This is BULLSHIT! Two filthy predators sexually assaulted a young girl and they walk free after serving only 8 months in remand. Words fail me …
Eh, well, at least this is reassuring:
At least folks aren’t just shrugging it off.
[shrug]
Is it just me or is the judge saying, here, that if she’d been 16, for real, it would have been perfectly appropriate to assault her for her manner of dress?
For that matter, you shitstain-in-legal-robes, even if you’re correct that she’s sexually precocious*, doesn’t that imply she may well have been systemically abused while in state custody? In which case you seem to be saying that since she’s been conditioned to have no self-worth outside of her ability to provide sex, she has no right to be protected against further sexual assault.
After a little looking, here’s a BBC article about the mess. It has details the Austrailia.com report lacked - the sex was apparantly consensual, for one thing. (Or at least, lack of consent doesn’t seem to have been at issue.) Even so, any 24 yo looking for sex with a 16 yo has to know that he’s going to get slammed by the courts if caught. It’s not exactly a frigging secret code. Then again, this judge has had other odd seeming decisions handed down in pedophilia cases. In addition to the whole bicycle thing mentioned in the linked articles, here he sentenced a serial child rapist to life in prison for sixteen charges of acts against seven children, from 18 months to seven years old. But he then went on to state that the offender could begin applying for parole in three and a half years. :eek: 
*This is not a judgement I’m endorsing, not based solely on the girl’s dress. I’m merely commenting upon what appears to be the prejudices of the judge in question. Since I can’t say I’m commenting upon his thought process. That would require me to admit that there’s evidence of thought.
The age of consent in much of the world as well as, according to that chart, all of the UK except Northern Ireland, and a majority of the US states, is age 16 or lower.
Thanks, Garfield226. I’ve got questions about the accuracy of that chart - I think it’s mistaken about NY, at least. The last time I looked at the code there were specific lines about anyone over 18, I think it was, having sex with anyone under that age. That is that the age of consent was graduated for teens themselves, and then for more mature adults. That may be what the places with two ages listed are referring to on that site, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Having said that, even if sex with a 16 yo is legal in the UK, that doesn’t mean, IMNSHO, that being told that the person one is with is 16 when she’s 15 necessarily absolves the fucker of guilt. If you’re going for young pussy, the chance she’s lying about her age is one of the risks you face, I’d think.
Slight hijack, but :eek:
I take it then that you ensure that anyone you might want to sleep with carries at least 2 forms of ID.
And back to the OP. Like so many things, the case is not clear-cut - the judge clearly felt that they both believed the girl to be above the age of consent. What they did might therefore be morally reprehensible, but there was a question of whether they were aware that their actions might be illegal. Intent has to play a part, surely?
This particular judge seems to be a complete and utter prat, based on some of his track record.
However, if[li] this is the same case that was being discussed a month or two back, I think what he may have been trying to say is that if a girl dresses up as a bit of a slag, meets a bloke in a pub, and less than an hour later agrees to go off to the park and have no-strings-attached sex with him, it would not generally be regarded as anything particularly illegal if she was legally able to consent by being, say, 16 years old and of sound mind. Dubious from a moral and sanitary perspective, perhaps, but not necessarily illegal. A fair number of pub-goers would class it as a good result, and possibly a dream come true.[/li]
If, however, she is mentally unwell, paralytically drunk, or, f’rinstance, ten years old, it’s a different kettle of fish. As in, go-to-jail different.
The time-in-jail issue is the subject for a whole different Pit thread. Currently prisons are so full that non-violent offenders (and some violent ones) are being being let out as soon as possible, and they seem to be avoiding sending people to prison unless they absolutely have to.
[*] Very Big If.
But the chances are you’re young yourself. If you’re an 18 year old young man, how are you going to know that the lass you’re chatting up and says she’s 18 (2 years over the age of consent round here, remember) is actually 14?
I do think that if a girl tells you she’s legal and it’s reasonably believable then that should absolve you. The age of criminal responsibility here is 10. If a 14 year old girl cons you out of £5, she’s legally responsible; why shouldn’t she be similarly responsible if she cons you into having sex with her?
But the thought of someone my age (40) going for a teen thoroughly skeeves me.
er…
I’m almost 40. If I were going to shag anything that looks like it might not be able to buy drinks* on her own, HELL YES I’m going to ask for ID. Of course, I’ll admit I’m just this side of being frigging paranoid, but…
*Under 21 for non-US Dopers
More seriously, I don’t disagree that intent should factor into sentencing. But, it seems to me that ignorance of the law, or of legal circumstances, is never a complete excuse for breaking a law. At least that’s how it is here in the US. I’m not saying that Fenn or his “accomplice” should be remanded for life. But I also think that less than a year in jail is more than a bit light for what they did.
For that matter an eight year age difference, 24 to 16, is large enough that I find it hard to believe that there isn’t something seriously messed up there. After a person reaches their majority, they can do what they like, I’ll agree. And eight years difference mean much less when dealing with full adults. But at that age it really does seem skeevy to me, at the very least.
ETA: Quartz, I agree there’s wriggle room. 20 wouldn’t bother near as much as 24 does. And 40 does bother me a lot more than 24.
Agreed.
Yes, and it’s the same here. If it wasn’t, they would have been acquitted, presumably.
I am aware that I’m taking a stance that might seem to defend these people - by which I mean judge and defendants alike - and that’s not the case. It’s just that this is quite clearly not a case of the judge saying ‘that 10 year old deserved it’ as presented in the OP - and I’d take a guess that the judge understands a great deal more of the circumstances than any of us, or the media which loves to hype up such cases.
A different scenario, and one that I see myself in the rural town in which I live, is where girls of all kinds of ages are in pubs drinking, wearing layers of make-up and next to no clothes. I sometimes wonder just how old they are, as whilst some may well be over 18 and just look young to me (at nearly 34) others are almost certainly well below the drinking age (18) and probably the age of consent too. Don’t know if Hot Fuzz has been released in the US, but the opening scenes are most definitely observational humour!
I’m also not going to disagree on the skeevy-factor - but being skeevy isn’t against the law and nor does it affect sentencing (well, officially…!)
No worries. 
I know I can often have my first reaction to a lot of these sorts of things to be ‘lock-em-up-and-melt-the-key.’ A large part of my anger is based on some assumptions on my part, anyways. I know there are sexually active ten-year olds. But I do take the view that most of the time that is aberrant behavior. Given the girl’s age, and the fact that she’s been in the care of the state since she was four years old, I have a very dark suspicion that she’s been victimized sexually for years.
I’m not trying to claim that foster care, or state-run orphanages are manned by mostly monsters, either. But it is distressingly easy for a monster to hide in the ranks, so to speak. And there have been enough stories on both sides of the pond, where that has happened, for me to wonder if this girl isn’t acting out behaviors that have been trained into her. In which case, I believe she’d qualify as being mentally ill. And this sentence would seem to have the effect, IMNSHO, to reinforce the low-self image that the scenario I’m proposing here would indicate.
Of course that’s using logic to make logical, most likely deductions. Without facts to reign it in, it may well be a case GIGO.
But I’d be far more eager to give the judge the benefit of the doubt if he hadn’t had other cases involving pedophilia where he set down questionable sentences. Finding three cases like those mentioned in my first post in this thread by simply searching BBC for the judge’s name (And those three cases were all on the first page of results.) implies a pattern of behavior, not simply a one-time incident.
Yep, it has. A big thumbs up from my 16-year old son, btw.
Cool - am in danger of derailing the thread again, but it was filmed in a tiny city called Wells that is about 9 miles from where I live. The depiction of the pub scene at the start is just spot on!
Speaking of provoking a paedophile, one of the recent Dateline to catch a predator episodes had one of the people pretending to be a 13 year old online call the guy a “chicken” several times when during the chat, he changed his mind, supposedly realizing what he was doing was wrong. Basically they goaded him into doing something he tried to back out of and he showed up and was arrested. That, I think, is wrong.
I’m having trouble keeping up here. The linked article says that he assaulted her, in which case he’s either a violent pedophile or just a guy who enjoys raping adult women who made a mistake this time. How is 18 months reasonable for either of those?
She’s ten and legally unable to consent, so it’s assault by definition even if he never hurt a hair of her head and she was begging for it.
This is just my guess, but I think they are saying in the context that even consentual sex with a minor still constitutes an assault. I agree that the wording makes it sound like they were physically violent with her, but other parts of the article contradict that.
I saw a Montel episode where the guy who knocked up a 10 year old testified from prison that it was her fault because “she liked to dress like Brittany Spears and sit in my lap.” Montel said “there’s no way she made you unzip your pants,” and informed him that if that had been Montel’s daughter, Montel would be the one behind bars because he would have killed the guy.
Or a walker and a colostomy bag.