To be absolutely sick of excuses being made for men's disgusting sexual behaviour? Trigfer warning. Hugh Edwards sentencing.

[UCConfuseMe]

Just read that Hugh Edwards ahs been given a suspended sentence.

And if course it's not his fault. He had a mean Daddy and some mental health issues and some bad things going on in his life, poor lamb.

All that made him say 'amazing' when sent photos of children as young as 7 being molested.

Having a rough time and a strict father doesn't make you a fucking paedophile!!!

Take responsibility for your predatory and vile behaviour!!

Brefugee, I’m not trying to convince you one way or the other. Your feelings on this are yours entirely. However, we need to move away from this obsession with imprisoning people as it just isn’t working. The threat of a weeks long imprisonment wouldn’t send any message at all and would pretty much collapse the entire system.

He's lost nothing. His family are standing by him and he can now start claiming his nice healthy pension, plus he was still getting his full pay.

Why is there always more concern about the men as opposed to the victims?

Those poor children. 7 year olds performing sex acts for the gratification of dirty bastards like Huw.

He will disappear into a contented little life. He couldn't even own his shitty behaviour and it was everyone else's fault but his.

*men

You don't know much about the judicial system,read up on sentencing guidelines

Well, I for one am glad the state can't kill or castrate people.

Prison is there for people who are dangerous enough to pose a real danger to the public so should be kept inside. And for those who need to be removed from society for rehabilitation.

In this case, he wasn't going about snatching kids off the street. He was exchanging photos. That's bad, I'm not minimising it, but there are ways of monitoring what someone is doing with communications that doesn't necessitate locking them up.

If you lock people up, you have to let them out at some point. What then? Or if you locked up every sex offender forever, we'd need a lot more prisons and higher taxes.

The point of the justice system is to deter offending and prevent reoffending, not to wreak vengeance. If we did that, we'd still be disembowelling people etc.

Animals, children and women aren't valued or taken seriously. Male abusers get away with it all the time. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable in our society continue to suffer.

Well, it’s not hard to establish what a suspended sentence means, as a couple of minutes on the internet should resolve it.

CPS graded him a medium risk of reoffending and a medium risk to children

He's a risk and is now back home. There's no deterrent to not commit paedophilia

The chief magistrate was quoted as saying he "accepted evidence that Edwards had no recollection of viewing the indecent images due to his mental health issues at the time of the offences" and that Edwards "doesn't present a risk or danger to children."

Time to check Paul Goldspring's hard drive. Men protecting men again.

I think the suspended sentence, coming at a time when people have been sent to prison for tweets , highlights how unfair the law is.
As someone who has suffered at the hands of an abuser and went to court but lost the case due to his witnesses not being available, this makes me sick to my stomach. People who are lucky enough not to have been affected by this crime have no idea of the lasting effects it has, they can imagine but will never know the torment victims have to live with for the rest of their lives.

People do go to prison for crimes against children. The judge said this case crossed the barrier for a custodial sentence being appropriate. A suspended sentence means Edwards will go to prison if he breaches the terms of his probation.

It's basically a prison term hanging over him for two years if he does wrong. Being on the sex offenders register also presumably means he can be swiftly in deep trouble if he does anything wrong.

Whilst this is true, the biggest issue is the scale of the problem. It is impossible to manage the amount of referrals and convictions unless every working adult joined law enforcement/judiciary to tackle it.

That pesky 'mental 'elf' removing men's memories. Tut, Tut, Tut...

Gee, my heart bleeds. 🙄

Can you tell us more about the societal overhaul aspect? It sounds like you work in this field. Clearly something isn't working, and I'd like to hear what solutions there might be.

Men, women, whatever! Anecdotally, I can tell you that an increasing number of women are now finding themselves in front of a Court for sexually motivated offending.

But if something isn't done, this thing is going to become accepted mainstream sexuality and then what?

A tiny fraction of the number of male offenders.

But as always on these threads it's like 5,4,3,2,1 "Women do it too!"

Seldom.

but not all or nearly all of them?

not good enough. Police resources are stretched for sure. I want more than some people involved in child sexual abuse being managed effectively.

I want the VAST majority of them being managed extremely robustly and effectively. And I'd be ok with a few non-violent prisoners being released to free up a few cells for them.

Mostly they’re handed out by magistrates.

If you have an issue with how magistrates are sentencing, then please apply to become one.

I take real umbrage with people ranting about how terrible magistrate decision making is when these are lay people giving up their own free time to volunteer to make our justice system function.

If you don’t like it, be part of the change. But don’t cast aspersions on those who are giving back to a community by volunteering to be the backbone of our justice system.

It's not "whatever" at all. The overwhelming majority of sexual violence is committed by men, none of whom are receiving adequate sentences from the hugely male-dominated judiciary.

Fuck's sake, look at the bigger picture.

Why not? If it's a crime against children but the perpetrator is in early 20s, grew up in care experiencing regular abuse themselves, it's relevant, right? Not an excuse or a get out of jail free card, but relevant.

How is it relevant? The man I know who was sexually abused as a child was in care when it happened to him. (So much for care!). He despises child abusers, and it's offensive to men and women like him when child abusers use their own childhood traumas as an "excuse".

ETA. Mitigating circumstances (childhood or adult trauma, mental health issues etc) are of course sometimes relevant for other crimes, for example drug use (sometimes turned to for self medication), TV licence non payment, etc. But there's no justification for child abuse.

"not a threat to society"

you are, i take it, familiar with the very basic economic concept of supply and demand, right?

You do know what these images are of, right? because despite the press and some posters pussy-footing around it is Child Sexual Abuse.

but "no threat" right?

Yes.

For those that don't know there are many dedicated 'sex offender' prisons in this country

I can think of 4 off the top of my head, but there's more

There's no dedicated prisons for any other crimes except young offenders