The Quality of Being Fair and Reasonable

As if the Jayden Meyer case was not concerning enough, the opportunistic late-night attack and indecent assault on a young female student walking home has seen the perpetrator get away scot-free. No conviction. No penalty. Because “his anxiety meant he was already withdrawn from society and a conviction would make it harder for him to gain a job, and have a ‘greater than usual impact’ on his life,” said the judge.

The attacker was also granted name suppression by Judge Andrew Nicholls, who said it would cause the man “extreme hardship” and that the aftermath of his offending, combined with the man’s anxiety, had left him in a “very dark and fragile place”.

The victim, a 20-year-old student, is refusing the emotional harm payment, saying the decision to let him off is “bleak” and shows how assaults on women are minimised.  

Stuff

Ah – so no bearing on the victim’s life then? No likelihood that his actions would have a greater than usual impact on her life? She will not experience repercussions from being groped ‘for a treat’ by the offender? May she not find herself in “a very dark and fragile place”?  Experience mental health issues as a result? He decided to ‘treat’ himself and in order to do so stalked and assaulted her. And the judiciary thinks this is all just fine and dandy. Just so long as the guilty bastard who did this doesn’t suffer then all is well. He has name suppression so we don’t even know who it is we should avoid.

These appalling decisions by the judiciary are bad enough individually but collectively send a strong message to males of any age that it is OK to rape, assault, grope and terrify young women with impunity. As you please, chaps. Women don’t matter. This message is now compellingly and heartbreakingly reinforced by a system that is out of step with justice, with decency, with women’s rights and the notion, quaint as it apparently is, that crime should be in lock-step with punishment. But it isn’t.

Nine months languishing at home watching Netflix for raping four 15-year-olds and indecently assaulting a fifth is not a punishment. And now an anonymous male stalking and assaulting a 20-year-old woman as a ‘treat’ is just fine. No conviction. No penalty. His ‘mental health issues’ provided him with his get-out-of-jail-free card.

A treat is ice cream or chocolate, not the body of a young woman attacked and abused at will.

The Jayden Meyer case saw a sentence of eight years maximum downgraded to nine months’ home detention with leave to attend community-based rehabilitation.

The case of the non-conviction carried a sentence maximum of seven years should this criminal have been convicted. But he wasn’t. He was ordered to pay his victim $200, which she wisely refused. She has principles and pride. She also has trouble sleeping and has had her confidence badly shaken.

The message from these judges is made known every day – crime against women is OK.

What will it take for common sense (which is not at all common) to take over and these criminals made to be accountable? Their victims feel pain, shame and distress. Why should the criminal be rewarded with home time with social media or no penalty at all?

And as for the ram raiders, those retail raiders can avoid penalty because of the length of time it takes for their cases to go to court. By then, we are informed that they will have forgotten all about their crime as their brains are underdeveloped and so, poor things, they would not understand why they were being punished, even in the laughable idea that punishment of any sort would be imposed.

“Celerity” referred to the swiftness with which justice was meted. If the courts took too long to deal with young offenders then those youngsters did not associate their eventual punishment with the crime they had committed.

Stuff

The concept of underdeveloped teenage brains has become a policy-influencing mantra, but if they can plan and execute a ram raid, with a stolen vehicle to facilitate that, then they have sufficiently formed brains to understand the association of cause and effect. Theirs is a planned, purposeful crime.

According to the New Zealand National Party Facebook post of 21 October, there is one ram raid every 15 hours. Grant Robertson says, “We believe we are making progress.” If you intended to increase the number of ram raids, then yes, Grant Robertson, the Labour Party is making progress. One every 15 hours is impressive. And devastating for those businesses and their owners hit by the behaviour of the young thugs who perpetrate this social catastrophe. And what is it going to take to turn this around?

Oranga Tamariki youth justice system director Ben Hannifin said almost all of the children involved in recent wave of ram raids and crime had come from homes with family violence.

About 70 per cent had been around family violence by the age of three.

“They’re growing up in an environment where they’re not safe, where they are being hurt, in all measures of abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse.

“And then on top of that… is the high propensity of mental health problems, three times more likely to have a brain concern.

“Almost all of them are out of school, from a home with financial stress, from an environment where the attitude to offending and offending behaviour is the norm.”

NZ Herald

These facts and figures are appalling and questions must be asked of these families.

If there had been an incident overnight within 24 hours they had “wrap-around” support for the young person and their family.

So if the family is the cause of the problem, how does wrap-around support for the family and the perpetrator after the event help? And are the victims of these out-of-control kids getting wrap-around support and within 24 hours? No, they are not.

It is well past time that these ram raiders, these out of control delinquents and their parents, as their first line of control, be held responsible for their actions. Let them do the clean up. Let them make financial reparation for the damage caused. Let them redeem the pain and the loss they have caused. Let the punishment fit the crime, as Gilbert and Sullivan had it in The Mikado. It won’t happen, nor will it happen that a teen serial rapist or groper are effectively held to account.

While the causation of these societal outcomes is complex and multi-faceted, surely at some point something has to change. If there are no deterrents there will be no change.

The public is losing faith with those who have the power to make meaningful decisions. The judiciary is not upholding justice: the quality of being fair and reasonable. Law and justice, although connected, are not the same thing. The law is a system of rules, but justice is what we believe to be ‘just’ – “based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair in a just and democratic society”. (bing.com)

Without laws upheld and justice seen to be done we can have vigilantism: the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority. Is that where we are headed?