Yet again a judge – and to the eternal shame of feminists everywhere, this time it’s a woman judge – has given a lenient sentence to an abuser because the victim ‘virtually groomed him!’.
(A 16 year old schoolgirl apparently groomed her 44 year old male teacher – now there is a power relationship that is totally new to me!)
Our judiciary is, of course, overwhelmingly drawn from the establishment. A certain moneyed class has an education bought for them that, naturally, creates another generation of the establishment carrying the ‘cultural capital’ that the rest of us seem to think is about cleverness and intellectual merit instead of privilege and power.
Crimes against the person are, to the vast majority of us at the peak of infamy. Murder, rape and abuse of children bring out the fascist flogger and executioner in even the mildest pinko liberal. Yet it is often property crime that gets the big punishments.
Kill a Hen Harrier to stop it eating your ‘game’ birds and likely as not you will get off, or get a few hours community service. Poach those game birds from their ‘rightful owner’ and the peasant with a pheasant gets a gaol term! Stealing from us all is, apparently, the lesser crime!
Rip off a bank and you risk decades in prison, kill an innocent pedestrian when you are three times over the legal limit and your Jaguar mounts the pavement and there may be some finger wagging.
Unreconstructed judges have allowed rapists, especially middle-class ones, to walk free because of the provocative clothes of the victim or the fact that she is a sex worker.
Turn this on its head. Let us suppose the high street store is provocative with its display of perfume, or the grocer puts out nice juicy pears… would that enticement and flouting of the fruitiness be an excuse when you nick the perfume or nab a pear… of course not!
Can one be judged when you’ve been deliberately tempted? Our whole society rests on a plinth of temptation. Adverts flagrantly entice us and incentive schemes are there to turn our heads.
I ask every member of every bench from the lowliest magistrate to the Lords in ermine to think about it… if provocation is a mitigating factor then every crime against property should be treated leniently.
“Its hardly surprising m’lord that he took the TV… it was blatantly broadcasting in HD for all to see!”
I rest my case!
