I’d want to do the same - mother kills children’s abuser

[HermioneKipper]

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/sarah-sands-kill-sex-abuse-paedophile-b2231508.html

i think any parent would do the same if given the chance

Even if it meant making your vulnerable children suffer more because you won't be there to support and help them?

That’s a very good point.

I haven’t suggested that. I’ve said that a justice system which allows men to rape and abuse children is what leads to these awful cases. It isn’t just people inherently wanting to murder others. It’s people being left with no other options because the justice system doesn’t protect them.

He was awaiting trial. So obviously it was.

It wasn't as he got away with it many times before and he was still free to walk around whilst awaiting trial. If anything he should have been kept in jail until the trial. He had previous convictions, they know damn well he was guilty.

Why she went to jail I don't know. She's hardly a danger to society is she?

Definitely get them in prison. Death is the easy way out. They don't have a great time in the nick either

Civility goes out the window when this kind of discovery is made .
Surely any parent would want revenge in this situation , i consider myself a decent ,civilized member of society but faced with this i think my rage would have no boundaries and i know for certain my husband would be the same .
I am glad that monster is dead and i hope he felt pain and terror as he died .
I hope now her family find peace.

She murdered someone. Of course she went to prison.

Well he clearly didn't find his previous spells in prison reformative nor unpleasant enough to stop raping children.

Most of them never make it there though!

This woman isn’t a danger to anyone else, the only reason she’s in prison is to be an example to others who think they would do the same.

It’s disgusting to me that they take her actions much more seriously than those of the child abusers.

The guy i room to court ended up with the same sentence another guy got for installing illegal sky dishes.

It took 3 years to see the court case through every harrowing step… he did less time than that

He did less time than I missed school due to trauma

That’s not justice!

Agree with this.
However, one of the oft spouted reasons for prison is rehabilitation.
I guess that's why people like her pretend to be remorseful.
She won't be feeling remorseful. She will be happy she did it.
We should all be happy she did it.
She should have done it so as not to be caught.

I remember a case where a widower was in court for viewing CSE videos and images (he had children btw) the court accepted his explanation that he was a bit stressed and thats why he did it. There is such minimisation of these crimes. There was that case in the paper a few years ago about the woman who’s ex was a paedo and he took her to court 37 times to try to gain access to her children, he actually enjoyed it and the courts allowed it. The law is fucking useless. Ditto on rape.

I really don’t care what happens to paedophiles and rapists. Can you imagine how they see themselves and how they de-humanise children to be able to do what they do. I don’t blame her frankly.

Also 24 previous convictions indicates he had a serious risk of re-offending, but still he was bailed. i think I would have gone ballistic if I were her too.

I really wouldn't cite China as a shining example of justice and human rights if I were you, or your Chinese colleague.

Em no because I wouldn’t want to end up in prison and miss a chunk of my child’s life.

I have only empathy for this mum. I don’t think she went over there to murder him. I believe her that she had attempted to convince him to plead guilty to spare her children further trauma from going to trial.

I don’t think that she was in a right state of mind. She was not thinking rationally because not only was she experiencing the trauma of her children being abused so horrifically, she was put in the threatening position of the predator who hurt her children living in close proximity.

Then he told her that her children were lying and she flipped.

Why did she bring a knife? Who knows. Maybe she needed it for her protection? Maybe she thought it a tool of intimidation to convince him to do the right thing? Probably because she really wasn’t thinking straight in the first place.

I don’t think her sentence should have been increased. In fact I think her time should have been served in a therapeutic environment where her children could see her more often and they got the therapy and help they deserved.

I don’t think that she is anything comparable to a vigilante. I don’t think she was taking the law into her own hands. I think she had a biological fight or flight response and she fought for her children’s safety.

We should be outraged that this man was allowed to be anywhere near this family in the first place. What excuse could the people who made that decision possibly have. No excuse! They are people who are not in the midst of trauma. And anyone who has truly experienced trauma knows that you’re not able to think as clearly when you are in the midst of that trauma.

If I was in a stable mental state I could not do what she did. But I don’t think anyone knows what they are capable of when not in a stable mental state or in the midst of trauma and fear and feeling threatened by the close proximity of a predator that hurt you or your children.

Raping a child is torturing them for your own sexual gratification. It is torture, it is inhumane and it is horrific with long lasting damaging consequences.

Most people I have known who confided in childhood sexual abuse or rape have never been protected from the perpetrator. Only one person out of every single person who confided in me was protected. Only one person was there a successful prosecution of the perpetrator.

That is appalling. This needs to change. Not through vigilantism (because most I’ve ever met are violent thugs who want an excuse and free pass for their own criminal behaviour). But by people speaking up and condemning the poor conviction rate, lenient sentencing and protection of these hideous predators.

One of the kids I was at school with (we were neighbours and friends to some degree) turned out to be a paedophile. He reoffended while on parole after his first conviction and is (or was) serving a second term. Prior to his first conviction he also sought out positions of responsibility and was a school governor. Between convictions, he changed his name. Looking back, you'd never have said - in general they are impossible to spot. This has caused me to think about this issue for a long time.
Any sexual offence by an adult against a child should carry a mandatory life sentence. Life should mean life. Bail should never be given while legal proceedings are ongoing. These people cannot be rehabilitated. They have by their actions foregone a place in society. The issue should not be about "strict controls while they are in the community" but about their permanent removal from the community. Name changing would be an irrelevance if they were never released.
The problem with the death sentence, vigilante justice or chemical castration is not that they wouldn't deserve it, if guilty, but that by doing so we as a society lower ourselves and risk the possibility of irreversible miscarriages of justice. Prisoners convicted of those offences should still have access to due process, legal representation and an appeals process, as well as medical care, but that's about all they should be entitled to.
The justice system completely failed that poor woman and her children - in her shoes many people would do the same thing.

Do you think that having your parent in prison for years would have been more helpful to you at that point?

Suppose your parent had got it wrong and killed the wrong person? It's inevitable that that will happen if you leave these issues to lynch-fever justice. How would you have felt then?

In China they also torture and execute people for their ethnicity and political beliefs, and imprison people for thinking. So I am not sure that your Chinese colleague has much to brag about. I also assume that he's "over here" and not in China!

As for the general point, if people break the law then there is a penalty to pay. We don't get to pick and choose which laws we obey, otherwise we have anarchy. You can campaign to change the law or to increase penalties for wrongdoing, but nobody gets to take the law into their own hands with impunity, and nobody should avoid the consequences of their choices because they had "a good reason". There are always alternatives. She intended to kill or seriously harm him. I might, individually, understand why someone felt like that. I might be tempted to do it myself. But that is vastly different from deciding that I have the right to mete out my own version of justice just because I want to.

Onnabugeisha what are your thoughts on the fact that he was repeatedly allowed out of prison and able to go on to abuse further children? Whether the punishments were ‘harsher’ is neither here nor there, they were not a deterrent. Genuine question, what sort of sentence would you like child sex offenders to receive? Do you think they should be given life upon first offence?

I had to force myself to put down the knife I was holding down while cooking dinner when my 3yo told me why was going on while her abuser sat in my living room before I went through to confront him. It is the biggest regret of my life as he got off with it. This woman did what many other parents wish they could when it comes to protecting their kids, I’ve got nothing but admiration for her.

There’s always another option.

She chose to pick up a knife, walk to his block of flats, take the lift, knock on his door, go into his flat and stab him to death.

She had an option to not do this. And I’m not saying this is a case of a deranged woman just looking for an excuse to murder, I’m saying no reason is good enough for murder.

And she knew what she did was wrong because she then chose to turn herself in to the police that same night wearing the bloody clothes and giving them the bloody knife.

Agree. Although if they got a reasonable sentence I'd rather them see it out. More often than not it's a pitiful few years, so I'd make sure he got justice myself.

So what happens when you get it wrong and kill the wrong person? Because that is what happens when you leave things like this to vigilante justice. Should we celebrate you then?

This is the mindset that led to that unfortunate paediatrician being demonised.

Your post is very insensitive.

I have quite enough trauma without playing through your imaginary scenarios for your entertainment

I don’t think she should have done time for it… if the justice system actually targeted predators and kept their victims safe then she wouldn’t have.

That should be the focus here not how you imagine my preschool age self would have coped with my mum going to prison.

The justice system should be held to account for the predators it releases back into society.
In this case he had double figure convictions

Why is anyone wasting time talking about their mum leaving it to the police when the police had their chance to keep people safe and let her children be abused.

doesn’t fill you with faith in the system if you have actually experienced it