Suspended sentence? That's all?

[isabellerossignol]

This man has a string of victims, so he can't even claim the usual tripe about a 'moment of madness' or whatever. So why does he get a suspended sentence? Why is the legal system so reluctant to punish sex offences?

I just find myself getting angrier with each passing day.

Even if the bit about him having a hard time getting it up was true (sure, mate), why is anyone meant to care? The only reason a lawyer would present that argument is that they are confident that a man's sad penis will be considered more important than any amount of harm he's done to women.

Don't mean to derail, but I really wish we'd change the terminology used around reporting sentencing. If you're a non-English speaker, young, don't watch the news a lot, or for whatever other reason aren't familiar with the terminology, and aren't the kind of person who tends to analyse or look up phrases you don't happen to know if you're just skimming through a news story, the phrase "three years in prison, suspended for three years" sounds like it's saying he's going to get three years in prison, because that's the main clause, with the "suspended" part just explaining some other detail about it (maybe delayed or something). Makes it less obvious that a lot of people sentenced for some really quite serious crimes don't go to prison. I know when I was a young teenager I didn't know what it meant.

And in terms of feeling violated without being physically harmed, I'm not sure it gets much worse than being recorded using the toilet. For me personally, I would find that much more upsetting than being secretly videoed whilst undressing or whatever (although I'd find that very upsetting too).

plan A history of the same offences would have been an aggravating feature, and a suspended sentence does seem lenient given the nature of the offences, previous history etc.
However in some cases a suspended sentence can be a better choice as it works as a deterrent, it hangs over the offender for a much longer period than a short burst in custody. A suspended sentence can be put in place for an extended time, perhaps eighteen months or longer maybe with supervision. He will be on the sex offenders register for life.

One more incident of any kind, and his sentence will be activated in full.

Meant to say non-native English speaker.

"Well, N Ireland is in no way a liberal society and plenty of other offenders go to prison. It's sexual offenders who consistently seem to go unpunished."

The stats I found...

www.justice-ni.gov.uk/publications/court-prosecutions-convictions-and-out-court-disposals-statistics-northern-ireland-2019

Sexual offenders were treated in a fairly similar way to "violence against the person". Now that's not entirely clear as a comparison, because both categories cover a lot of different ground. Robbery had much higher use of custodial sentence.

"However in some cases a suspended sentence can be a better choice as it works as a deterrent"

Well what do you want the justice system to do? Some people may want the justice system to punish people for the sake of the victims. If that's what you want, then a suspended sentence is just a slap in the face to the victims, because they completely failed to get justice from the court.

Now I realise that some people would see such an emphasis on punishment as "backwards", "merely revenge", and we need a more enlightened and humanitarian system today; but just to point out, sometimes victims want offenders to be punished.

"The recording was an invasion of privacy, similar to upskirting, but his offences there predate the upskirting law and so cannot technically result in a prison sentence because laws cannot be applied retroactively."

That's not what the news story suggests at all. The news story suggests that he admitted to an existing crime with what he had done with video recording. So yes he could be punished for it presumably.

zinco it is not just about punishment, it is about keeping others safe as well. Some offenders respond well to the suspended sentence by trying to stay out of trouble, to avoid custody, so it could be that others are safer because the suspended sentence is there.

Sex offenders are notoriously hard to rehabilitate, it is an ongoing problem.