To be absolutely sick of excuses being made for men's disgusting sexual behaviour? Trigfer warning. Hugh Edwards sentencing.

Men, women, whatever! Anecdotally, I can tell you that an increasing number of women are now finding themselves in front of a Court for sexually motivated offending.

Can you tell us more about the societal overhaul aspect? It sounds like you work in this field. Clearly something isn't working, and I'd like to hear what solutions there might be.

Gee, my heart bleeds. 🙄

That pesky 'mental 'elf' removing men's memories. Tut, Tut, Tut...

Whilst this is true, the biggest issue is the scale of the problem. It is impossible to manage the amount of referrals and convictions unless every working adult joined law enforcement/judiciary to tackle it.

People do go to prison for crimes against children. The judge said this case crossed the barrier for a custodial sentence being appropriate. A suspended sentence means Edwards will go to prison if he breaches the terms of his probation.

It's basically a prison term hanging over him for two years if he does wrong. Being on the sex offenders register also presumably means he can be swiftly in deep trouble if he does anything wrong.

I think the suspended sentence, coming at a time when people have been sent to prison for tweets , highlights how unfair the law is.
As someone who has suffered at the hands of an abuser and went to court but lost the case due to his witnesses not being available, this makes me sick to my stomach. People who are lucky enough not to have been affected by this crime have no idea of the lasting effects it has, they can imagine but will never know the torment victims have to live with for the rest of their lives.

The chief magistrate was quoted as saying he "accepted evidence that Edwards had no recollection of viewing the indecent images due to his mental health issues at the time of the offences" and that Edwards "doesn't present a risk or danger to children."

Time to check Paul Goldspring's hard drive. Men protecting men again.

CPS graded him a medium risk of reoffending and a medium risk to children

He's a risk and is now back home. There's no deterrent to not commit paedophilia

Well, it’s not hard to establish what a suspended sentence means, as a couple of minutes on the internet should resolve it.

Animals, children and women aren't valued or taken seriously. Male abusers get away with it all the time. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable in our society continue to suffer.

Well, I for one am glad the state can't kill or castrate people.

Prison is there for people who are dangerous enough to pose a real danger to the public so should be kept inside. And for those who need to be removed from society for rehabilitation.

In this case, he wasn't going about snatching kids off the street. He was exchanging photos. That's bad, I'm not minimising it, but there are ways of monitoring what someone is doing with communications that doesn't necessitate locking them up.

If you lock people up, you have to let them out at some point. What then? Or if you locked up every sex offender forever, we'd need a lot more prisons and higher taxes.

The point of the justice system is to deter offending and prevent reoffending, not to wreak vengeance. If we did that, we'd still be disembowelling people etc.

You don't know much about the judicial system,read up on sentencing guidelines

*men

He's lost nothing. His family are standing by him and he can now start claiming his nice healthy pension, plus he was still getting his full pay.

Why is there always more concern about the men as opposed to the victims?

Those poor children. 7 year olds performing sex acts for the gratification of dirty bastards like Huw.

He will disappear into a contented little life. He couldn't even own his shitty behaviour and it was everyone else's fault but his.

Brefugee, I’m not trying to convince you one way or the other. Your feelings on this are yours entirely. However, we need to move away from this obsession with imprisoning people as it just isn’t working. The threat of a weeks long imprisonment wouldn’t send any message at all and would pretty much collapse the entire system.

Sure he does, but most mentally ill people don't ruin children's lives and support child abuse by viewing the images.

People like him need to get a bloody grip.

I don't work in the justice system, and maybe you do, but to lay people whether or not it's a custodial sentence is semantics. Someone only goes to jail if they break the conditions placed upon them, conditions that normal people don't find at all difficult to abide by. It shouldn't be called a custodial sentence because there is no custody UNLESS there is further wrongdoing.

Under no other circumstances would a punishment work this way, if we tell a toddler who's done something naughty not to do it again because next time they'll be in trouble, that's not a punishment, that's a warning.

It's because there is so much of it that they can't lock them all up. The police can't even arrest all the men they know are looking at images. There are too many.

NAMALT but far too many are. Try starting a conversation about restricting access to streaming porn and they will all come out going on about it being too hard and infringing their liberties.

I'm sick of it too. Not sure what the answer is.

Why aren't men angry that their children are victims of this???

They are

And who will staff them??

We have no staff either.... anyone here on this thread fancy it??

Honestly, if we aren't sending people to prison for crimes against children, why do we send anybody at all?

Or is that the point?

Given prisons are overcrowded, he is not likely to be a threat to society I think the sentence was appropriate whee we n comparing other sentences.

It's gross.
Someone I knew quite well got a suspended sentence for 8000 images of children including the rape of infants under one and the case is even more complex than that.
He was given no prison sentence because he was lonely.

I cannot stress how lonely many people I have met who are lonely and haven't felt the need to watch babies be abused.

He was named and the address of his street reported on locally and I really expected some kind of response from his community as its in a relatively high crime area with lots of violence and he's had no repercussions, (I'm not saying I want to see him harmed by anyone, I'm saying I'm surprised he wasn't a victim of at the very least his windows being put in with bricks).
It's a very strange time, I feel we almost accept child abuse these days.
When I lived next door to a man who was imprisoned for CSA and CSAI even the local milkman threatened to smack him in the street.

It's just not enough. This is the abuse of kids FFS. I hope it wakes people up.