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eddiesmith 
Lets get ready to Rumble
Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Location: Lexus Centre
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| Dont think anyone has ever claimed the Aussie legal system is fair or consistent for all people |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| And why not? |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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It's a bad call by the judge and I think the majority of us would accept that.
Sure, we don't know all the facts of the case, but I think there are some basic issues here that need accepting - someone their age having sex with a 10 year old is not only unacceptable, but a criminal act, and should be treated as such.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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sherrife 
Victorian Socialists - people before profit
Joined: 18 Apr 2003
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This is a tough one for me.
On one hand, the proto-feminist in me feels that a 10 year old girl being approached by a group of older men has no real 'choice' but to consent to sex or anything else for that matter. Something drastic has to be done to ensure this sort of patriarchal power-play (wow, did i come up with that? :S) is weeded out of our world as much as possible.
On the other, punishment through imprisonment is a primitive response to what is almost always a complex series of interconnected causes. Can I ask what good it would do to put these guys in jail for 25 years?
Vengeance? Lame, the girl's life would not be improved in any way by such a primitive reaction to the event.
Deterrence? Bullshit. Can any of you tell me that you can imagine young adult males deciding not to rape a minor (or sleep with her/him after getting their consent, it's impossible to tell which it was in this case) on the basis of the severe sentence they would receive if they were to be eventually charged based on this harsh legal precedent? That's not how crime works, everyone knows that.
There is also the fact that I don't feel jail is the right response to this (or almost any) incident anyway. From all the news reports (and the sentencing) I think it is safe to say that they're probably not malicious people, probably just opportunistic chauvinistic pricks, and there are plenty of those around. I really think they (and 75% of males on this planet) need education rather than a slap on the wrist that is likely to encourage further criminal behaviour.
I don't want to sound like I'm apologising for the rape at all, the minimum age of consent is there for a reason and I support the basic principle. I'm just saying that imprisoning people who don't seem malicious seems a bit counter-productive.
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I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks... - Eugene Debs |
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spoljar
Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Location: Lynbrook
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| sherrife wrote: | | There is also the fact that I don't feel jail is the right response to this (or almost any) incident anyway. |
What incidents should there be jail time for???  Hopefully, you will atleast say murder.
I'm with Tess on this one. It is clear cut and a clear message has to be sent out that sex with children is completetely unacceptable. Having men walk out of court without any convictions and laughing at the system certainly sends out the wrong message.
Imagine if this was your daughter or son at the end of the day and the irreversable damage it would do to them for the rest of their lives. |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Quote: | QUEENSLAND'S Child Safety Department knew that a 10-year-old girl had been gang-raped but did not report it to police, despite the girl also contracting a sexually transmitted disease from the encounter.
The child - who had been living in a Cairns foster home before the department decided to return her to Aurukun, in Cape York - has been diagnosed as "mildly intellectually impaired" and suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, having been born to an alcohol-dependent mother.
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| Quote: | A senior departmental official yesterday told The Australian that the child involved was sexually abused at age seven and, as a safety measure, was put with various foster families, eventually ending up in 2005 with a non-indigenous family in Cairns. But she was returned nine months later to Aurukun, where she was gang-raped by the nine males.
"These non-indigenous people were fantastic - ensuring she went to school, and the father actually took a year off his work to personally supervise this girl," he said. "But two new social workers were appointed to the north and they expressed the view, which was repeated many times to the investigating committee, that putting an indigenous child with white foster parents was another stolen generation.
"They convinced the department with this rubbish and the girl was taken from Cairns to Aurukun - back to where she was being abused previously and where she had contracted syphilis as a little child - and she was unsupervised, with the result that she was constantly raped.
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http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22903474-2,00.html
If any of that is remotely accurate, someone needs a leather enema big time. 
Omar, I respect your views on punishment but I disagree.
A 10 year old girl cannot legally consent to sex. IMO, she cannot do so intellectually either.
These men have no excuse and if locking them up (or indeed as Tess suggests, castration without anaesthetic using a blunt knife) serves no other purpose than vengeance and maybe serves as a deterrent to others, then job done.
I also found this disgraceful.
| Quote: | THE mayor of Aurukun yesterday refused to publicly condemn the pack rape of a 10-year-old girl by nine males.
Neville Pootchamunka called the outcry over the refusal of far north Queensland judge Sarah Bradley to jail nine males over the rape "a lot of crap".
Mr Pootchamunka called the case "a media beat-up".
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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21811,22902577-662,00.html
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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sherrife
Victorian Socialists - people before profit
Joined: 18 Apr 2003
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| spoljar wrote: | | sherrife wrote: | | There is also the fact that I don't feel jail is the right response to this (or almost any) incident anyway. |
What incidents should there be jail time for??? Hopefully, you will atleast say murder.
I'm with Tess on this one. It is clear cut and a clear message has to be sent out that sex with children is completetely unacceptable. Having men walk out of court without any convictions and laughing at the system certainly sends out the wrong message.
Imagine if this was your daughter or son at the end of the day and the irreversable damage it would do to them for the rest of their lives. |
First of all, very little (proportionally) psychological damage is irreversible, if dealt with in a proper way. If you accept the stats that 5% of women in the UK have been raped at least once in their lifetime, and the reality that 5% of women are not in mental clinics, then I think the inevitable conclusion is that most of these women are strong and resilient enough to deal with the suffering over time and continue living their lives. I think this is a testament to human strength. To label victims of rape as "screwed up for life" is fundamentally condescending and disempowering. Many might struggle for years to deal with the issues (like my ex) but they're definitely not permanently "damaged goods".
Secondly, the 'message' has proven to be a useless deterrent. The death penalty in the US doesn't seem to be discouraging many murders does it? It just brutalises society, and normalises that primitive eye-for-an-eye mentality that is destructive for everyone involved.
RE which incidents deserve jail... Maybe I would prefer to imagine jails as "institutionalised care", as I would never support locking someone away in a concrete block to let them "think about what they've done". How non-constructive and vengeful is that idea! Anyway, having created institutions designed expressly for rehabilitation and psychological evaluation/support/treatment, I would say that murderers, rapists, paedophiles, and perpetrators of other forms of personal violence should be required to spend a significant period of in this new space - and yes, it would be secure so that they couldn't leave.
Once they had gone through some sort of mediation process with the victim, some of their psychological issues had been dealt with, and it was established that they had been set on a more constructive path in life, they could be reintegrated into society. Only those with clinical antisocial personality disorders (which means they cannot empathise with other people, would probably need to be in state care for the rest of their lives, but I'm no expert on the curability of these conditions!
Basically the idea is that only those who cannot be reformed are kept as wards of the state, everyone else goes through a rehabilitation program and ongoing psychological counselling before and whilst re-integrating into society.
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I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks... - Eugene Debs |
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spoljar
Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Location: Lynbrook
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Well Omar, the scars are there for the rest of their lives. Those memories (and it is the bad things you tend to remember the most) will always be at the back of their minds. That is the irreversible damage. Yes life will go on and slowly but surely, the impact will lessen, but a memory like that, stays.
As for criminals (and that's what they are) I dont give a stuff if they do or dont think about about what they have done. I want murderers etc to do hard time and I mean hard time. A 30 year stint carrying out their shit and piss in a bucket is what I would be looking for with murderers for example.
Its a simple equation, dont do the crimes and you dont have to worry about jail time at all. |
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nomadjack
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Location: Essendon
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| sherrife wrote: | | [If you accept the stats that 5% of women in the UK have been raped at least once in their lifetime, and the reality that 5% of women are not in mental clinics, then I think the inevitable conclusion is that most of these women are strong and resilient enough to deal with the suffering over time and continue living their lives. |
Omar, you can't be serious. That (particularly the quote above) has got to be one of the most illogical pieces of twaddle I have come across on this website. You could just as easily argue that 95% of victims don't seek clinical help for ensuing mental illness after being subjected to rape.
The death penalty argument is a straw man in this context. Just because the death penalty can be shown not to act as an effective deterent against murder does not mean that penal sentences are not effective at influencing or deterring human behaviour. Yes rehabilitation is crucial, but so to is deterrence, particularly in areas such as this where a deep cultural shift is necessary.
FFS these men raped a 10 year old intellectually disabled girl and for at least some of them it was not a first offence. What do you suggest? Perhaps a street theatre course will set them straight 
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| spoljar wrote: | Well Omar, the scars are there for the rest of their lives. Those memories (and it is the bad things you tend to remember the most) will always be at the back of their minds. That is the irreversible damage. Yes life will go on and slowly but surely, the impact will lessen, but a memory like that, stays.
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Well said Spoljar. Being able to function relatively normally doesn't equal getting over something.
There's 3 types of memory. Long term, short term and the instant synapse type that lets you remember something for a few seconds and then forget it. Long term memory stays with you. People suffering Alzheimer's or dementia can recall long term memories from 40 years ago clear as a bell but couldn't tell you what they did yesterday.
Traumatic events get instantly filed in your long term memory. You cannot erase these, even with counseling. Long term memory has a nasty habit of coming back spontaneously when you are in a similar situation. A happy memory of a date in a park may come back unbidden while walking thru a park on a similar kind of day, a traumatic memory (eg of an assault) may come back unbidden in certain similar circumstances and blind side the person completely with it's intensity.
What you can do with counseling, is learn how to cope with the memory so it doesn't come back so hard, so you don't get caught out. You can't just forget or repress it, that's just keeping it locked away and when you're least prepared for it, it can get out and confront you. The trick is to learn to be able to face the memory, accept it exists and not let it rule your life.
That little girl may go on to have a happy, healthy relatively normal life, but the memory of what happened will always be there. Something she will have to live with for life.
What baggage will her assaulter's have to live with for life?
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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spoljar
Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Location: Lynbrook
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| nomadjack wrote: | | FFS these men raped a 10 year old intellectually disabled girl and for at least some of them it was not a first offence. What do you suggest? Perhaps a street theatre course will set them straight |
That of course would be after the Christmas Hamper they receive on the way out of the court room.
I didn't actually realise that she was interlectually disabled and yet the judge in her wisdom somehow came to the conclusion that she probably agreed to have sex with them.
Unbeleavable. And then we have the audacity as a nation to have a go at legal systems in other countries around the world. |
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Alec. J. Hidell
Joined: 12 May 2007
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| Tess wrote: | How can it be tough! She was just 10 years old FFS........
There can be no grey area in this type of thing. |
But castration is not a valid response Tess.
It takes, thinking, not some knee jerk red necked response.
Having said that, the punishment IMO was insufficient and I say that without knowing all the facts.
However a 10 year is incapable of giving informed consent to almost anything.
The whole thing is sad and depressing in the extreme
_________________
The one man in the world, who never believes he is mad, is the madman. |
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Pa Marmo
Side by Side
Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Location: Nicks BB member #617
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| sherrife wrote: | | This is a tough one for me. |
I wonder how tough it would be if it was your own daughter.
| sherrife wrote: | | Can I ask what good it would do to put these guys in jail for 25 years? |
For starters they wont rape any one else for 25 years.
| sherrife wrote: | | I don't want to sound like I'm apologising for the rape at all, the minimum age of consent is there for a reason and I support the basic principle. I'm just saying that imprisoning people who don't seem malicious seems a bit counter-productive. |
If you don't think 9 men having sex with a 10 year old girl is malicious, you have no understanding of the word.
_________________
Genesis 1:1 |
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Jason
Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Location: Mackay
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| Quote: | But two new social workers were appointed to the north and they expressed the view, which was repeated many times to the investigating committee, that putting an indigenous child with white foster parents was another stolen generation.
"They convinced the department with this rubbish and the girl was taken from Cairns to Aurukun - back to where she was being abused previously and where she had contracted syphilis as a little child - and she was unsupervised, with the result that she was constantly raped. |
What was Andrew Bolt saying?!
Whether or not the Stolen Generation occurred... This girl is suffering for it and I'm sure many more are. |
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sherrife
Victorian Socialists - people before profit
Joined: 18 Apr 2003
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| stui magpie wrote: |
That little girl may go on to have a happy, healthy relatively normal life, but the memory of what happened will always be there. Something she will have to live with for life.
What baggage will her assaulter's have to live with for life? |
Do you see the duty of the justice system to equalise the amounts of psychological damage of the victims and their attackers? Because honestly, I really can't see a reason for the eye-for-an-eye approach, apart from sheer vengeance.
_________________
I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks... - Eugene Debs |
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