AIBU to question this judge's decision? (*warning - extremely distressing*)

[UpstartCrow]

A judge has reduced the prison sentence for a nurse who was found guilty on 10 separate serious offences against very young children.

George Robert Anderson, 28, worked at Torbay Hospital as a psychiatric nurse, was jailed for 19 years four months last year.
His lawyers today argued that his crimes took place over just a few minutes and that no lasting physical harm was done to the girl.
Judge Wendy Joseph QC reduced his sentence by 2 years.

The link contains distressing details.
www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/nurse-who-filmed-himself-raping-1141202.amp?__twitter_impression=true

Should his sentence have been reduced?
What do we have to do to get men to stop?

The Appeal Court judges were abiding by sentencing guidelines. One of the things that must be taken into account is a guilty plea, which this person made. That automatically results in a reduction in sentence.

The chairwoman said this: '"A significant sentence was needed to reflect the nature of these assaults and the aggravating features".

19 years is a significant sentence.

It goes on: But she concluded: "Fortunately minimal physical harm occurred to the child. "We accept that the sentence was not sufficiently reduced to reflect the totality. We must accordingly allow this appeal and reduce the total sentence to one of 17 years."

There was nothing that the court could do. I think that 17 years is a significant sentence. I also think sentencing guidelines are a good idea in imposing consistency and have cancelled out the ability of individual judges to impose their own interpretation of the law like Judge Dredd such as the weird Judge James Pickles who, among other things, let a rapist off for the 'contributory negligence' of his victim because she was wearing a short skirt.

There are people who think child abuse isnt so bad, as long as the child is very young or there's no lasting physical harm done. I think one of the terrible things about Vanessa George is that hundreds of families don't know if their child was abused, she wouldn't co-operate and the photos she took didn't show faces. I think she deserved everything she got as she showed no remorse, you would think when she had to face up to what she had done she could have at least co-operated. Then again maybe she had abused so many she couldn't identify them.

prh47bridge the offence of rape does carry a life sentence

I am well aware of that but a judge can only impose that sentence in exceptional cases where there is justification for stepping outside the sentencing guidelines. Within the sentencing guidelines a life sentence is not possible. As I say, judges are required to follow the sentencing guidelines and can only step outside them in rare cases.

@WhooooAmI24601

One statistic that stuck in my head was that the level of recidivism is so high because of the poor support offenders receive within their communities.

There are befriending schemes run by, I think, the Quakers. They are shown to work, but don't go down well with the general public who apparently would prefer someone reoffend rather than do anything that could in any way be seen as being 'soft'.

We are going to make very little headway on this as long as we have people in government who prefer to listen to the Daily Mail rather than experts.

I misremembered about the short skirt. I think in Judge Pickles's opinion the rape victim was guilty of the crime of hitchhiking while being young and attractive.

Anyway, I think sentencing guidelines are generally a good thing.

"He chose to take drugs
He chose to rape a three year old child
He chose a child who could not fight him
He chose to violate her physically and mentally
He chose to video it
He chose to watch that video when sober
Five minutes or five hours, he made choices
19 years is not enough"

^^this!

That may be true but it is a factor the courts are required to take into consideration when sentencing for these offences. The sentence is higher if the child suffers long term harm

Long term harm is impossible to quantify at this stage, and the likelihood of no long term psychological harm is fairly small.

As I said upthread, if the comments had simply been that as per sentencing guidelines the judge had no choice but to reduce the sentence, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The problem is the comment ‘fortunately minimal physical harm occured’ which is inappropriate in this context. It followed on from the defence’s own argument who were trying to get the sentence reduced based on limited physical harm to the victim.

Is that comment inappropriate if it is one of the things judges are required to take into account under the guidelines?

prh47bridge I understand that, don't like it but do understand it. You seem very knowledgeable what exceptional cases would warrant a life sentence?

Yes because it could be expressed differently - eg “while the long term effects are as yet unknown, as there was no additional physical harm, injuries etc then...”

In cases where there is for example ABH or GBH on top of rape they are counted separately.

george

The judiciary are directed in sentencing guidelines by the law. MPs who are voted in to make these laws are guided by public opinion.

Remember Dunblane? Hand guns were banned following public pressure.

Of course laws are changed by internet pressure and public opinion. That’s democracy.

And this peice of vile shit should never ever be released.

Our children deserve to be protected.

It’s fucking disgraceful paedophiles rapists and their ilk serve 10/27/20 years and then are let out with ‘fingers crossed’

Fuck that. You do crimes like that you don’t deserve s second chance

Laws need changing

Not all men are violent offenders but almost all violent offenders are men.

If most men are not violent offenders then the attribute "men" is not an accurate descriptor for the set "violent offenders."

The OPs statement was bigoted, because it implied raping small children is something "men" do. It would be utterly irrelevent to the truth of what she said if 100% of perpetrators were men, the fact that 99.9% of men do not rape three-year-olds make it essentially a false statement.

Let me put this another way to see if it helps. Let's suppose 100% of child rapists are men, and that one in five hundred men are child rapists. If action X prevents a person committing child rape, then identifying "men" as the problem requires us to apply the solution to 499 blameless people instead of 999. If applying the solution has any cost at all, even just hurt feeling or resentment from the target, that's very unlikely to be an implementable course of action.

Absolutely disgusting. Some judges are so terrible I wodner how the hell they hang onto their jobs. Surely someone oversees their decisions? At which stage is enough enough...puitiful sentences and vile decisions like this.

Also pretty disgusting is how this thread immediately, on the first reply... turned into an other chorus of NAMALT and 'women do it too'. Like fucking clockwork.

(Number of blameless people is for each one where the solution is needed.)

Firesuit Calling rapists 'men' is not bigotry. In UK law, rape is the act of non consensual penetration with a penis.

UpStartCrow, please re-read my post however many hundred times it takes you before you understand it.

You are merely repeating the argument it refutes.

I actually returned to point out that if the OP had asked what we could do about "nurses" instead of "men", then her post would have been hundreds of times more accurate than it was. Including all nurses would have dragged in far fewer people who aren't the problem. (But would have left out some who are, admittedly.)

Even better than "nurses "would "people who work with vulnerable people", though rather than trying to get a single generalisation, it might be better to identify several target groups. e.g nurses who work with children, nursery workers, teachers, sports coaches, parents. Each group is likely to need different approaches.

Do I agree that a disgusting perverted child rapist should have had his sentence cut.
Indeed a do not. I think the judge should be jailed as well to be perfectly honest.
Apparently theres very little physocal damage. However physical scars heal. Psychological scars never do. That little one will never be free from trauma,
If I was the judge id have doubled his sentence for having the darn fucking audacity to appeal his sentence.

If it were up to me child abusers would be stoned to death. I have absolutely zero issues whatsoever with saying that.

If you are a man but not a rapist, you are obviously not included in the question of how we get men to stop raping children.
This wasnt the only case of child rape I read in the news today. It's endemic, people make images of the abuse and share them. As this man did.

The fact thats its illegal does not put them off. They arent doing it to alleviate poverty or distress. But in some circles its socially acceptable.

So how can we tackle it?

Physical not physocal.

Awwlook

The judge couldn’t double his sentence. I would have been a breach of the sentencing guidelines. If you think those guidelines are wrong take it up with your MP.

I mean in an ideal world. Mind you in an ideal world we wouldn't have these beasts.

fucking hell why did i click on that link

that man should be hanged

Sentencing guidelines for sex crimes need reviewing across the board.

But, this doesn’t excuse the way certain judges think it’s appropriate to spout their personal bias and awful opinions that would be unacceptable off anyone less powerful, privileged and influential.

I will wait for the full court write up, however, as the comments probably are taken out of context etc... but I can’t see how much context could ever take away the awfulness of that key sentence.