AIBU to feel outraged that Kyle Clifford is able to refuse to attend court today?

[HappySonHappyMum]

I am absolutely outraged that Kyle Clifford can choose not to attend court to hear his sentence and be forced to listen to the impact statements being read out by John and Amy Hunt. I'm literally sitting here crying with rage and sadness right now listening to their words. He should be dragged there and forced to listen, he lost all rights when he committed rape and then murdered three women in cold blood. Why does he even have a choice?

Exactly this. If he heard the victims' impact statements he wouldn't care and would make no pretence to do so, which would be even worse for the family and friends of Carol, Louise and Hannah.

YANBU to be outraged. He's disgusting.

But I don't agree he should be forced into the courtroom. I don't think he's suddenly going to think 'maybe I shouldn't have killed three people' after hearing the impact statements. He could be disruptive or make it harder for the families. Even if he was restrained or whipped or whatever people want on the thread, it makes it all about him (and good footage for the future Netflix doc).

There's some real budding Irma Geese's on here though aren't there? Daily torture, removing body parts...jeez, it's a shame Assad was overthrown, some people have clearly missed their vocation in life.

Thank you for sharing your experience, and also for your bravery in going to court. I hope people take note.

No. I think he should be in prison until he dies. However, there are some seriously vile comments on this thread.

SOFT BRITAIN. Unbelievable. This country is ridiculous. Name me another country this is allowed. Maybe if we had tougher punishments people would escalate into crime. Kyle didn't wake up one day and murder these women, he has been a long time offender. In Singapore if you throw a cigarette on the street you go to jail. If you steal something you are punished with lashes. If you sell drugs you are sentenced to death. Safest country in the world. I'm so angry at the soft state of this crumbling country.

There should be more whole life terms. It's sickening that Huntley, Sharif etc. may not be in prison for their natural lives, although saying that I can't imagine the parole board ever being stupid enough to let them out. While I agree many prisoners can be rehabilitated, I don't think that extends to murderers.

Not sure how you double a whole life term

This. An obstructive and aggressive defendant is worse than the defendant not being there,

You could revoke all privileges and make them earn them from scratch.

Totally agree. Yet another life taken by a total misogynist, supported by dark online influences.

We as women also need to ensure the females in our lives aren't involved or coming into contact with men like this. Get them away. Cut them off. Like, presumably Louise's family knew Kyle's brother was a murderer and that Kyle himself had very strange views and opinions. It's not a small thing when people start sympathising with Andrew Tate.

What we do with the psychopaths and sociopaths. That's a huge problem.
Axel nutty slack, clearly showing signs of a personality disordered state ( not treatable in any way I understand). What exactly do you do?

There's alot of people like this all around and we just don't know what to do with them.

I know we are all on a continuum of being, but where there are flags, what do you do.

I don't think there are any answers. Can prison systems manage this. And I don't want them around us knowing rehabilitation is not possible.

No. Everyone has the same human rights. That's the whole fucking point!

You can’t - it’s an irrational comment.

And then he'd probably scream and bawl and curse and bring proceedings to a standstill, increasing the distress for the bereaved.

I like the idea of him being forced to watch/listen to proceedings from a room at the prison though. Obviously with the sound turned off at his end so he can't interrupt. Not necessarily be forced to listen to the victim impact sentences - I fear his ilk would get off on having the effects of the carnage laid out before him. But certainly to hear his whole life sentence read aloud in real-time.

People thought that about Christopher Watts on Colorado after murdering his little girls , wife and unborn son.
Instead he has besotted women sending him fan mail , chats with his parents and is quite happy - if institutionalised -from reports of fellow inmates.

They also execute people by firing squad. Some of the violent fantasies here are very disturbing.

I agree about deeply ingrained misogyny. Whilst I think that the convicted criminal should be forced to hear the victim statements, I am not sure it should be in the courtroom where they can be disruptive.

Play the sentence in his cell on a loudspeaker where he can't get away from it then.
It's only right that somehow he should have to listen.
We really are so freaking soft. He's wielded his power right until the end.

The majority of them aren't coming out anyway. They have nothing to lose.

They will never be rehabilitated and it's not fair on prison or court staff to have to deal with them.

One of my colleagues works with the prison officers association so I hear various things from him. The officers do not need to be dragging prisoners back to court to listen to sentencing. It's a beast of a job.

Some seriously stupid ideas on here and a staggering lack of knowledge of what it's like to work with offenders in a prison setting.

Most people don't have a clue sadly

I am well aware of that, was just drawing attention to it

It's a nice idea on the surface, but in reality it wouldn't work out so well. It shouldn't be forced by a law change either. I'd be quite happy for sentencing rules to be amended to stipulate that if a defendant refuses to attend their sentencing a mandatory 25% increase is applied.

But in this case that'd probably make no difference either, he knows he'll never get released. So I'd prefer that he's locked in a cell with a very loud pa that plays recordings of the victim impact statements at him for 23 hours a day, for the duration of his sentence. Prison in this country is too soft, not deterring people from serious crime.

Yes he is, and it's hard not to wonder what exactly has been going on in that family

My own view counts for nothing compared to that of the family, but would anything honestly have been gained by dragging Clifford into court?
Yes he's a snivelling coward, but then we knew that anyway and surely what matters most is that he should never be able to do this to anyone else

Does anyone know if the full sentencing remarks have been posted online?

What is the point of the victim impact statement if the perpetrator is not there to hear it?

The views of the family should absolutely be taken into accounts and if they want him to hear it, he should hear it.

Too many on here more bothered about the rights of the perpetrator rather than the family, indicative of the society we live in nowadays I suppose and evidence on so many different threads and in different circumstances.

If the perpetrators cannot be physically restrained and brought to court because it may risk injury to the prison staff, then at the very least they should put a camera in the cell so that the family can see the prisoner in the cell and stream it loudly into the cell. It could then be repeated every morning or evening in the cell

If this was not possible for some namby-pamby reason, then that should be a penalty for the perpetrator for example loss of privileges or luxury items, et cetera, so that we can prove who is in charge here and that the perpetrator holds no powers or control.