To think this is an insane verdict

[DancingNotDrowning]

pilot who takes lost girl back to his hotel not guilty of kidnap and assault.

unbelievable verdict, poor girl.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly2xv1yx83o.amp

Maybe it needs to be more like in the USA where they are vetted for their views

You know what. I’d ask for their porn habits. Seriously you would not believe the sewer of stuff that people watch which 50 years ago would have made you subject to a criminal charge yourself.

This man could not be proven to be a child molester. But he would appear to be someone who likes watching it happen. A lot of men fall into this category and we do not send them to prison. We used to.

The normalisation of abusive sexual imagery as entertainment (even if now legal) means that juries really have a kind of implicit social conditioning which means fairly obvious deviant behaviour is minimised.

I worked in criminal justice for years. And I would not bother to report sex offending as a victim. It is traumatic.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but was the judge a man or woman and what was his (or her) summing up speech?

You will not be surprised to hear that it was a man.

I'm a fully-paid-up member of the jury-had-more-evidence-than-you brigade, and have certainly not piped down!

No, no surprise there. It was a stupid question really.

As a 16yo I found a lost, crying kid in a busy High Street and even at my youngish age I had enough sense to say ok, we”ll wait here, your parents will find you/be looking for you and the best bet is to wait near where you last saw them.

If I’d waited too long I’d have gone in a shop and asked someone to ring the police but within a few minutes the parents appeared.

if I could think that at 16yo I’m sure an intelligent adult could have handled the situation better. If they had good intentions

That last paragraph really isn't fair.

The person who suggested that "maybe he has dementia or something" was throwing out possible explanations for how the jury arrived at a verdict that defies common sense. They weren't giving him the benefit of the doubt, or being "traitorous", just speculating as to what information (if any) the jury might have had that could reasonably have resulted in him being found not guilty.

Yes, when I said maybe he had dementia it was knowing nothing about the other cases.

Now obviously I see it differently.

Still I’d imagine when the police looked through his devices they didn’t find evidence of criminal planning or prior intent.

Would be interesting to know if CCTV shows him out on the prowl in the preceding hours and days.

For info dementia is almost automatically a disqualifying condition when it comes to professional flying licences (and somebody holding corporate jet ratings and a recent medical with an exact name match to Prussak appears on the FAA license registry).

It's not like murder, they don't need to prove prior intent.

This was an opportunistic crime. He possibly had no intention of taking a child away that day but instead of doing what the vast majority of women, children and men would do and support the child to find her parents, instead he took the child away.

Regardless of whether they had sufficient evidence to prosecute on the sexual assault cases, no sane person could conclude that his story around taking her away is true. I agree that the jury must have been led by the judge in this case.

If it sexual assault it seems the safest thing is to go for a civil case like Nikita Hind did.

Yes, sexual assault cases do seem to do a lot better in civil court.

But even in this case,it's so tricky with a child and no real evidence.

From what we can see, it seems like the whole thing hinges on the fact that we all know that there are bad men who take advantage of kids, and this man didn't behave in the way anyone normally would if they had good intent, and there isn't any reason to explain why else he would make such a poor choice (like an intellectual disability, say.)

There just doesn't seem to be anywhere to go with that under the law - we surely do not want to start saying that we will convict people because we can guess what was really going on, even with no evidence of it. I'm not sure that would hold up even in a civil case.

There is nothing to thank the system for here.

Every year thousands of girls and women are sexually abused and in most cases there is no proof, meaning their assailant will in most cases not even be brought to trial, and even if they are they are likely to be acquitted.

I think it was abduction. Air line pilots do not have a low IQ.

Was there at reason to suspect the girl was lying such as her parents had put ideas in her head?

Of course no proof other than a child’s word makes it difficult, but goodness it is easy to sexually abuse a child. You only need to say, no I didn’t!

As an aside - and I do mean an aside, I'm not victim-blaming - people are too reluctant to scream and yell. My dad, who was an arsehole but dealt with the scum of the earth professionally, taught us all to do this (following up with more in-depth advice once we reached our teens). Few adults will ignore a child yelling "Help! Call the police!"

Once we're adults we may need to overcome onlookers' doubts by yelling "Get off me, I don't know you!" and appealing directly to them to call the cops. In a pinch, it's better to yell "Fire!" than Help because people are weirdly scared of helping strangers on request.

Anyway, teach your kids to yell like fuck.

It sounds likely this Prussack slimeball made the kid drowsy and took compromising pictures of her. If such images are in the evidence now under consideration, the CPS might allow a retrial for sexual assault of the girl, if not for the kidnapping.

She was French and the pilot had to use Google translate.

How did the court speak to her?

How did the jury understand her in her own words, tone and demeanour rather than some translator’s. What prejudices or assumptions might the jury have about French girls?

@ScrollingLeaves I’m surprised the pilot did not speak even rudimentary French

The most common reason for cases not getting to court is the victim withdrawing, not lack of evidence. For cases that do get to court, around 60% result in a conviction.

Unless he'd worked for a French company or lived in France (and I can't be bothered to look at his CV) there would no reason for him to do so.

From an aviation POV English is the pretty much universally required language.

Surely the images found on his devices are unrelated, and they are not photos he has taken himself.

Otherwise this would have been part of the first trial. There’s no way he would have been acquitted, and he’d have faced more serious charges.

Oh, yes. That makes disappointingly good sense.