Judge Nicholas Rowland

[TonTonMacoute]

Must never be allowed to preside over a trial involving rape or sexual assault ever again.

This is an interesting article, and looks at sentencing guidelines and other complexities, but please don't let more victims suffer his complete lack of any empathy towards female victims.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/a653d1ed-e178-41a7-bb03-3d433a704520?shareToken=b714a3cc871c7c657515b6594349108e

I’m still not clear on why a custodial sentence isn’t mandatory for a rape conviction? There are some crimes which are so severe that no amount of mitigation can justify the criminal avoiding jail.

There are actually not many cases which carry mandatory custodial sentences.

Murder is the only crime which - to my recollection, I am not a criminal lawyer - carries a mandatory custodial tariff for a first offence.

Other serious crimes such as violent or sexual offences only carry a mandatory custodial tariff where the offence is a second or a third one.

With most crimes, even including rape, there is a range of severity. Imposing mandatory custodial tariffs does mean there is a risk that juries are put off handing down a conviction for all but the most serious cases.

Yes, I know men with IQs under 60 that understand consent. And would certainly know that this was wrong.

And it wasn't even arguable - they used a knife to threaten her!

They knew exactly what they were doing

The only way I can see that these lenient sentences might be justified is if these boys were under duress or threat in some way from older adults to commit these crimes for their benefit.

This simply does not seem to be the case - these boys acted of their own volition and are old enough to know it was wrong - add in the knife and the filming/posting on SM and there is no way boys of that age would not know they were committing a crime.

Pregnant women dont tend to rape young girls at knife point while recording the offence

They don't, but that's completely irrelevant to the point being made.

It seems that these boys had limited intellectual capacity

I do not believe that anyone, of limited intellectual capacity or otherwise, reaches the teenage years without understanding that rape is wrong and is a crime.
(Unless of course they are so learning-disabled that they are basically unable to function or to leave the house alone, which is obviously not the case here).

Either their lack of comprehension of the basic rules that allow people to live in society are so lacking that they need to be held in a secure unit for everyone else's safety OR they're criminal rapists and should be in prison.

There is no middle ground.

We do need a change in law - mandatory prison time for aggravated rape - which this was - should be the very first step.

However, there are also judges that side with the perpetrators, quite clearly, and these judges need to be sacked. There is no balancing at all in terms of the impact on the girls here at all.

And I do think it might focus minds on the victims if judges that give unduly lenient sentences to rapists did have a review. Statistically speaking there's a percentage of men who themselves will be rapists in these positions. When such an obvious failure to consider the victims occurs, as here, I think it is not unreasonable to question why and to perhaps review all the sentencing of that judge and see if they can do the job as required.

Their sentence is now being sent to the Court of Appeal according to the BBC.

I hope this doesn't mean that those poor girls have to go through the whole experience again?

I don’t agree that there are degrees of rape. Rape is rape. There are aggravating factors, like whether they are known to the victim, or indeed additional crimes like whether violence was used.
Rape when a woman was drugged, unconscious and received no injuries is not ‘less bad’ than rape when a woman was also beaten up, or rape when the perpetrators are related to the victim, etc.
Rape is rape, imo.

I agree.

It's been referred.

Starmer has sent it to appeals thank goodness. Total disgrace, that judge should never be allowed to sit again

I discussed it with my 11 yr old and she got straight the point and said, ‘I’d imagine he’s a rapist too.’

Because what grown adult man would be a rape apologist eh…

So interesting
I was trying to get more info on the judge and interestingly while chatgpt will basically try and tell me biological are women and that iabvr when iabu... it wouldn't tell me anything about this guys previous sentencing history.

Its also very hard to remove judges according to the quick Google I did.

The AG has apparently referred this to the court of appeal

I agree. The suggestion that any type of rape might be excusable based on how violent/drugs/assailant known to victim etc is totally unacceptable and sends completely the wrong message.

I'd like to see the judge and all his previous cases and judgements investigated. While they're at it they should look through his internet history and check his hard drive. They live among us and act with impunity, he probably just wanted to watch the videos and admired their work. The fact he's probably at work today fucking up more lives is disgusting.

Please, do quote where I said any type of rape was "excusable".

Having read the Times article, it seems clear that Judge Rowland does have empathy.

He is perfectly able to empathise with male perpetrators of violence and abuse.

I know it's controversial, but I really would make it a legal requirement for the parents (or other responsible adults/carers) of criminals who are under 18 to stand trial along with their children.

I cannot understand how people who have grossly negligently brought up children to think that such serious crimes are acceptable are not brought to account for it. I'm not saying that all of them will be culpable - as sometimes you can do your very, very best as a parent to no avail - but they should at least be charged and the evidence considered.

I do wonder how many fewer youth crimes there might be if their nonchalantly negligent parents knew that they could risk imprisonment for the crimes too.

This case has angered me so much. Limited fucking intellectual capacity! I was just 12 years old when I was sexually assaulted at a fairground by a young man who was out with a group of others, all with differing mental capacities. The one who attacked me should have had 121 supervision as he had previous for inappropriate behaviour.

His carer let him go off on his own and I paid the price. I was in the funhouse with my friends and couldn’t get away from him. Luckily a fairground worker caught on to what was happening and pulled the young man aside to give me time to get out.

My mum called the police who did come out but said there was no way there would be any consequences for him as he had the mental age of a child. Didn’t stop him pressing his erection against me, putting his hands down my trousers repeatedly, grabbing my breasts and telling me I was a little whore though.

This was back in the 70s and it’s maddening to see that very little progress has been made towards protecting women and girls.

I meant in terms of the judge considering it reasonable to let these boys off. I probably chose the wrong word. Sorry. It isn't "excusable", but it does seem to me that the notion that there are different degrees of rape is not appropriate.