" They are the accused here, not the NAS."
The NAS are taking a high moral tone.
"The victim, who is 17 years old, was subjected to a three day ordeal during which he was brutally and maliciously tortured. However, his assailants ? Jack Bolton, Andrew Griffin and Nathan Marshall ? were handed a meagre 80 hours of community service for their crimes. The victim?s family described the ruling as a "joke"."
Well, let's see how the National Autistic Society do when it comes to protecting vulnerable victims.
"A mentally ill man who raped a schoolgirl after escaping from a low-security psychiatric hospital had previously been allowed to amass a collection of pornographic and horror DVDs, a court heard yesterday.
Darren Harkin, 21, who attacked the 14-year-old girl the morning after absconding, was also taken by staff to the cinema to see horror films and had been allowed unsupervised leave.
Judge Nicholas Cooke QC said Harkin, who was initially detained when, aged 12, he stabbed his six-month-old stepbrother to death in his cot, was "exceptionally dangerous". He said he was aghast at the actions of staff at Hayes hospital in Pilning, a village near Bristol.
"How on earth could it be thought appropriate that someone who had done such a thing could access horror films? It is difficult to understand," he told Reading crown court."
(...)
The judge also questioned why hospital staff waited half-an-hour before alerting police when Harkin escaped in February and why neighbouring police forces were not then alerted.
So on the one hand, courts should listen to the NAS when it comes to sentencing people who attack innocent victims. On the other hand, when it comes to stopping violent offenders who have dismembered babies from accessing violent pornography, preventing them from absconding and actually being bothered to inform the police, the NAS appear to have a bit of a blind spot. Yes, attacks on 17 year old autistic boys are bad. But so are the rapes of 14 year old schoolgirls by people the NAS are being paid to deal with, and it's perfectly reasonable to ask the question "if the NAS are such experts on the criminal justice system, why did they fuck up so badly that a 14 year old was raped by someone in their care?"