Sentences must take account of the victims
Saturday 30th July 2011, 2:30PM BST.
SENTENCES imposed on paedophiles who take, make or possess indecent images should reflect the horror that children have been subjected to, according to Zibby Yates, who survived horrific abuse as a child.
Miss Yates, 35, was targeted by judo instructor Eugene Hughes between the age of eight and 12 and has spent every year since struggling with the repercussions. Hughes was convicted in 2008 for a series of assaults on young girls and was jailed for six-and-a-half years.
Yesterday Miss Yates (pictured), who first told her story to the Guernsey Press in April, explained why she disagreed with a recent court judgement that will lead to shorter sentences for paedophiles convicted of taking, making or possessing indecent images of children.
‘The life of a child is priceless and their human rights are the real issue here,’ said Miss Yates. ‘Sentencing should reflect the horror that children have been subjected to by imposing a strong judgement against those who abuse them.’
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This is one courageous woman, putting herself forward in an effort to stop similar things happening to others.
Just maybe, coming from someone who has experienced first hand, what it is like to be taken advantage of as a child, the few that would attempt to trivialise these issues will take note.
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This is a profoundly difficult area for the law. Sentences for categories of crime should, and do, take into account the effect on the victim – hence robbery with threats to kill would incur a more severe sentence than robbery without.
But we must imagine the consequences if the judge takes into account how upset or traumatised a victim is in individual cases, for example through a victim impact statement. Would we want a child abuser whose victim has managed to get their life back on track to be given a lesser sentence than an abuser whose victim has not?
Or would we consider an abuser who rapes a child with a profound learning disability as deserving a lesser sentence than one who rapes a child with average intellectual ability?
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I can t think of a worse crime than this , what sort of message are we sending out , go soft on paedophiles. HOW can we protect our small children from a nightmare than never ends when we talk about going soft on paedophiles .Send out a message that they will be in for a long time .FOREVER if i had my way .
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It was n’t only little girls that Eugene Hughes was molesting. I know for a fact that little boys were n’ t safe either.
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