Is Shamima Begum a victim or a criminal?

[ShamimaBegu]

Just listened to the podcasts about Shamima Begum. How can Shamima Begum not be viewed as a victim of grooming and sex trafficking? How on earth would a 15 year old got to Syria without adults making it happen?
She was married off and became pregnant on multiple occasions. She surely is as much a victim as a criminal?

👆🏼 this

At 15 we know what we're doing!

Criminal. She shouldn't be allowed back.

Pretty sure the UK already tried that one in 1788 😂😂

And apparently we’ve not moved on since! We still seem to think our problems are somebody else’s problems.

Okay, so rape isn’t really compatible with UK values, is it? So tbh they’re not home grown problems and we shouldn’t be arsed with rapists, we could ship them off to other countries, preferably poor and war torn ones.

Do people realise how stupid they sound when they babble this nonsense?

I’m amazed at the argument that the stripped white people of their citizenship too so that makes it ok. I don’t like in the Uk but if I did I would be terrified of my government doing something like that. In Australia I think a good % of the population would be technically eligible for citizenship elsewhere. If they started revoking citizenship for people who are born here and parents are citizens no matter who it was I would have a problem with it.

She showed Josh photos of the children during the podcast

Thank you, Teafor1please, I wasn't aware of that

However I mentioned evidence rather than claims and don't know if there's any to show the children pictured were her own?

She's brown and a Muslim, that automatically makes your guilty in the eyes of the tory government and a not insignificant portion of the UK population.

You're right. Tory votes would never judge a brown and/or Muslim person by the content of their character rather than the olour of their skin. I certainly can't imagine the racist Tories ever accepting a brown leader or a Muslim Home Sec. Gosh, I wonder if it might happen under Labour.

Yes these points seem to be lacking reality

I don't think its about not punishing her though, you could argue this point about any child who has committed a crime as most of them are likely to have factors involved that have steered them towards committing these crimes. She is no different but surely she should be punished, rehabilitated (if possible) etc like those other children were.

I don't necessarily disagree that we know what we're doing at 15 but on here (and in the eyes of the law) if a 15 yo decides they want to date a man over 18 then they are being groomed and aren't old enough to consent. I am not understanding why this is different. In that line of thinking she wasn't old enough to consent to do what she did so was essentially groomed. Not saying I don't think she deserves punishing, I'm just interested in how people have decided its different.

She was a mature and intelligent fifteen year old, there's no getting away from it. You can even see that now. She is an old head on young shoulders, a considered thinker. There are fifteen year olds who are over sensitive, immature, damaged, naive but she was not.

It’s not about consent. It’s about criminal responsibility. The age of criminal responsibility in this country is ten. Quite simply our legal system makes her responsible for her own actions and decrees that she was old enough to know right from wrong. She voluntarily stole a passport (a crime) and joined a barbaric, murderous regime.

All the talk about consent and grooming is irrelevant. She’s a criminal, pure and simple and, according to the security agencies, a dangerous one.

The law doesn't care how mature someone is though as it's hard to prove. She was definitely damaged though.

It will probably hinge on how much right of reply she was given at the time her rights were revoked. The answer is probably not much and there was nobody sufficiently knowledgeable or legally conversant to act on her behalf. That is the basis upon which the decision would be revised.

She should 100% be punished, but not sure I agree she should be banished from the UK, locked up and throwaway the key as many posters seem to be suggesting. Grooming is relevant here though, that is how people often become involved with ISIS. Not just underage females, but older males who are vulnerable etc. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be punished of course but I do believe they are the UKs problem.

She was groomed and is consequently a victim and, given her experiences, most likely remains a very damaged individual. Sadly, the reality is that this may mean she continues to pose a danger. Or alternatively, she may be successfully rehabilitated and hugely beneficial to the UK in terms of helping us learn more about how to effectively prevent this happening to others. Either way, to leave her stateless, having allowed this to happen to her, is unforgivable. And I agree with others that her race and religion have seen her judged far more savagely than would otherwise be the case with the grooming and sexual exploitation of children.

her race and religion have seen her judged far more savagely than would otherwise be the case

By a brown Home Secretary with the same religion? Please.

I think you have articulated this so well. I have had some personal involvement in a situation that could have ended up like her (not me but a friend). It was so devastating at the time but luckily the police in our area do a huge amount of work with young people who are being groomed by extremists so many are helped before anything top serious has happened.

Exactly.

If two 10-year olds can be held accountable for their actions and said to know exactly what they were doing then why is a 15-year old attracting sympathy? Whether she was groomed or not, or whether James Bulger’s killers had a terrible childhood which led to what they did, we are all ultimately accountable for our actions.

Also, there was talk of sending James Bulger’s killers to New Zealand once released. It caused uproar in NZ and the Prime Minister at the time had to make a statement to say they would never be allowed in.

Unfortunately we can only trust a Labour Government (ideally led by Jeremy Corbyn) to ever place a person of colour (or indeed a woman) into a position of high office. We all know it would never happen under the racist Tories.

Is being groomed an excuse now in the eyes of the law? Does it make you exempt from punishment?
I’m only asking because based on this theory, most criminals were abused, groomed or damaged in some way. Nobody becomes a criminal just out of the blue.

So we might as well abolish prisons and punishments because all criminals had some kind of shit going on in their lives before they committed their crimes. If you dig deep enough into someone’s past, you always find something that could have affected their psyche in a way that turned them to crime. Shall we set all of them free then because it’s not their fault?

Well, given the current HS's policies on immigration and sending people to Rwanda, I don't think this is a great yard stick to be honest.

But actually, I was talking about the general public.

It wasn’t the current Home Secretary who removed her citizenship, was it? It was the very brown, non practicing Muslim Sanjid Javid. Hence the ridicule for your assertion that her race and religion are causing her to be victimised.

Not sure how you've managed to deduce so much inference from my post.

Most criminals get a chance to serve their time and be rehabilitated. Even kids like Jamie Bulger's murderers.