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!!

Oh aye, cos women have nothing else to do with their time. We do the vast majority of child- and elderly care, wifework, community work, and most of us work full-time. We earn less and travel uphill thanks to sexism. But sure, shut up whinging and fix systemic misogyny, gals.

@ClaudiaWinklepanda we need to examine our attitudes right from the start. This includes child rearing, acceptable behaviours, the encouragement of certain gendered behaviours including the ‘boys will be boys’ trope. We need to stop kids having unsupervised internet access and parents need to be more clued up. There needs to be more easily accessible help for those experiencing worrying sexual thoughts. We need to be less permissive about certain kinks and sexual behaviours, all too often shielded under the umbrella of consenting adults. We need regional disparities to be removed. We need investment in services and schemes that are preventative. I could go on……

The poor children in those photographs.

Unlike Huw, those kids have a life sentence. If I had it my way, the victims in those photos would be given every penny and asset of Huw's. They deserve it.

Yeah it’s funny how that increase has coincided with men being recorded as women.

And no, it’s not ‘whatever’ FFS.

Unfortunately there’s not enough room in prisons and we have sentencing guidelines. This sentence looks right when compared with the normal sentences for this. Former head of DPP says this and you should not give a sentence based on whether someone is a household name or not.

The bigger issue is how individuals control risky behaviour. It’s certainly something that can result from being bipolar. It’s definitely a mental health issue and prison doesn’t address this. It needs therapy and that’s now required. It’s also important to understand that losing your job and standing in society is a “sentence”. It is like losing everything. So the court has punished fairly from what I can see.

As an additional comment, we are a nation that only engages in law and sentencing when we think it’s too lenient. We don’t engage much at other times and we should. The law underpins society and its vital we understand how it works and even read up
on sentencing guidelines. Some people want 200,000 people in prisons. That’s simply not going to happen. There has to be a judgement on risk to society and managing the risk. HE is seen as a manageable risk. So that’s why it’s a suspended sentence.

It's not relevant? So anyone convicted of a crime should get the exact same sentence?

Say someone steals £500 from a shop. Should there be the same punishment if it's a mother struggling to feed kids, a millionaire's daughter doing it for kicks, an old lady who can't explain why she did it, a drug addict funding their habit? All the same sentence with no thought about the context or likelihood of reoffending?

I didn't mean anyone abused as a child would think that's ok. Of course not. I do mean that these things are more complicated than meets the eye.

It's massively relevant because a large majority of those in prison for these offences ie. the worst offenders, were victims themselves once upon a time. This does NOT excuse their behaviour. But it does go some way to trying to reduce the impossible numbers we are talking about here.

By tackling the source of the problem then you begin to tackle the wider effects. Yes, in an ideal world all paedophiles would be locked up and away from children, but you would have to turn our whole country into a prison to achieve that.

This is of course an incredibly emotive subject because we are talking about child victims of the worst crimes imaginable. Unfortunately "kill or castrate the fuckers" is not an actual solution.

However, we need to move away from this obsession with imprisoning people as it just isn’t working.

since we are only involved in this convo, you really have no idea about if i have an obsession with imprisoning people.

As it happens i do think we should put people in prison: for violence (GBH and above, for rape, for murder, and for being a part of the child sex abuse industry)

I don't think we should be jailing people for a lot of things they are in jail for, and i do believe we need a much better and far more robust and community based method of punishment, reparations to victims of crime against property etc, and rehabilitation.

I don't believe that anyone into these kind of images will ever be safe, and i think a year to think about what they did, and then a LIFETIME on the register would be appropriate, knowing they would be out in 6 months. And i am ok for their lives to be pretty much ruined in terms of only getting shit jobs and having shit pensions afterwards.

Which is why I said anecdotally. I have dealt with several female sex offenders, some of whom had committed contact offences.

YANBU. I can not believe that two men can share videos of young children (7 and 11) being raped and walk away with a suspended sentence. It's an absolute disgrace.

No restrictions on him in the future as the judge thinks he's an upstanding bloke who messed up due to his mental health issue. A mental health issue that only appears when confronted with consequences. How terribly convenient.

I'm so angry.

Have we had a NAMALT or women do it too yet?

Absolutely disgraceful!

Several, of course.

If thats the case, there is nothing stopping you joining Police or Probation, or becoming a prison officer. Failing that, you could volunteer in one of these areas. We all have to do our bit if we are going to turn this around.

Yes!!!

Come and walk the landings with me!!

Who is going to join up??

Yes, NSPCC data found that 87,000 sexual offences against children were recorded by police in 2022/23. That's the number of offences, not number of perpetrators though which will be lower.

On images alone they found via Freedom of Information requests that police forces were bringing more than 25,000 charges a year.

But the National Crime Agency said last year they think that's the tip of the iceberg. According to their estimates "there are between 680,000 [and] 830,000 adults in the UK that pose some degree of sexual risk to children. These are extraordinary figures: roughly 10 times the prison population".

And the NCA is very clear, 80% of those arrested in relation to child sexual abuse are male. The crime data and their research suggests that 2% of the adult male population are a sexual danger to children.

So if we (as a society) want more of these men to be in prison we either have to create a lot more prison places or release many thousands of people who are already in there.

I am quite aware of the bigger picture thanks. Have you actually read any of my comments? You don’t seem to understand them.

Very good point ☝️

I understand 'mitigating factors' being brought into crimes such as driving offences, burglary, shoplifting, even manslaughter. But I cannot imagine a single mitigating factor into a man, making and obtaining images of children, actual small children and then wanking over them. There is not a single mitigating factor that makes that crime any more 'understandable'. Mitigating factors should not come into child sexual abuse.

Whilst-ever we can incarcerate individuals for Facebook posts then we can incarcerate individuals for downloading images of children.

Have those women self identified into womanhood by any chance?

I wouldn't trust the statistics

I was just reading them, actually. I understand them perfectly well, and think they're utterly ludicrous. You seem to have zero interest in actually examining the axes of oppression going on here, and imagine that women can conjure up spare time out of nowhere to overhaul a male-dominated "justice" system that's actively stacked against women and children.

nah mate, i did my bit and now it is for other people to do it.

that's a pathetic comeback, don't you think? I volunteer elsewhere, because that is where my skills lie.

But. I am a citizen of the UK and it is perfectly normal for me to be able to express the direction i think our criminal justice system should go, and i do occasionally write to my MP about some of it.

@Haroldwilson I edited my post because I agree with you re the examples you're giving above. Some crimes, there should be (properly funded) practical, psychological, and financial support provided instead of prison.

Not when it's child abuse though. There's no justification for that - and it's offensive to the many women and men who suffered child abuse, when an abuser uses that as an excuse.

It literally is “whatever”. I deal with the individual and behaviour in front of me as well as considering the wider context.

There needs to be more easily accessible help for those experiencing worrying sexual thoughts. We need to be less permissive about certain kinks and sexual behaviours, all too often shielded under the umbrella of consenting adults.

Wouldn't these two things be contradictory? If someone has worrying sexual thoughts (I presume you mean paedophilic thoughts, given the topic of this thread) surely they'll be LESS likely to seek help if we are less permissive about kinks and sexual behaviours?

I get where you're coming from with everything else, so much surrounding sex and the raising of boys is a shitshow.