to think the legal system should not place white victims of sex crimes below Asians

[oldshilling]

www.theguardian.com/law/2015/sep/17/asian-child-sex-victims-suffer-more-than-white-children-court-rules

There has been a lot of news about certain Muslim men choosing to sexually abuse white girls rather than members of their own community, because of cultural differences making white girls often easier targets, and perhaps because perceptions of about non-Muslim women.

In this case, however, a Muslim man chose to sexually abuse Muslim girls, and was given a longer sentence on the basis that Muslim/Asian girls will suffer more than white girls, a decision that the Court of Appeal has confirmed.

AIBU to think that this is disgusting, particularly given the targeting of tens of thousands (at a minimum) of white girls by Muslim men.

And what if, say, some of the muslim family concerned no longer attend the mosque, maybe are non practicing? How do we know to believe them when they say the abuser's sentence must be higher due to the honour issue.

Who do they wheel in as proof, the local imam? the family members? their next door neighbor?

What if the victim had had non muslim friends - does she not qualify for the higher sentence for the abuser??? What if she is not a virgin? Do they wheel in past boyfriends to render the abuse less serious? What if she is not a virgin but none of her community know, would we believe the boyfriend???

It is an absolutely mad and needless slippery slope.

If we swapped around the race there wouldn't be a petition

Really?? Since it took me barely 5 minutes to find the following - which certainly won't be the only ones - I can't help wondering about your motivation for making such a comment

www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/191/624/531/
www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/sisters-anguish-child-killer-colin-9180937

Puzzled they are petitions to keep rapists in prison! They aren't petitioning to get them off on lighter sentences wtf.

I see your pov whirlpool but I don't agree. Equality isn't treating everyone with the same blanket.

The more I look at this the more I'm thinking that sentencing being based on impact is just a bit dodgy. How on earth are you supposed to evaluate the impact on someone of having been raped? Surely this will end up with harsher sentences being handed to people who are able to show the jury they are visibly upset, while rapists whose victims end up frozen and unable to 'perform' their devastation will get off relatively lightly. (Plenty of traumatised people show no emotion when discussing their trauma, because they have blocked off the horrific effect the experience had on them. It's a recognised phenomenon in psychotherapy and by no means suggests the trauma didn't affect the person showing no emotion.)

I think the implicit pressure to play to the gallery enforced by 'impact assessments' doesn't necessarily lead to fair outcomes in criminal justice.

So what would you suggest manatee?

A set number of years per every crime? Judges already have guidelines but can use their discretion for lighter or harsher sentences.

The problem is taking rape out of it not all crimes are the same. A burglary is a burglary but someone coming in and nicking your telly isn't the same as someone coming in and nicking all your dead grans jewelry that was hid in your underwear draw and your telly.

Yes I'm thinking those sorts of things too Manatee. It also feeds into the ideas about how victims of sexual violence "should" react which again is something that we have been trying to move away from.

There is also the question with this, that the impacts sometimes come out much much later. Plenty of rape victims and victims of other forms of sex crime are fine or cope well afterwards, only to realise years later that actually it did fuck them right up but they shut it out, minimised, gave every impression of being AOK but actually looking back all those drugs and the promiscuity that started up soon after, well that didn't come from nowhere and now I'm having counselling. As an example. Just thinking, it happens a lot, the consequences aren't immediately obvious (and of course some people do get over this stuff with no massive immediate or delayed emotional trauma and that is fine too) but, you know, you can't go back 20 years later and say oh he should go back to prison for another 6 months because turns out I wasn't OK after all...

BrandNew I think it's fine to disagree, after all I don't think any of us are arguing about the fundamentals of whether men like this should go to prison for a good long while.

Please sign this petition against the judge's decision

www.change.org/p/courts-and-tribunals-judiciary-recognise-that-rape-is-rape-regardless-of-the-victim-s-cultural-background?source_location=petitions_share_skip

I suppose a lot of this might be a consequence of our criminal justice system being built for property / monetary type crimes. Interpersonal violence has been shoe-horned into a framework that I think is fundamentally not the right shape for it.

Maybe a rethink needs to happen. Certainly when there is outcry about outcomes (whether too long / too short) it is invariable in cases of interpersonal violence, you don't often see petitions because people think some men who were burgling houses didn't get long enough or whatever.

I don't know. I'm sort of thinking out loud. But taking your burglary example, while I can see your argument I'm not sure I agree.

Certainly it's true that the experience of having someone nick your telly or nick your dead gran's jewellery aren't the same. But when it comes to trying to reflect that difference in the criminal justice system, it seem to me you run into all kinds of problems. I suspect I'm on the wrong side of history on this. But I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the force of the law should be determined by factors as subjective and inherently incommensurable as individual experiences of impact.

Staying with the burglary example, for a moment. Let's say one person is burgled and nothing much is stolen, just a pair of £40 earrings and a DAB radio. But the owner of these items is already quite fragile and the experience plunges them into depression and anxiety and causes them to be signed off work on long-term sick leave. Then, let's say a second person is burgled, tied to a chair and threatened with a knife, and family heirlooms worth £15,000 are taken. But this person is pretty stoical, has insurance and a good support network, and seems pretty okay and is continuing to function in the workplace.

According to the logic of victim impact, arguably the first burglary is more sever than the second. But is that really just? Really? How are you supposed to measure that? It just seems to me a recipe for strange unevenness in the justices system.

To me, while the subjective impact of a crime on the victim/s of said crime is of course something you'd respond sympathetically to when talking to that victim, I'm just not convinced that it should be the main determinant of how severe the crime itself was. I just think that should be agreed more objectively, by society as a whole.

But I'm saying that I am uncomfortable with the idea of treating sexual offences differently based on how the victim reacts or the perceived harm based on their situation or whatever.

I don't understand why you say you disagree with me and then go on to say what I've been saying? I think that there has been some miscommunication here somewhere.

Puzzled they are petitions to keep rapists in prison

I realise that; my point was to illustrate that outrage, petitions and so on aren't necessarily influenced by the race of those involved, as your observation suggested

"I suppose a lot of this might be a consequence of our criminal justice system being built for property / monetary type crimes. Interpersonal violence has been shoe-horned into a framework that I think is fundamentally not the right shape for it.

Maybe a rethink needs to happen. Certainly when there is outcry about outcomes (whether too long / too short) it is invariable in cases of interpersonal violence, you don't often see petitions because people think some men who were burgling houses didn't get long enough or whatever."

This?

I was flagging up that, going on what you hear people getting angry about with this sort of thing, it is rarely property crime that gets people starting petitions about leniency / harshness, and is often interpersonal violence especially sex offences.

Given that our legal system was built around property crime and interpersonal stuff has been shoe-horned in, this maybe isn't surprising. It was just a thought, really.

x posted whirlpool. I was replying to brandnew and took ages to write

Ah yes I see!

The OP might be be better expressed as "White and non-Muslim BME victims.
We do not have just 2 groups in this country: white and Muslim.
Millions of us are neither white nor Muslim.

Your missing my point puzzled.

Her race and religion is part of this for her.

Other people have migating factors to. It should all be taken into account.

However I also agree with how people block out traumatic events and don't realise till a few years later how messed up they were.

I agree with those that say that crime should be tried the same wether the crime had effect or not.
Otherwise we're do you go with?

change org have a petition on this.

If it's the petition I signed, it was started by a MNer - OhTheHugeManatee.