received a spell from the Wizard, which I cast on over parliament steps, over the internet and over the Auckland District Court. And, of course, the Poliitcal Busking. I have had countless conversations with the public on politics – (don’t try it from your own home the pay is lousy). But most of all, obviously, the hardest part of my protesting has been in the absense from an association with my son and daughter. It approaches 7 years now, with only some 40 to 50 hours contact with them in that period. My son contracted type 1 diabetes in this time, and on an occassion of trying to visit him in hospital I was turned away by a foul and interferring woman nurse, paid to provide social service for children who was foul by interupting my conversation with my son and me, going on about the importance of dads and kids, which I interupted – politely telling her to bugger off because that was the last thing I wanted to think about at the time. They kicked me out of the hospital on the third day I visited, saying it was because of the protection order, not telling me that in fact he had been discharged. The cruelty of some people is simply mortifying. Compounded to all of this – and making yesterday so hard was that I had planned to see my son and daughter last weekend, arranging hopefully to see them at my mum’s house, on the weekend of my brothers birthday. I was hopeful that I would get to see both my son and my daughter, knowing already that my former wife had incorporated delusion into teh reasons as to why I should not see my daughter, where apparently my daughter didn’t want to see me outside of supervised conditions. I was prepared not to see her, as advised by a friend just to take the crap on the chin and keep on putting up with it. I found out that this was possibly my daughter’s expression from the nice Salvation Army woman, who was organising on my behalf given that the protection order interferes with my ability to make any direct contact. She was fully aghast at the comments. She knew the difference because she had supervised my most recent contact under the supervised access conditions. She had even written in her report what had happened and how happy my daughter was to see me – how bubbly she was and excited. So it was simply an out and out lie by my former wife, exploiting the provisions of the order further to manipulate the circumstances. In the tirade she gave, as tirades she gives to the Salvation Army woman, she justified her reasons for demanding the supervised access. She said it was because I had moved down to Wellington. That was the breadth of her justification: because I had moved down to Wellington. I’m not so suprised though, I know that when I went into prison for protesting from the Gallery in Parliament calling an emergency on July 3rd 2003, trespassed and deliberately affecting that trespass so that I could force Court proceedings to bring Margaret Wilson’s breach of the law not putting in the COC bill proper, disguising that we were compromising a child’s protections, built into the UNCROC to associate with Dad before a judge. I was delusional to think that the Court would work to its justifiable affect, and while I wanted them to keep the information out of the public eye, where it IS, “SO” extraordinary and an event of unprecedented dynamic political damage, I did expect them to be honest and justify the system to the problem. After all if the dads actually recognised what had happended then everything you any could want for dads, is absolutely yours to have. But you will all think that its me who is dreaming.
And there is more to my story, much much more. My plans and intentions are so detailed that they would make you sit back and go numb. Yet I cannot do what I intend to do where 1, I have to cope with extreme depression and 2, that I have to do this because I am being ground into the ground by people not paying attention to their obligations as humans to stand principled to human law and stand in principle to protect children from harm. A child deliberately separated from an association with their father is being harmed. In many cases seriously. That Margaret Wilson and government officials and employees are presently consolidated protecting this harm to occur trying to keep it out of the eyes and ears of the public is so repugnant to justice that its subconsious toll in shame must really be quite crippling. Of course, they any won’t believe this and just keep on taking their government wages as if nothing has happened and tomorrow is a new and brighter day.
So what am I talking about?
I came off the streets and into a flat, stopping the busking when I felt justified having made a submission of all my work to the Justice and Electoral Select Committee on Doug Woolerton’s deletion of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. I asked Margeret Wilson as teh Speaker to exercise her authority as the Speaker and to summons herself as for when she was the Attorney General to explain to the Select Committee why her office put the COC in bad. Quite simple really and the only means that I could think of for the public to exercise their rights in parliament. Because this is an issue of constiution it was directly linked ot the Bill of Doug Woolerton’s submission. I had asked to appear. Yesterday the committee ruled that their was not support for the Bill and rejected it. Of course, they did this on the eve of Dominion Day, announcing today I am sure the plan to go Republic.
You see, there is an extraordinary corruption at hand in this country – and as I am the whistle blower, where the media too, for the correlation of events standing to alienate homosexuality as it has advanced improperly its persuassion into (the COC) legitimate status to breed, don’t want to know.
So I’m tired. I’m really tired. I wrote to parliament last night and the other official and media I have selected and gave them again what I suppose would be their equivalent of “he shouted at us for 15 minutes in front of witnesses”. They’ve stolen my children. How can they do this? Their system is inadequate and overly protected and people just don’t want to know. They abuse their responsibility to the functionof their employment and keep these truths out of a rioting publics eye. They pretend that the only problems of real significance are in Burma. Only the monks are justified – and only the obvious bashing of the public is brutal.
I have more that i can do, but unlike others I have trialled the objective means that are accessible to the public to compete with parliamentary privilege and when I get close, every time, they cheat. They just simply cheat.
There is no honour in cheating.
So will I look up the site to find out the inconsistent judgement of Murfitt’s and compare it by gender discrimination to other relevant judgments and make an obviously necessary comkplaint o teh the Judicvial Conduct Commissioner, employeed by your wages to tackle these events with independent rigour? I’m tired guys.
Respectfully,
Benjamin Easton.
(of a) fathers coalition.
Respectfully,
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Thu 27th September 2007 @ 11:09 am
how can I add to bookrmark your blog? would you like to visit mine? regards!
Comment by cipcipcia — Tue 26th January 2010 @ 4:36 am