ROLF HARRIS SENTENCE

[donnie]

Is just about to be announced. It has now been revealed that he was also initially charged with viewing child pornography images and visiting child porn sites , as well as the sexual assault charges, but his lawyers successfully had these charges dropped as they would 'infect the case'. Sorry, not able to cut and past but it's on the Guardian website.

Why does he have to serve his sentence here, with us paying for his 3 squares?! Why don't they ship him back to Australia to serve it there.

If and when he gets out of prison, he will have court cases to face in Australia.

So fucking depressed that people still blame the victims. Especially when they're children.

Pink he has lived in the UK since 1952 and is a British Citizen so has lived here and paid taxes etc etc. Anyway, don't think the Australians would want him back.

Apparently a lot more people have now come forward claiming to have been abused by him.

God Alive!

So good to know that the British Justice system values what happened to that 7 year old child (and all his other victims) so lowly.

As for the images of Child Abuse not being 'relevant' -

No wonder abuse continues to thrive, when these are the sentences handed out.

All the abuse apologists should hang their heads too.

Vile, vile, vile man. I hope he rots in jail, I really do.

But remember the Joanna Yeates murder trial. Somehow the defence managed to get his internet history disallowed as evidence. The history included a video I a blind young woman bound and gagged in the boot of a car :(

I genuinely don't understand how highly relevant evidence can be excluded this way.

If new people have come forward he could be tried for additional crimes against them and those would result in additional jail time if found guilty, no? Don't think we're done yet.

Thing is, as with most crimes, what sentence would you consider appropriate? See it time and again with all sorts of crimes, hit and run through to serial murder.

If you're looking for jail to fulfill vengeance you will always fall short. Because, really, would any time be long enough? Hard enough?

Five years seems woeful though.

A big factor has to be his age; it's normal to adjust sentences downwards for someone so old. There is a whole prison in Germany (I think that's the right country) for elderly people because their specialist needs are hard to cater for in general prison population; they have a really low crime rate for younger cohorts, too. RH could end up spending as much time in hospitals as he does behind bars.

The thing is, if he hadn't been famous, then his sentence might well have been shorter, or the cases wouldn't have come to light...So if this highlights how short these sentences are in general and how the system really does have to change, that is a good thing. There must be thousands of victims who have tried to bring charges against a perpetrator and found it a terrible ordeal, for the sentencing to be lighter than this (even if it gets to a court hearing).

I don't like the way there is so much emphasis on this one case, as though it is in isolation. What about the example the judge is setting, let alone Rolf Harris? This is a chance for our justice system to be steered toward greater justice for ordinary people in future.

The justice system has already changed massively (sentencing rules have, anyway, for this type of crime).

RH got a relatively shorter sentence because he was sentenced under guidelines that are now obsolete & decades old.

Maybe change the rules for historical crimes brought to light belatedly, but this is considered bad legal practice & principles.

Yes...they didn't hang people for murders commited in 1950s though, did they? That obsolete rule seems to only work in favour of the perpetrator. And so what if that was the sentencing then? Does that mean people were to think it was less of a crime then, and the justice system was ignorant of how devastating it was to the victim? I thought ignorance was considered no excuse it the eyes of the law?

didshedoitonpurpose: That shocked me about the Joanna Yeates case too. That evidence was highly pertinent. Imagine if the jury had found him not guilty and that evidence had come out later.

What disturbs me is the idea that this kind of evidence will "prejudice" the jury, when in fact it just means giving them relevant information that will allow them to assess the truth of the defendant's story.

it's not about vengence for me - sentencing should serve as a sufficient deterrent for other offenders and a sufficient message to society as a whole and victims of these crimes that this is totally unacceptable behaviour.

the light sentences achieve neither of these things. the drip effect of all these pitifully light sentences (and often completely no jail time given) is to keep on normalising male violence and sexual crimes against women and children and to reassure abusers that they'll probably get off even if they do ever make it to court. it also tells victims loud and clear that there is little point reporting their abusers because even if it actually makes it to court and the survive the ordeal of the criminal justice system and their attacker is found guilty there will still be the sickening end result of a pitifully light sentence that says, 'it wasn't that big a deal'.

in the deterrent sense i would like to see automatic jail sentences for sexual assaults, rape and child abuse.

agree btw with the ridiculousness of not wanting to 'prejudice' the jury - errr your accumulated behaviour gives a picture of you, that's not prejudice it's the reality of who you are and how you have behaved coming back to you.

No crime is ever deterred by a sentence. Well not beyond petty crime. Nobody breaks the speed limit then think "eek! 3 points on a licence! I'll never drive at 73 miles again!"

If you're committing murder I'm not sure you would care if it's fifteen years as the immediate gratification of being rid of said individual.

And I'm bloody confident sentence has no impact on crimes like peadophilia. Because there's something else wrong there. It's completely different.

Interesting piece on the type of prison he could go to

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/04/andy-coulson-rolf-harris-different-prison-fates