The Judge RANTS!
Date: 28/06/06
Sex And Death...
...and the problems our legal system seems to have with them.
Two news reports caught my eye today, and between them they
highlight an issue which has exercised my mind more than once in recent
times.
In Case
No. 1, a 49-year-old woman teacher was convicted of having sex with
a 14/15-year-old pupil at the school where she taught. The boy is
described in the BBC's report as having 'behavioural problems',
although his response to the woman's advances seem to be quite normal
to me, and coercion doesn't seem to have entered into it (if you'll
excuse the phrase) if they went on to have sex ten times, along with
what the report describes only as 'a sex act' and 'indecent touching'
(well, I don't suppose the BBC is allowed to say 'a gobble and a
grope').
The woman's punishment? Four years and three months imprisonment.
In Case
No. 2, a 45-year-old man's case was up before the Court Of Appeal.
He had been convicted of running down and killing a 20-year-old
student, being without insurance and having taken a week to turn
himself in.
His original punishment? Eighteen months in jail. The authorities
appealed, claiming the sentence to be unduly lenient, as well they
might. The Court Of Appeal agreed, and today increased the
sentence...to three years.
Now, there is something odd going on here I think.
Ponder, if you will:
In the first case, a teacher of un certain age takes
advantage of a teenage boy's undoubted (hormones cannot be denied at
that age) eagerness to lose it. There's no suggestion in the report
that the boy had suffered as a consequence (if this had come out in
court, the media could be relied upon to say so), and indeed his
experiences might have been viewed with envy by many of his classmates
(although the photograph accompanying the report doesn't indicate that
this woman is a looker - admittedly, it only shows her from the neck
up). OK, she most certainly shouldn't have done it; she abused her
position for her own gratification, and one can only assume that
whatever the boy got out of it was, from her point of view, a mere
side-effect.
In the second case, a man - out of outright carelessness or not
giving a damn anyway - kills a young woman who had all her best
years ahead of her; then drives off without attempting either to save
her life or even to put his hands up and admit what happened. One life destroyed,
and the lives of her family and friends ruined.
So please tell me why someone who killed got such a short
sentence in the first place, and why the Appeal Court's decision today
is scarcely any less of an insult to the victim's memory, and why
someone who shagged a (in all likelihood) willing teenager gets the
book thrown at her?
I think there are two factors at work here.
In the first case, it is the typical confusion in Anglo-Saxon
society about sex in general. We are surrounded by it: it features on
our television, in films and in music. It is used to sell all sorts of
things, be it a product or an idea. This merits little response of
condemnation from most; nothing much more than a shrug of the
shoulders, perhaps, or maybe a mild outbreak of synchronised tutting
when the ever-elastic boundaries of popular taste are blatantly
breached. It is surely beyond denial that this flooding effect must
have its influence on those who witness it: why else would the tactic
be used otherwise?
However...when it comes to our own sexuality, especially that of
teenagers, nothing may be admitted, nothing permitted, nothing even
talked about in most cases. Still and all, we know that between the
ages of about eleven and seventeen, most people (especially the males)
are a barely-controlled explosion of horniness. Yet any
expression of that is deemed to be so far beyond the pale as to render
those subject to it liable to outright condemnation, abuse, scorn and,
increasingly, the sanction of the courts. Every extreme case is cited
in an attempt to 'clamp down' on it. So, a particuarly egregious case
of the physical abuse of a young adult may be used (actually, no 'may
be' about it: it is used) to justify such a dubious
exercise as the Sex Offenders' Register. Once in place, such measures
tend to suffer from what is termed 'function creep', in that they are
applied to situations where they were never intended to be used. For
instance, there was a case only three or four years ago of a
12-year-old boy, who had felt up a girl in his class at school, being
placed on that Register for life. And there's no easy appeal
against such a decision either.
My point is this: if a mature (for a given value of that word)
woman tries to seduce any remotely physically-normal boy in his
mid-teens, she is likely to succeed irrespective of her motives. This
doesn't make her less culpable any more than it makes her 'victim' into
a naïve innocent: it merely is, and we have to recognise
that fact. Other societies do seem to handle this better. Had a similar
case arisen in France, there would have been a shrug of the shoulders:
in Spain or Italy, it might have merited a small headline. In parts of
Africa, a wry smile of bemusement might have been engendered by the
reaction to the act, rather than to the act itself: the boy may be
considered to be slightly slow off the mark. In the Diyip Saath
of the US, the teacher might have been considered to be the
retard. Punish if you will (and you should), but nearly half a decade
in the jug is a disproportionately prurient response.
In the second case, it seems to me to be a manifestation of another
particular fact about our society: the overlordship of the Great God
Car. It happens time and again that people who kill with a motor
vehicle, either through carelessness, negligence or outright
not-giving-a-flying-one-ness, tend to end up with far lighter sentences
than if they had been homicidal using any other lethal object. If you
commit what is termed 'manslaughter' with, say, a knife or a baseball
bat, you are likely to end with a prison term of five years minimum,
and life sentences can be, and are, given in some cases. Yet, if your
carelessness, etc. with a motor vehicle causes the same outcome, you
can consider yourself somewhat unlucky if you get anywhere near as much
as five years. Indeed, the maximum sentence you could get (unless it
was so obviously deliberate that a murder charge is preferred) is
fourteen years. Our beloved Government, in one of its regular spasms of
populism (another one in which it made more vows than you'd find at a
Moonie wedding), claimed it was being 'tough' on crime by increasing
the maximum from ten years. The sad fact is that the previous maximum
had never been used, even in the cases most obviously suited for it.
For example, I recall a case from Lancashire a year or two back where
some young arsehole had been responsible for killing three people by
driving whilst drunk and stoned. The bastard (who had absolutely no
mitigating circumstances to defend himself with) got only eight years.
That's right: eight years, for killing three people.
Yet this is very much par for the course when it comes to instances
of killer motorists: a far lighter sentence than would otherwise have
been the case.
It's almost as if those victims don't really matter. Why else would
lethal driving attract charges not of 'manslaughter', but of 'causing
death by careless/reckless/dangerous driving'? It's scarcely to be
wondered at that sentences tend to be so low if the offence of which
the perpetrators are accused is phrased in such a touch-me-not,
understated fashion, a verbal formula which suggests a minor infraction
of the regulations rather than outright homicide.
And yet all we hear is motorists squealing on about how terribly oppressed
they are, poor darlings, and about how speed cameras are only there to
put money into the pockets of the Police, and how outrageous the price
of fuel is. OK, here's the deal, petrolheads: no more speed cameras, so
long as you keep within the limits; no more increases in fuel, on
condition that you buy the most economical vehicle which is suitable
for your actual practical needs (as opposed to just desperately showing
off). In return, you agree that any one of you done for killing with
your car will face a charge of 'vehicular homicide', complete
with sentences which properly reflect the seriousness of what you've
done. Agreed?
Reading these two stories side by side reminded me of something.
Some years ago, I bought the CD release of that famous midnight concert
at Carnegie Hall by Lenny Bruce in February 1961. In it, he remarks on
the inconsistent attitude taken by 'all right-thinking people' towards
what teenagers may be permitted to see on film. His two illustrations
were 8mm porn movies and Hitchcock's Psycho. Bruce's
conclusion was that, as far as the Great American Public was concerned
then (and given the Battle Of Janet's Nipple a couple of years ago,
nothing has changed), their rule for what young adults could view could
be summed up by the phrase: "Killing, yes; but shtupping, no!"
Our societies are deeply confused.
