the sir jimmy savile obe thread

[elbows]

I don't believe in giving people special treatment just because they managed to evade justice until they were really old.

 

[cesare]

wtf is that supposed to mean?

If you want clarification about what I meant by that, just ask, ffs.

I said that because that's exactly how your post read, to me.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I said that because that's exactly how your post read, to me.

Fuck you, in that case. I explicitly said that I did not say that to underplay the damage he did.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't believe in giving people special treatment just because they managed to evade justice until they were really old.

It's not a question of special treatment. It's a question of extending a quality of mercy towards them that they themselves were incapable of showing.

 

[cesare]

Fuck you, in that case. I explicitly said that I did not say that to underplay the damage he did.

Fuck you too. If you wanted to emphasise that aspect, you wouldn't have tagged it along as an afterthought.

 

[Wilf]

Fuck you, in that case. I explicitly said that I did not say that to underplay the damage he did.

To be honest, I can't see any other reading of your post. You said:

Personally, I don't like the fact that I live in a society that sends 83-year-olds to jail in anything other than very exceptional circumstances. This isn't one of those, imo.

This is not to underplay the damage he has done. He certainly deserves to go to prison. But that doesn't mean it's right to send him to prison

You seem to be saying 2 things at once in the 2nd paragraph, but the 1st clearly says you think he shouldn't have gone to prison.

 

[Wilf]

littlebabyjesus - just for clarification, I think society should have a default position of not imprisoning the elderly except in, as you put it, exceptional circumstances. However the definition of exceptional circumstances is drawn up though, multiple child abuse should fall within it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

This is the bit that bewilders me somewhat:



Now I know that the law has to be adhered to scrupulously and all that. But it makes no sense to me that he (anyone) should be sentenced according to the tariff available at the time of the offence. If we've decided that it's worse than we previously agreed, and it merits a longer sentence, then why sentence at the earlier - less enlightened - tariff? Either we've moved on or we haven't. Either the crime is worse than we collectively agreed at the time, or it isn't. So if he was caught and convicted then, he'd have got a shorter sentence... and so he only gets the short sentence now, even though he's hidden it and lied and deceived for all these years...? I don't get that. Perhaps I'm being dim.

If a man beats and rapes his wife, and she finally finds the courage to come forward to report it, is he only to expect a sentence that may have been handed down had she reported him in youth?

Fifteen months does seem very short, given the numbers of his victims (that mitigation argument was insulting), their age, and the length of time he was active. And his lies, his awful denial. I can only assume he is either mad (unable to discern the truth) or maliciously deceitful.

Listening to the 6 o'clock news last night (please don't ask me to recall who was speaking), I was struck by the truth of what was being said: that many of his victims don't much care about the length of the sentence so much as they do about the fact that justice has been seen to be done: that there is now public acceptance of what happened to them: they are believed, they have been heard, they are no longer doubted or disbelieved.

And the other thing is this: that his denial and the subsequent need for his victims to prove their statements, to go through it all over again: that amounts to a second assault. Every time someone has to disclose, especially if that disclosure is doubted, all the emotions and thoughts and reactions that accompany the initial assault are repeated. This is well documented and recognised, and I'm sure that anyone who has been through something similar will recognise this.

All the people involved with the Hall case will now be struggling to process the fall out of the initial abuse, the denials and lies, and now the short sentence.

Fifteen months, out in eight: acceptable because of his frailty and the shortness of his life... really? The children he abused: their life was short when he assaulted them, and they've now had a lifetime of living with what he did to them. And what about their fragility, as children, and as a result of the damage he did to them.

existentialist has expressed my own thoughts about how I hope things play out for him: self-knowledge and the knowledge that he is despised by all: that is fit punishment.

Makes me wonder what sentence Savile would have been given had he lived and been caught. Would his work for charity be held up as mitigation?

No, because he used the charities he worked for as access-providers to victims.

I agree that sentencing at the tariff in use at the time the crimes were committed seems wrong-headed, but there's no legal precedent for doing differently (in a legal system that relies on precedent), and if the judge had sentenced under extant tariffs, Hall's shill could well have had grounds to appeal.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Personally, I don't like the fact that I live in a society that sends 83-year-olds to jail in anything other than very exceptional circumstances. This isn't one of those, imo.

This is not to underplay the damage he has done. He certainly deserves to go to prison. But that doesn't mean it's right to send him to prison.

It's an old saw, but: "Justice needs to be done, and be seen to be done". A non-custodial sentence, besides anything else, would also have set a legal precedent for the disposal of such cases which could well lead to other such offenders also getting non-custodial sentences.

 

[ViolentPanda]

wtf is that supposed to mean?

If you want clarification about what I meant by that, just ask, ffs.

What do you think it means? It means that your posts can very easily be read as saying "these aren't exceptional enough circumstances. The rape of 13 females isn't exceptional".
Don't have a go at cesare for the fact that your post is so poorly thought-out that it reads like an apologia for rape.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Fuck you, in that case. I explicitly said that I did not say that to underplay the damage he did.

And yet you still didn't have enough foresight to see how your post would read.

Moron.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It's not a question of special treatment. It's a question of extending a quality of mercy towards them that they themselves were incapable of showing.

Mercy is already being extended to Hall, and has already been. His pre-trial handling and the sentencing have been more than adequately merciful, even considering his age. He raped a minimum of 13 young women. He will actually serve a total of around 3 weeks per rape. The quality of mercy extended toward him has been, in my opinion, exemplary, and I say that as someone with a reasonable degree of experience of the sort of sentences usually handed down for crimes of violence, and as someone who isn't at all at ease with the UK's criminal justice system.

 

[ViolentPanda]

To be honest, I can't see any other reading of your post. You said:

You seem to be saying 2 things at once in the 2nd paragraph, but the 1st clearly says you think he shouldn't have gone to prison.

It's not massively inconsistent to not wish people to be imprisoned for anything but the most serious crimes, but to then state that you don't believe it will serve a purpose with regard to a particular offender.
My rebuttal to such a view would be that, in some cases, it's necessary to make recourse to particular methods of punishment to send a clear message and set a clear precedent for subsequent sentencing for similar offences. I hope that Hall's sentence will set such a precedent for custodial sentences in cases of "historical rape".

 

[cesare]

littlebabyjesus I daresay you are angry with me again now, because this is the second time that I have challenged you on this thinking - the first being your putting of some nebulous, unquantifiable concept of Assange's greater good for society in priority to the justice for his assault victims. Your liberal ideas of what society should/shouldn't be like should be driven by immediate justice rather than overlooking/sacrificing the needs of victims in pursuit of this ill-defined societal goal, which also immediately (if you had your way) would benefit the perpetrators of these sexual assaults.

 

[ViolentPanda]

littlebabyjesus - just for clarification, I think society should have a default position of not imprisoning the elderly except in, as you put it, exceptional circumstances. However the definition of exceptional circumstances is drawn up though, multiple child abuse should fall within it.

The criminal justice system already has a default position of only giving custodial sentences to the elderly in exceptional circumstances. There are many sound reasons for doing so, not least the pragmatism involved in not incarcerating people whose inevitable health issues will significantly affect the amount of care available to other inmates of an institution, and the fact that we've still only (to my knowledge) got 3 prisons with proper geriatric care facilities in the whole of England and Wales, with a few others having ad hoc provision.

 

[ViolentPanda]

littlebabyjesus I daresay you are angry with me again now, because this is the second time that I have challenged you on this thinking - the first being your putting of some nebulous, unquantifiable concept of Assange's greater good for society in priority to the justice of his assault victims. Your liberal ideas of what society should/shouldn't be like should be driven by immediate justice rather than overlooking/sacrificing the needs of victims in pursuit of this ill-defined societal goal, which also immediately (if you had your way) would benefit the perpetrators of these sexual assaults.

Justice, in the concrete sense of the term, needs to address the crime(s) against an individual through a prism of neutrality, and any idea of weighing the social costs and benefits of sentencing an individual criminal beyond the immediate ones of whether the victim (and other potential victims) benefit from the sentencing is redundant. In fact it wouldn't be "justice", it'd be expediency of the foulest kind, and an expediency that would be massively-liable to abuse.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

littlebabyjesus I daresay you are angry with me again now, because this is the second time that I have challenged you on this thinking - the first being your putting of some nebulous, unquantifiable concept of Assange's greater good for society in priority to the justice for his assault victims. Your liberal ideas of what society should/shouldn't be like should be driven by immediate justice rather than overlooking/sacrificing the needs of victims in pursuit of this ill-defined societal goal, which also immediately (if you had your way) would benefit the perpetrators of these sexual assaults.

You never did get what I was saying about Assange, did you? And you don't get what I'm saying here either. Fuck off.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You never did get what I was saying about Assange, did you? And you don't get what I'm saying here either. Fuck off.

Stop acting like a petulant child, and start acting like an adult, eh?

 

[Streathamite]

Considering that Hall had more than one victim, IMHO that's a ridiculously short sentence.

yep. I'm seething at how short a sentence that is

 

[little_legs]

I am a bit confused with age related leniency here. Is there a difference between sentencing guidelines in England and Scotland? William Watson, older than Hall albeit not as famous, got a longer sentence. Is this because of the difference in law in England and Scotland then?

 

[cesare]

You never did get what I was saying about Assange, did you? And you don't get what I'm saying here either. Fuck off.

I did understand what you were saying about Assange - you just don't like my reaction to it. I understand what you're saying here too - you just don't like my reaction to it. You keep telling me to fuck off, I refuse. Surely your liberal handwringing wooly-headed notion of "society" at some level incorporates the concept of challenges to it without resorting to petulant demands that the people that don't agree "fuck off"?

 

[Maltin]

What do you think it means? It means that your posts can very easily be read as saying "these aren't exceptional enough circumstances. The rape of 13 females isn't exceptional".

Not to defend his crimes but, to be clear, Hall wasn't accused or convicted of raping 13 people. I believe that There was one accusation of rape but he wasn't prosecuted for this.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not to defend his crimes but, to be clear, Hall wasn't accused or convicted of raping 13 people. I believe that There was one accusation of rape but he wasn't prosecuted for this.

You're absolutely right. Some of the incidents weren't classified as rape for reasons of legislation (i.e. the crimes, committed with people under a certain age, weren't categorised as "rape" at the time they occurred, but as "indecent assault"), which is the main reason he wasn't charged with more counts of rape. That's a quirk of our legal system, though, not an exoneration of his acts, and should not be seen as a diminution of the severity of his offences, as some people might take it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I am a bit confused with age related leniency here. Is there a difference between sentencing guidelines in England and Scotland? William Watson, older than Hall albeit not as famous, got a longer sentence. Is this because of the difference in law in England and Scotland then?

Differences in sentencing law and in the prison-side provision of facilities for older inmates.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I did understand what you were saying about Assange - you just don't like my reaction to it. I understand what you're saying here too - you just don't like my reaction to it. You keep telling me to fuck off, I refuse. Surely your liberal handwringing wooly-headed notion of "society" at some level incorporates the concept of challenges to it without resorting to petulant demands that the people that don't agree "fuck off"?

I think you're asking a bit much. Balanced argument isn't going to sway lbj. It was ever thus with liberals.

 

[Fez909]

There was a good opinion piece in the Guardian today about this. Can't remember who it was, but the jist was: even showing leniency for his age and whatever else, and the restrictions on the length of sentence available due to the different laws, he could still have served his sentences consecutively which would have worked out about 10 years. Half that for good behaviour and he'd have done a minimum of 5. I don't think many people would have been too disappointed with that.

 

[cesare]

There was a good opinion piece in the Guardian today about this. Can't remember who it was, but the jist was: even showing leniency for his age and whatever else, and the restrictions on the length of sentence available due to the different laws, he could still have served his sentenced consecutively which would have worked out about 10 years. Half that for good behaviour and he'd have done a minimum of 5. I don't think many people would have been too disappointed with that.

That has a "feels fair" about it, without delving too deeply into the legal niceties.

 

[Fez909]

That has a "feels fair" about it, without delving too deeply into the legal niceties.

Yep, that's how I felt about it.

I don't know how this investigation into the sentencing works, but hopefully the home secretary or whoever does it can just switch that concurrently into a consecutively and that's the last we need to hear of him.

Of course things are never simple and rarely have the right outcomes in cases like this

 

[little_legs]

Differences in sentencing law and in the prison-side provision of facilities for older inmates.

Right.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Right.

Basically Scots law is somewhat more forward-looking in terms of penal provision.