“…Among the ordinary public, meanwhile, many people know little beyond an oft-quoted fact that a mere 6 per cent of reported rapes end in a conviction.  But as a thoughtful government review, published today, points out, constant repetition of this figure – usually for the purpose of indicting an allegedly failing police and criminal justice system – is unhelpful to victims and society alike.  It is a good example of a “fact” that generates more heat than light.

As Baroness Stern's report explains, this low figure refers only to the percentage of complaints received by the police that end in a conviction. About 60 per cent of those actually charged with rape are indeed convicted by the courts. This latter figure radically changes the standard portrayal of a justice system that is routinely failing women and all too often treating the victims as if they had “asked for it”.”

Leader - The Independent

The Stern Review

A guide to injustice: something must be done – anything in fact, to raise rape conviction rates

Professor Jennifer Temkin rides again: devious barristers and ignorant judges

“You would expect [the Bribery Bill] to criminalise both the person who pays a bribe and the person who accepts one. And so it does. But the Bribery Bill also makes it lawful for a very broad range of law enforcement agencies to provide or receive what would otherwise be improper financial inducements.  They include not just the police, prosecutors and bodies such as HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Borders Agency. Clause 12 would allow every environmental health officer and local authority trading standards officer in the land to go around handing out or accepting cash if they can prove, on the balance of probabilities, that this is necessary for the prevention, investigation or detection of ‘serious’ crime.

Officers from all the security and intelligence services would also be able to pay or receive bribes if they can show it was needed for the ‘proper exercise of any function’. So would all troops on active service.”

Joshua Rozenberg

Says House of Lords Constitution Committee member Lord Pannick QC,

“It is quite unacceptable for any intelligence officer of whatever rank, any employee of the CPS or any employee of a local authority carrying out law enforcement functions to be able to decide for themselves to carry out an act of bribery.”

Quite so.

“Although designed to deal with serious crime, European Arrest warrants are often issued for minor crimes. This puts huge pressure on the police and courts, and shipping people across Europe for petty crimes is, in itself, grossly disproportionate.”

Jago Russell

“When Thatcherism destroyed organised labour and unleashed free market fundamentalism 25 years ago, the middle-class professions cheered, wearied of power cuts and grateful for tax cuts. But the bell tolled for them too. ‘Professionals’ replaced miners as the ‘enemy within’; they too had to be neutered as one of the remaining bulwarks against the power of the state and untrammelled markets. And so the assault began, through privatisation, commoditisation, the sweeping away of restrictive practices, and an obsession with costs and targets at the expense of amorphous ‘value’.

That the status of professionals should have diminished in consequence was only to be expected.”

Editorial – Law Society Gazette

I have a problem with all this nonsense involving the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland.  Her mitigation is being spun currently on the basis that her “technical breach” of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 was merely an oversight by way of her not photocopying her housekeeper Loloahi Tapui’s documentation. Thus it is argued that she did not knowingly employ a person who did not have the right to live and work in this country.  Might I ask what documentation it was that Baroness Scotland omitted to copy?  It has been established that Ms Tapui had no right to remain in this country, so she could not have possessed any relevant papers to copy.  The Attorney General failed to read the documentation she was purportedly shown, or failed to read it properly before failing to copy it as the law required.

All this from someone who is the chief legal adviser to the Government and responsible for all Crown litigation, yet she does not resign nor is she dismissed.  Incredible.

Baroness Scotland must now stand down

“On Friday a BBC journalist announced on breakfast television that “a million children are being abused”.

Where do these figures come from? How do we know? Are we feeding the paranoia that stops a grandfather taking a picture of his nine-year-old grandson playing football? Surely this cannot continue. Someone needs to put things back on an even keel.”

Former Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Stevenson

Earlier in his article for The Times Mr Stevenson, the officer in charge of the Soham murder investigation, remarked,

“As a result of poor intelligence, [Ian] Huntley was appointed a school caretaker in Soham. Did that give him access to children? Yes, hundreds. Did he abuse them? No. In fact he reported to the head teacher that several teenage girls had made inappropriate comments. What Huntley did to Holly and Jessica was as bad as it gets, but did he come into contact with them through being a caretaker? Not exactly — he was caretaker of Soham Village College, a school for the over-11s. The two girls attended St Andrew’s Junior School. Different building, different caretaker. Huntley had contact with them because [his partner Maxine] Carr was employed at St Andrew’s as a classroom assistant. She worked in a class with Holly and Jessica, who both liked her. Holly’s mother sent Carr a box of chocolates on the last day of term to say thank you for helping her daughter.”

He concludes,

“How do we prevent such chance encounters happening? We can’t. No amount of legislation, record keeping or checking could prevent this type of crime completely. Thankfully it is extremely rare. Children are far more likely to be killed by a family member or on the roads.”

 Well now, we cannot have that sort of talk.  Something had to be done. Anything.

“A 2008 federal-funded survey conducted in New Jersey, where Megan’s Law¹ originated, concluded it had done nothing to deter the repeat offenders it is designed to target. It only made them easier to track down when they had reoffended….But a register is a knee- jerk response to the cry of “something must be done,” and that done, we are all too happy to do nothing more.”

Catherine Philp

___________________________________

¹ A law requiring information to be made public concerning registered sex offenders.

“One in three teenage girls has suffered sexual abuse from a boyfriend and one in four has experienced violence in a relationship, according to an in-depth study published today”

reports The Guardian.

The research was undertaken on behalf of the NSPCC at the Centre for Family Policy and Child Welfare, University of Bristol.  The Centre describes itself as “one of the leading national and international research centres on child welfare and child safety issues.”

The survey of 1,353 teenage girls and boys from across the United Kingdom found that nearly ninety per cent of these teenagers aged 13 to 17 had been in an intimate relationship. A quarter of the girls claimed to have suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends. Ninety-one teenagers were questioned at length and of these, one in six of the girls claimed that they had been pressured into having sex and one in sixteen claimed to have been raped.

A previous report from Bristol University published in late August 2009 concerning domestic violence declared amongst other things that,

“men abuse more than women do but women are three times more likely to be arrested” (my emphasis).

Having been involved in a professional capacity at the sharp end of domestic violence for a sufficient number of years, it was my experience that the overwhelming majority of individuals arrested were male.

It makes you ponder how representative of the general population were the samples relied upon for this latest research.  If sample data is not sound then neither is the conclusion drawn from that data; or as a computer bod would say, garbage in, garbage out.

Following developments this week, once again there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the purportedly low conviction rates for rape.  Now it is the turn of Janice Turner to wring her hands in despair and lament the denial of justice to rape victims.

The fundamental point frequently glossed over is that in many trials the entirety of the evidence does not assist the jury in reaching a verdict of guilty. It is this inability or refusal to confront the crux of the issue that prevents progress being made whereby the truly guilty can be convicted and punished appropriately.  In a significant number of cases, too often the prosecution case simple recites facts that would apply to any “courtship” taking place daily, up and down the country but where in the case before the Court, some four-fifths of the way through the ritual that would in almost every other case have led to consensual sexual intercourse, something went awry.  It is not a simple problem of it being one person’s word against another’s.  I have met women who have been raped in a social or “dating” situation.  Having known each woman for some time, I had no doubt in accepting as true what they had told me, but how is a jury to make such a determination of veracity, having met the victim only once upon the occasion of her giving evidence from the witness box? Is it so surprising that jurors err on the side of caution, particularly given the burden of proof borne by the Crown?

The “something must be done” campaigners have rarely had the benefit of sitting through numerous trials where having listened to the Crown’s evidence, it has become impossible to dismiss the thought that “something doesn’t add up here”. You have to be involved in a trial and listen dispassionately to the evidence before you can understand how a doubt about a defendant’s guilt can creep into a juror’s mind.  In those cases where the mating ritual has proceeded to that final stage, the reason for it coming to an abrupt halt must be plausible.   Perhaps fearing the loss of the Court’s sympathy (or more importantly that of the Police) in some such cases for instance, victims omit evidence that explains their behaviour and makes the Crown’s case truly complete.

In reality, a low rape conviction rate is little to do with juries having prejudices about how a woman should or should not behave.  Juries are not packed with individuals who were born before sex was invented in 1963.  Most have “been there, done that” and any curio from a bygone age would be put right, quickly. Tinkering by way of “re-educating” juries must just as surely lead to miscarriages of justice as would rigging the rules of evidence.

“One of the characteristics of those most determined on assisted suicides is that they are powerful personalities used to exercising total control — the polar opposite of those who would be the most likely victims of their campaign, were it to succeed. Purdy is quite typical, described in The Guardian as “a self-confessed adrenaline junkie who had revelled in travelling the world diving from planes, conquering mountains, trekking through jungles and exploring the depths of the oceans”.

You can see why such a personality cannot bear to contemplate the complete loss of control that her condition might impose. Debbie Purdy is, in so many ways, an admirable woman. Yet when I saw her declare last Thursday, “I feel like I have my life back”, my stomach heaved. It is a sick society that regards assisted suicide as an affirmation of life.”

Dominic Lawson

During a recent dialogue concerning whether the United Kingdom should adopt a pluralistic legal system, Sheikh Faiz Siddiqi, founder of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal said,

“in a jurisdiction where rights are afforded to many mistresses and there is recognition of same-sex marriages, the idea of polygamy should not be so alien or distant.”

He is right, isn’t he?

Challenging debates remain on Islam and English law

Nothing will stop Labour and its Media claque from continuing to seek the scalp of the Conservative Party's director of communications Andy Coulson, in an endeavour to inflict damage upon David Cameron.  The story will be kept rolling (or perhaps more aptly, limping) for a while yet, but it is nevertheless a severe blow to Labour that the Metropolitan Police have confirmed that there is not any need to reopen their investigation into claims of illegal ‘phone-tapping at the News of the World because no new evidence had come to light since the case was first investigated four years ago (my emphasis).  The Police emphasised in particular that no evidence was found that former deputy prime minister John Prescott's ‘phone was tapped.

A lot of hot air will be expended during the course of the next week or so by partisans seeking to cause the Conservatives the maximum amount of embarrassment, but in the meantime, those of us possessed of a critical facility will await the evidence.

Police rule out fresh investigation into News of the World phone-tapping claims

Another case of “Give a dog a bad name and hang him”

So, Labour politicians and their helpers in the Media think that as Andy Coulson had been a bad boy in the past, David Cameron should now dismiss him in the light of The Guardian’s latest “revelations”.

First let us remind ourselves that Mr Coulson was a bad boy in the sense that as Editor of  the News of the World, he accepted that the buck stopped with him concerning the criminal conduct of one of his journalists even though he knew nothing of that journalist's errant activities. Second, the events leading to Mr Coulson's principled resignation as editor took place long before he was appointed as the director of communications for the Conservatives.  More importantly, and forgive me for asking, but where is the evidence of Mr Coulson’s wrongdoing in relation this current story?

At least this episode will assist the Conservatives to determine who are their real friends in the Media.

Andy Coulson trusted member of Cameron’s inner circle – Terry Kirby

“British law, which, while it has its flaws, is more developed and grounded in reality and fairness”

Zeinab Huq

I’ll give a religious court (of any persuasion) a miss, if you don’t mind

What a complete and utter disgrace.

The Evening Standard reports today that Linda Bowman, the mother of murdered model Sally Anne Bowman, has called for a DNA database of everyone in Britain to help police catch serious criminals.

Mrs Bowman believes that her daughter’s case highlights the value of a universal database.  It does no such thing. Mark Dixie, the man convicted of Sally Anne’s murder was detected because like most criminals he committed more than one offence.  It is what nearly all criminals do. In a later incident, he provided a DNA sample to the Police.  It was by this means that his involvement in Sally Anne’s murder was detected.  His detection plainly took place without the need for there being a national database.

Whilst it is obvious that a national DNA database should have enabled Mark Dixie’s earlier detection (bearing in mind the fiasco that occurred in the case of serial rapist Kirk Reid) this is not a compelling reason for the DNA of tens of millions of innocent people being stored on a national database.  It is not only a question of everyone being considered by the State as a potential suspect, which is repugnant enough in itself.  I simply object to my DNA (or fingerprint records, or any other information for that matter) being maintained on any database just because an arm of the State thinks that it might prove useful.

All is not well down at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).  Reports The Guardian,

“Part of the concern stems from a shift in the tone and style of the new body, which emphasises the concept of “fairness” more than the notions of “equality” and “discrimination”, and is less focused on campaigning. A spokesman for the EHRC said it saw itself as “a regulator and not simply a campaigning organisation.  He said, ‘Fairness is a great British value. I think fairness is a concept that a wider population understands.’ ”

The report continues,

 “An equality lawyer, who also asked not be named, said: ‘The problem is that ‘fairness’, unlike equality, has no basis in law. It’s a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it’s about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men.’¹ ”

Out of the mouth of babes…

_________________________

1   My emphasis.

“It would appear that the government has an agenda which is driven by the Association of Chief Police Officers. That involves neutralising an independent legal profession whose future role will be to stand by ticking boxes while people are rushed to conviction, whether innocent or not.”

Robin Murray

There is a lesson to be learned from the case of Erica Connor which might not be immediately obvious.  Mrs Connor was the former headmistress of New Monument School, a primary school in Woking, Surrey.  She was a victim of a campaign by two Muslim governors to give Islam a greater presence in her school. New Monument School is situated in the Maybury district of Woking and its local education authority is Surrey County Council.

Surrey County Council is controlled by the Conservatives.  Save for a period between 1993 and 1997, it always has been. Its employees hail largely from Conservative supporting Surrey and surrounding areas.  In spite of that fact, a significant proportion of its management level bureaucracy seems to be of a distinctly guardianista mentality.

Mrs Connor was forced to leave her school because of stress after she was unjustly accused of “Islamophobia” and racism by Islamic elements on the school’s board of governors. Surrey County Council failed in its duty to protect her and intervene.  The Council’s excuse for that failure was “fear of a complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality.” In the High Court, the judge, Mr John Leighton-Williams, QC found that council officers had shown “excessive tolerance” towards the two governors [who had caused the school’s governing body to become dysfunctional] and displayed “misplaced sympathy for [one of the governors]”.  In consequence, the Council was ordered to pay Mrs Connor £407,781 in compensation for psychiatric injury, loss of income and pension, medical expenses and the premature end of her career.

After twelve years of Labour misrule, at senior management level most of our institutions are now riddled with individuals of a guardianista persuasion. The Conservatives must adopt a strategy to deal with this. Otherwise, upon returning to the helm of national Government, though perhaps not being baulked outright at every turn by a reluctant bureaucracy, they might find themselves undermined continually or at the very least severely embarrassed.

Asks Matthew Parris, whilst pondering the advantages of judgment-based regulation as against rule-based regulation,

 “...And the question arises: wouldn't it be cheaper, wouldn't it be faster and simpler, and would it really add much to the sum total of general injustice, if we moved in the direction of appointing more commissar-like adjudicators: men and women empowered to consider the spirit and purposes of regulation and then to pronounce definitively, to deem - their judgments final, with no rights of appeal or judicial review?”

To a significant degree, too many decision makers rely upon an unnecessarily restrictive, literal interpretation of rules to enable themselves to avoid making robust decisions. Their fear of being “taken to law” by someone adversely affected is in most cases irrational.  Worse, it is feeble.  Ultimately, it is a question of mindset. Thus, if Mr Parris’ “commissar-like adjudicators” are possessed of the same trepidity the vice he desires expunged will endure.

There is also the issue that in recent years, rules have been amended and clarified in ever greater detail to achieve a political purpose. In such instances, where decision makers have contrived to do the right thing, the rules have been changed again to tighten the straitjacket.  A prime example is the constant amendment of the criminal law where legislators have sought to enable the securing of convictions where evidence is weak or uncorroborated.  Here, more often than not the Courts have still been able to dispense justice against all the odds.

In essence, in so many spheres of life we appear to have appointed the wrong sort of decision maker.

No matter how you look at it, Gail Trimble and her Corpus Christi College, Oxford team won the 2009 University Challenge competition.  That the BBC stripped the champions of the official title and physical trophy is neither here nor there.  It is not surprising that the Manchester University team was reluctant to accept the champion's mantle, because its members knew that they had not earned that accolade.

The rules contrived an unfair outcome, the disqualification of the winning team, as a direct result of the competition now being run across two academic years, in effect barring final year students and one year course postgraduates from taking part.  Everyone save the BBC and its acolytes saw the strict application of the rules as being grossly unfair and wrong.  In the light of the latest revelations that earlier winning teams also comprised disqualified members, the BBC’s decision to disqualify Corpus Christi appears increasingly perverse as well as ridiculous.

As with another great champion who was stripped of his title on trumped up and dubious grounds, Gail Trimble and her Corpus Christi team remain the people’s champions.

“We cannot refuse to be killed. With or without 42 days, there will be further attacks on London. But we can refuse to be terrorised. We should be building defences in our minds against terror. Rather than fuelling disproportionate, uninformed fear in pursuit of their police-powers agenda, the Government-should be educating people about the true nature of the threat. They should tell us that it is grave, but not devastating. They should acknowledge, for instance, that most so-called "weapons of mass destruction" are nothing of the sort.”

Andrew Gilligan

Terrorism: The Government has lost all sense of proportion and perspective

Says Eamonn Butler in The Times today, about the latest TV licence advertisement,

“It's time we citizens stood up against this state-sponsored intimidation, particularly now that anti-terror legislation is being used to spy on whether our dogs are fouling the pavement and that we're closing our wheelie-bin properly. And it's time we told our unelected officials that we don't much like “our town, our street, our home” being in their database - given their ability to lose it in the mail or leave it on laptops that they forget in the pub.”

It is more than fair comment to say that in recent years government has sought to criminalise an ever greater number of rule breaking activities and impose increasingly draconian penalties for “crimes” which though seen by the majority of the public as being worthy of some punishment are still considered by that same public as relatively  minor.  There is too much stick and not enough carrot.

“A key inquiry into the Met's handling of the Stockwell shooting has been shelved for political reasons”

proclaims the Evening Standard  today.

As I understand the situation, the publication of the report has been merely delayed…again, rather than actually “shelved”.  Nevertheless, any suspicion that the Government or one of its agencies might be suppressing a report, even temporarily, must be more damaging than the publication of the report, even if its findings are uncomfortable reading.

From having been able to successfully massage news for so long, Labour’s habit of walking into sucker punches has now become pronounced.

“Legal “vultures” are making £2 million out of the NHS each week” reported one Sunday Newspaper recently.

As usual, this figure was not put into context so as not to spoil a good story, but to quote Amanda Stevens, the vice president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) who responded to the criticism in The Law Society's Gazette,

“It is insulting to imply that rectifying the harm caused to people who have been carelessly or recklessly injured is somehow wrong”.

Too right.

Writes Tom Uttley in The Daily Mail  today,

“If my guess is right, the great majority of fair-minded, reasonable Britons - those, anyway, who remember the cash-for-questions scandal that gave the Tory government such a bad name - will think: “Yes, of course. It's an established fact of history that Hamilton corruptly took money in brown envelopes for asking Commons questions.”

Guilty as charged, Mr Uttley.

Now reminded as to how the “brown envelope”  allegations came to be, I have revised my view.

Says James Swede, of solicitors' firm Darlingtons in a letter to the Law Society's Gazette,

“The Labour Party can accept funds without identifying the true source.  We, the legal profession, find ourselves bound by anti-money laundering regulation, which means that if we were guilty of the same offence we could face a lengthy prison sentence....”

It is right that our professions are bound by the very highest standards of integrity and that the penalties for failing to do so are harsh, but Labour should ponder why it believes that similarly rigorous standards (and penalties for breach of those standards) should not apply to those who purport to govern us.

It is a guiding principle in English Law that “Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.”

R v. Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy [1924] 1 KB 256 at 259

Since 1997, the Government has honoured this general principle frequently only in the breach when arranging or overseeing an inquiry or review following some ministerial or departmental debacle, or alleged misconduct or lack of competence on the part of someone holding an appointed Office.  The investigation into the HM Revenue & Customs lost data fiasco is to be conducted by the Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a company that undertakes sizeable projects on behalf of the Government.  Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair survived a no confidence vote by the Metropolitan Police Authority, a body that “exists to make sure that London's police are accountable for the services they provide to people in the capital”.  As it happens, it is a body where Government appointees outnumber the elected members.

Such inquiries might well be conducted with the utmost integrity and vigour, nevertheless the public's perception is just as likely to be that there has been a “fix”.  Any positive outcome for the Government or its placeman convinces few but more significantly does nothing to clear the air or settle the issue.  It is a simple matter for the Government to avoid such misperceptions by appointing patently independent inquiries or regulatory bodies, but it can do this only if it is fearless of the truth being outed.

Words fail me completely.

Julie Bindel reports in The Sunday Times today of the disinterest shown by the local Police and political authorities concerning the pimping of underage white girls by black and Asian gangs.  Apparently, cracking down upon such blatant criminality is seen as “contentious”, involving as it does, minority groups.  Says Aravinda Kosaraju, a researcher for the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (Crop),

“What we are dealing with is gross criminality that should be confronted whatever the race of the perpetrator.”

According to Julie Bindel,

“A number of families affected by Pakistani pimping gangs have said that Police inaction and the refusal of white liberals to acknowledge the problem has resulted in more girls being at risk than ever before” (My emphasis.)

Says Ms Kosaraju,

“We are battling to get recognition that what we are dealing with is organised crime against children.”

There is a word for treating one group (in this instance white girls) differently from another purely on racial grounds.  Racism.

It suits this Government to boast that our citizenry has easy access to free or low cost legal advice.  Unfortunately, it does not want to pay for it.  However, rather than adopting the honest course of explaining that because of budget constraints it is either legal aid or the NHS (or defence, or education) the Government always seeks to blame greedy lawyers for the expense of the legal aid scheme.  Legal aid practitioners undertaking routine family work are paid a little more than a third of the private, high street rate.  Criminal legal aid lawyers are paid a little over a quarter of the going private rate.  The new costs regime being introduced by the Government’s quango, the Legal Services Commission, will result in legal aid practitioners receiving a pay cut.  The propaganda peddled by the Government, to the effect that legal aid lawyers are well paid and will be even more handsomely remunerated by way of the new costs regime, is worthy of Dr Joseph Goebbels.

The comprehensive legal aid system that we have in this country is the envy of the world, but if the Government doesn’t want to pay for it then it should say so and desist from attacking underpaid legal aid practitioners who have been the backbone of the system these past thirty years or more.

Legal aid bill 'highest in world'

Commenting upon developments in the Madeleine McCann case in Saturday’s edition of The Times, Professor David Cantor opines,

“It appears that the Portuguese police may have fallen into the trap of having first formed a view of who the guilty party is, then seeking out the evidence to support it. It is rare for people untrained in science deliberately to attempt to refute their own hypotheses: instead we tend to reinterpret anything that happens to fit in with the notion to which we have become increasingly committed.”

Lest the Portuguese Police take the rap all on their own, in all fairness it should be pointed out that this is a common failing of many Police investigations the world over, including those conducted by our own law enforcement agencies.

Why patterns of the past point to abduction by a stranger as most likely explanation

So, today in the High Court Mr Justice Beatson has upheld The Law Society's challenge against the Legal Services Commission (LSC) for having imposed unilaterally upon legal aid practitioners the new (and grossly one-sided) "Unified Contract".  Says the Law Society,

"The judge said that the LSC has breached Public Contracts Regulations 2006 and European Law in its reform of legal aid. Most significantly, the judge said that changes to the contract should not be made if they would, 'alter the economic balance of the contract to the disadvantage of those who have entered into the Unified Contract or to the disadvantage of some of them.'  The judge also noted that any proposed changes should be restricted to those envisaged by the initial White Paper. It is not clear at this stage how this will affect the LSC's proposals on fees and the Judge has granted the Law Society permission to appeal on the basis of public interest on this point…"

Well, this is what happens when you try to introduce ill conceived, half-baked reforms at breakneck speed.  It will be interesting to see the Government and the majority of the mainstream media spin this into a victory by lawyers (including the Judge) against the common interest.

A Home Information Pack, anyone?

"If services are cut as a result of the legal aid reforms I don't think I'm being unduly cynical in expecting the vast majority of media comment to accuse overpaid lawyers of letting down the public because the Government has stopped the gravy train."

Kit O' Brien

It is worth fighting to save the least loved branch of the welfare state - Jonathan Freedland

"A paedophile who raped a ten-year-old girl will be free in just four months after a judge said his young victim had dressed provocatively. Window cleaner Keith Fenn, 24, could have been jailed for life after twice attacking the girl in a riverside park,"

screams The Daily Mail this morning.  Mr Fenn it transpires, had pleaded guilty to two counts of rape involving a ten year old girl.   His co defendant Darren Wright, who had encouraged the commission of the offences, received a prison sentence of nine months after pleaded guilty to inciting the girl to engage in sex acts.  Paedophile, rape and attack are very emotive words.  One can imagine that even at this moment some dark shadow in government will be moved to draw plans to impose obligatory life-sentences for anyone convicted of rape involving a child under the age of sixteen years.  No doubt a stiffening of the law in such a manner would please Dr Michele Elliott of Kidscape who is reported by The Daily Mail as saying,

 "This sentencing is beyond pathetic, it is utterly derisory. For the judge to say that the way she was dressed in any way excuses a 24-year-old man having sex with her is disgraceful and ridiculous."

The NSPCC is reported to have added its two-pennies' worth,

"There's no excuse for having sex with a ten-year-old, no matter how she dresses."

Even the most cursory examination of the facts related by The Daily Mail  (and better still the original Oxford Mail report) show why the Judge was entitled, indeed obliged by justice to impose a short, rather than long, term of imprisonment. The defendants thought that the girl was sixteen years old.  It appears that the Crown accepted that presumption as being not unreasonable.  Mr Fenn was guilty of rape because as a ten year old, the Law deems the young girl involved as not being able to consent to sexual activity, thus notwithstanding that her involvement was consensual and not forced (in the true sense of the word) upon her, it was illegal.  The defendants did not realise that they were committing criminal offences. Nevertheless, that illegality has resulted in the defendants being sentenced to terms of imprisonment.  Harsher sentences would have been unfair.  His Honour Judge Julian Hall did justice to the case.

Oxford Mail - Judge claims paedophile victim 'dressed provocatively' - George Gaynor

Judge's mercy for the man who raped 'provocatively dressed' girl of ten