To be surprised the lady that stabbed the paedophile got 3 and a half years?

[m1nniedriver]

Just that really. I thought she would get longer. The world is a better place without him but still .... She murdered him.

She didn't get her revenge. It wasn't about revenge, the judge was clear that she hadn't intended to kill him but lost control.

I would WANT to kill someone who abused my child. But I wouldn't because I can't begin to imagine plunging a knife into someone and killing them. The fact that so few abusers are killed by their victims parents shows that the vast vast majority of people wouldn't either, despite their talk.

I'm not sure it was an appeal polish, though I also may have read it wrongly, but otherwise an excellent post.

thelush I think she put herself in a very dodgy position by taking the knife with her. She hadn't lost control at that point.
To be truthful, I'm conflicted as well, because I'm always relieved to hear of the death of a paedophile. Having said that, I'm with you. I can't imagine doing that to another human being. Just the thought of it makes me feel ill.

Liesel I wasn't sure if it was an appeal, think the newspaper I read said it was. I had the idea that it was an appeal against sentence but happy to be corrected if I got it wrong.

Taking a knife to his house is unusual for loss of control but so long as it's part of one (continuous) act then it still satisfies loss of control, even though that usually falls into the premeditated category.

Yeah, I think people are maybe not getting that loss of control doesn't legally have to be some instantaneous thirty second thing.

She went there, armed with a knife. This wasn't a crime of passion, unexpected and sudden - it was premeditated

Not according to the judge and jury who heard all the evidence.

She was tried according to the law she did have the full weight of it thrown at her and that takes into account all the circumstances it is allowed to.

Well we don't know the full details. I can only imagine she would have lost control in such a way if the man had actually abused someone close to her. How would she have known he was a pedophile unless he had abused someone she knew as he wasn't on a register?

she will likely serve 11 months

all in all, whilst I understand why she did it- we cant all go round stabbing people. I hope her sentence is short and she will be treated OK inside

MinecraftWonder Perhaps you should look up the meaning of the offensive word moron before you start bandying it about ignoramus.

Ronnie - love the name. Don't worry I know who you are!

stop - She was sentenced to three and a half years = 42 months. Serving half would be 21 months.

But she will but out in a further 10/11 months as she will have served time in prison while waiting to be sentenced so that will be removed from the length of her sentence. Therefore I would assume that she has already been in prison for around 10 months already and has 10 or 11 months left to serve.

However calculating sentences plus remand time is not my strong point.

It is possible to be of the view that the death of a pedophile is not a great loss to society, but at the same time thinking that the person who killed him should be held responsible for their actions and not upheld as a hero.

It is also possible to not judge someone for killing someone based on their reasons while at the same time not congratulating them or feeling that what they did was a good thing.

Murder is wrong. It doesn't matter why you kill someone, if you intentionally hurt someone and they end up dead, then you were in the wrong for doing so. And this woman went to the house of this man armed with a knife - the fact that the jury seemingly believe she didn't mean to cause him harm is pure luck on her part. Personally I don't believe she didn't intend to cause him harm, even if she didn't intend to kill him. But two wrongs don't make a right, and regardless of what this man did, she was the one who held the knife and then stabbed him, not once, but eight times. Of course she has to be held accountable for that.

We don't have the death penalty in this country, and as such we don't permit the public to kill people whose sentences they don't agree with. trial is by judge and jury, and legal process. Convictions are based on evidence not emotion or supposition. To allow otherwise is the slippery slope.

Whether this man's previous sentences were adequate is a whole different debate. but if people feel strongly about the lengths of sentencing for child abusers/murderers/perpitrators of other crimes then there are avenues they can go down to hope to effect change. Campaigning, petitioning, speaking to MP's. Not going to the house of someone whose sentence you feel was wrong and stabbing them to death. Where does that end? If we ended up with longer sentences for pedophiles what happens then when someone decides that custodial isn't long enough and that actually we should re-introduce capital punishment? Would it be ok for someone to go out and kill someone on the basis they will only get life and they feel that's not enough?

There will always be the cases where there is some mitigation, and in this instance we don't know what that mitigation might be. We can assume but we don't know. But on the whole if people start turning pedo killers into heroes then we do open up permission for vijilanti justice if no action is taken.

And while this woman might have been compelled to kill this man, the fact is that she has contributed to the suffering of the children she sought to protect by doing so. Yes, the urge might be there to kill the bastard, but now he will A, never get a trial so the children he abused will never see justice, and B, if they were her children, they will not only have to come to terms with what happened to them, but the one person they should have been able to trust to be there for them won't be, because she didn't have any self control.

And while this woman might have been compelled to kill this man, the fact is that she has contributed to the suffering of the children she sought to protect by doing so.

Just to be clear, this is an assertion not a fact. It's quite possible she actually alleviated suffering because all or most of the victims prefer knowing he's dead than having to endure and perhaps testify at a trial. I realise this is fairly incidental to your post, but let's not present things as absolute truth when we have no idea if they are or not.

Liesel If she did seek out to protect her children, she has failed them. She has harmed them further. She may have scared other children in case their parents do the same. So, they keep it themselves and keep getting abused.

I think she's done society a great service actually. Looks like the court system agrees looking at her sentence.

Again kourtney, that's an assumption. Nobody on this thread knows what would have happened had he lived, whether he'd have gone on to abuse more children and/or whether those he'd already abused would have suffered more by enduring a trial and possibly giving evidence. And nobody here has the right to decide whether, if her children were victims, they will suffer more harm from 21 months of separation than they might have done from the terror of knowing he was still alive and nearby potentially for the rest of his natural life. That simply isn't a call any of us are entitled to make. At all. It's for them only. It's fine to raise the possibility that eg her actions will cause other victims to be afraid of disclosure, but that's a point that can be made without presenting our own views of other people's experiences as fact.

I said "may" have caused other victims to be scared. There are a lot of parents who feel they can share their views about how they'd kill him in her shoes but not many putting themselves in children's shoes. After all, it is about them. I was talking generally anyway.

Yes, we definitely need a society where abused children are even more afraid to tell their parents in case the parent confront the abusers with a weapon and spends time in prison as a result. For crying out loud, so people are too wrapped up in their own warped sense of 'justice'. For many abused children, their parents are all they have in a fucked up world.

mitigation was because she was a single parent, not because he was a pedophile. Therefore it can be presumed that the court has taken into account the more time she spends away from her children the more damaging it is to those children.

There are at least two people on this thread who have said that fear of the parent doing something was precisely why they didn't tell.

When notorious criminals come to harm in prison there are always outcries from the victims who state that an early death has made their pain worse not better because real justice hasn't been served.

The upset caused to five children being separated from their mother for potentially three years is a certainty. Nobody can say for sure that there would be more upset caused by putting this man on trial and making him serve a sentence in accordance with the law. In fact the asssumption that his death has in fact caused less suffering is a dangerous road to go down, because it takes away the need for proper justice.

yes, if Jimmy Savile had died earlier perhaps others wouldn't have been abused, however there are many, many of his victims who feel that justice was never served. This isn't about a mother's wish to seek revenge, or justice or whatever it is that were her motives. It's about the victims' right to justice, justice which they now will never have because of her actions, and a childhood which has been distorted further by her actions.

And of course it is not certain that her children were the victims. And if they weren't, then she has made them victims by taking the law into her own hands.

It's easy to take a black and white "what an evil bastard, good on her," view, but that view is far to simplistic and takes no account of all the others who are then caught up in one person's inability to control her anger rather than seek proper legal recourse.

You're assuming that she took the knife with the intention of doing him harm, WannaBe. There's no evidence that she did, and she wasn't convicted of murder.

Isn't it just as possible that she took it for her own self defence? And then lost control because of something he said or did?

I'm delighted that she killed him. It's not a 'But what if he was innocent' case, is it? He had systematically preyed on children for decades. But it's depressing that he had just been cleared of some offences - how many crimes were reported where his victims got no justice and were viewed as liars? I'm sad for them, but so happy their attacker won't be raping any more children.

tanith that would have been part of her defence, presumably. That isn't what she said , though.
And even if she had, carrying a knife 'in self defence' can still be seen as an offensive act.

When notorious criminals come to harm in prison there are always outcries from the victims who state that an early death has made their pain worse not better because real justice hasn't been served

Can you name some please Wannabe? I have never heard of these supposed outcries.

Crikey, terrifying number of people gleeful at the death of a human being. I hope that nobody I love is accused of being a paedophile, then gets stabbed by a lunatic who turns up with a knife attempting to extract a confession.

I posted up thread the definition of 'manslaughter due to loss of control'. It depends very, very much on the victim having acted in such a way to reasonably have been unable to control the impulse to harm them. We know that this was accepted by the court which knows the full story. We don't, but most of us can make a fairly educated guess unless we're wilfully trying to minimise her motivation and promote Pleastead as more deserving of the victim tag.

Meanwhile over on another thread posters are pleading for us to be more charitable and understanding towards paedophiles. One person is actually saying that they have welcomed a paedophile into their family home to eat with them and their children. Some of you might not realise it but Sarah Sands was actually that woman welcoming the local perv and thinking well of him when all the other neighbours had cracked on he was a wrong 'un. Funny that eh? I imagine some of you would applaud that poster, but when those sort of ideals went tits up for Sarah Sands you want retribution.

You're assuming that she took the knife with the intention of doing him harm, WannaBe.

You don't take a weapon to someone's house in a threatening manner with "no intention" of hurting them. In gun safety class we're always drilled with never point a gun at something you don't intend to kill. The same goes for any weapon, never threaten someone with a weapon you don't intend to use, because you will end up using it.

Would a mugger get off for using a knife because "he didn't have any intention of hurting the person"? Of course not.

Intent was established the second she showed the weapon, and then she acted on it.

There's no evidence that she did

The fact that she even had the knife is evidence.

Now, if she walked up to his door, he let her in and she grabbed his kitchen knife and stabbed him, I could buy that she didn't go there with the intent to do harm.

She got a light plea bargain essentially because she went to the police and admitted what she did, and likely had a connection to the victims making her a sympathetic criminal.

It's the equivalent of an officer writing you a "faulty vehicle" ticket instead of a speeding ticket that will put points on your license. It doesn't mean I didn't speed, it means I got off lightly. Same with her. Just because she was given a light sentence doesn't change what she actually did.

Also I think it's clear that everyone here saying they would kill someone, are speaking in hyperbole. Not many people would actually go out of their way to kill instead of being there to make sure their children saw justice.