With horror and disgust, I read the Headline on page two of the South Coast Herald of the 4 July which read, “No sentence for rapist (65)”. I was disgusted when I read that the man has been convicted of sexually assaulting two girls from when they were three and four years old respectively and that the sexual assaults were continuously repeated for seven years between 2000 and 2007.
This monster pleaded guilty to the charges. Yes, he pleaded GUILTY; the sexual attacks on two innocent little toddlers of three and four continued until they were +- ten and eleven. However, Chief Magistrate Johan Bester sentenced the man to five years’ imprisonment, WHOLLY suspended for a period of five years.
Naturally, I do not know the contents of the proceedings and if there were extenuating circumstances but, the facts are the facts, a proven guilty child molester has walked out of court scot-free (well that is what I consider a five year sentenced wholly suspended for a period of five years for a serial child molester).
One of the victims, now a teen, has said that her life has been ruined, she has not attended school for two years and she cannot see herself returning to school. The other victim, now twenty, said that in high school she kept having flashbacks to what had happened and that it affected her school work.
Only someone who has lived through the nightmare of sexual abuse can understand what this does to ones’ life. It destroys virtually every fiber of a person’s being. As the perpetrator was a close family friend, it destroys the victim’s faith in all people.
The victim feels that they have no one to turn to; all adults are to be distrusted; they feel dirty; they feel ashamed; they don’t feel the same as their peers; they withdraw from all interaction with school mates; they become a loner. It is a cancer that spreads through their life and eats at each part of their being.
Immediately on reading this article, the thought came to mind, “Is this going to be the precedent for the sentencing of Dave Middleton if he is found guilty ….. is this court ruling a prelude to the sentence to be handed to Dave Middleton?
I then turned to page four and read the headline, “Pink bicycle thief jailed for three years”. The person who was found in possession of a generator and a pink bicycle, which he admitted stealing from a property in Oslo Beach, was sentenced to three years imprisonment.
Two little girls have had their innocence stolen from them and the perpetrator gets a suspended sentence and the “pink bicycle thief” gets a three year sentence! I am not saying the bicycle thief does not deserve his three year sentence, he does, but, as a layman, I cannot equate the two sentences.
I then turned to another column on page four and the headline “Herdsman is sentenced to life” jumped out at me. This article reports the tragic events where the man raped a five year old girl several times during 2012 and he was found guilty of four counts of rape and rightly, in my uninformed opinion, deserved the four terms of life imprisonment.
Well actually, I wish that the death sentence could be reinstated, as I feel a death sentence would be a more appropriate sentence as the young child has been given a life sentence if not a death sentence.
So reading the three articles, the disparity of the three sentences, is frightening …. My father used to say, “There is the law but there is no justice”. I disliked it when he said that, but I think I now have to agree with him.
LAW
