Could you imagine if this was a Father ?
A 36-year-old mother who had sex with an under-age boy has been allowed to keep her interim name suppression for the sake of her two daughters.
The girls, aged 10 and 15, were described as vulnerable during the suppression appeal before Justice Christine French in the High Court at Christchurch today, the Christchurch Court News website reported.
When the woman pleaded guilty on January 16, District Court Judge Stephen Erber refused suppression but allowed the interim order to continue until the appeal could be heard.
Justice French said the judge was likely to have reached a different conclusion about suppression if he had been given the additional material that was now available to the High Court.
The woman admitted having sexual connection with a boy aged 15 about September 6 last year.
The two had been at a Christchurch house on an evening when they had alcohol and party pills, and then had sex.
The woman said the boy had helped himself to the pills and had initiated the sex.
She admitted having sex with the boy when the police spoke to her, and said it was “the biggest mistake of my life”.
The woman is due to be sentenced in the District Court on March 6 and defence counsel Gilly Ferguson said today she would be seeking permanent suppression at that hearing if an interim order was granted today.
Submissions from counsel and medical and psychiatric reports were put before the judge.
Mrs Ferguson said the woman’s daughters had been distressed when the mother had discussed the case with them recently and she had mentioned the possibility of her name being published.
The reports mentioned the possibility of the girls facing ridicule, bullying, criticism by peers, and the desire of parents for their children to discontinue their association.
“We are dealing with one isolated moment in the life of a mother who slipped from the decent standards she had previously observed,” she said.
Prosecutor Shannon-Leigh Litt said the crown had sympathy for the two children who would be particularly vulnerable if the name was published.
Justice French said the fact that a woman had been charged with under-age sex was unusual and was likely to attract significant notoriety.
But she said it was an isolated incident and there appeared to be no need for publicity to “flush out” further offending.
“I am satisfied this is a rare case where the need to protect the appellant’s daughters displaces the public interest in revealing the appellant’s name,” she said.
The order remains interim, and a decision on permanent suppression will need to be made by the sentencing judge in the District Court.
He’d be in jail with everyone wishing rape on him already.
Comment by Scott — Thu 26th February 2009 @ 9:29 pm
She gets protection from her name being released because she’s a woman, which would attract public notoriety? As if male sex offenders don’t also attract public notoriety? Why does she get protection? Oh right, she has a vagina, that’s why.
Comment by etherspirit — Fri 27th February 2009 @ 6:21 am
Hmm..sounds to me like nothing more complex than a double standard to me, one tough rule for men and boys and a softer one for women and girls. What is obvious is that most of the actors in this plot are women. The perp, the daughters, the justice, the prosecutor, the defense counsel, all holding hands and defending the perp in the true nature of the the femme alliance. Not surprising really that the judge, a man I presume, came down with a soft decision, given the gender bias of the situation and the overwhelming odds against him on that day. Luckily he was wise enough to merely postpone the inevitable and eventually we will get to know. The whole deal with sexual abuse has long intrigued me, particularly in the methodology beind the victim counselling processes and how they are so different to the processes involved with other forms of abuse, including the self abuse of addictions. However I do wonder if the victim in this case felt himself to be abused and how the case actually got to be heard. Someone must have initiated the complaint, but I suspect that it wasn’t the boy.
Comment by Vince — Sat 28th February 2009 @ 5:26 am
This is totally outrageous and I support the comments that have been made. I reckon if this was a bloke the police would also find child porn on his computer too. Sad times but then come on guys. The world culture has shifted and this kind of double standard is no longer denied as a reality by normal women, Just feminists ( surely dying out now) who only ever rant when it is safe to do so.
Comment by Masculist UK — Sat 28th February 2009 @ 9:54 pm