UK paedophilia scandal

I think people knew it was wrong but felt invincible because of toadies around them, but they knew it was wrong thats why it was kept secret. feeling sorry for a bunch of frail old men is not going to help the victims much is it? when they did these crimes they were Young and knew they were wrong otherwise they wouldnt have hid it.

I think it was more than it being secret- in a sense it didnt really need to be, wider society was endorsing the young image as sexual.
Its even in Doctor Who. Romanna- companion of 4th Doctor was a Galliifryean Student- a schoolgirl by Time Lord standards, she even had a school uniform-



And you had Bill Wyman publicy dating Mandy Smith whom he slept with when she was only 14-



So it wasnt exactly secret in society, more worryingly it was accepted with barely a word said.

I just googled UK age of consent. This isn't a new law.
England and Wales:

A concern that young girls were being sold into brothels led Parliament to raise the age of consent to 13 in 1875 under the Offences against the Person Act 1875. After W. T. Stead's Maiden Tribute articles, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raised the age of consent to 16.

Scotland:

Male homosexual acts were illegal in Scotland until 1980 when they were decriminalised by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980, Section 80, which specified an age of consent of 21. The Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 lowered the age of consent of 18 and this was further lowered to 16 by the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000 described above.

Given that the law was in place at the time, I really don't see the "everybody was doing it" argument being any more valid than for Catholic priests. If a victim wants to press charges 50 years later, they're still entitled to the full protection of the law.

If a victim wants to press charges 50 years later, they're still entitled to the full protection of the law. - David

I dont disagree. As I said above I am not saying they should be let off.
But there has been a sort of zeal at times about this investigation, a feeling of 'who can we go after next' and a  sense of society collectively purging ourselves through it all of a period of British history we now find hugely distasteful and embarrassing.
And justice needs to be blind to be justice.
It used to be the law here ,although I am not sure if it still is, that the maximum sentence you could get for a crime committed in the past was whatever the maximum at the time the crime occured was.
A law designed to somewhat address the issues I am highlighting.
I will need to try to see if I can find out it still is on the books.

It apparently is still the law- the maximum a person can be sentenced to is the maximum at the time the crime was committed.
This is why there was an outcry over the Stuart Hall case- he was convicted of 14 cases of indecent assault- the maximum at the time the crimes were committed was 2 years (it is now 10), as he pleaded guilty and cooperated and it was a first offence he was sentenced to 15 months, in line with being tried under the law when the crime was committed.
A sign of how differently such matters are viewed now compared to then is that the sentence caused outrage for being lenient.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I think it was more than it being secret- in a sense it didnt really need to be, wider society was endorsing the young image as sexual.
Its even in Doctor Who. Romanna- companion of 4th Doctor was a Galliifryean Student- a schoolgirl by Time Lord standards, she even had a school uniform-



And you had Bill Wyman publicy dating Mandy Smith whom he slept with when she was only 14-



So it wasnt exactly secret in society, more worryingly it was accepted with barely a word said.

''I think it was more than it being secret- in a sense it didnt really need to be, wider society was endorsing the young image as sexual.
Its even in Doctor Who. Romanna- companion of 4th Doctor was a Galliifryean Student- a schoolgirl by Time Lord standards, she even had a school uniform'' Petty

Now you are starting to worry me, what the heck has Romanna in a school uniform got to do with anything? did the Doctor have sex with her, or treat her like a sexual partner? NO he didnt, she just happened to be a schoolgirl, the implication is, coming from your point of view, that any older man and a schoolgirl means he is going to have perverted thoughts about her. Instead it was innocent, the times were in many ways more innocent in the 70s, the connotations were just not there, you are imposing your 21st century cynicism on it. Wider society in the 70s was in no way endorsing under age sex, it has alaways been wrong, and punishable in law. There was an outcry over Mandy Smith, I remember it, and people were shocked and disgusted, you are wrong about it not being an issue. It was all over the papers.

I think things like Mandy Smith, and even Rommana were indicative of attitudes at the time (I cannot imagine the BBC now making the Doctors companion a schoolgirl, complete with school uniform, can you?)- a time when Benny Hill could chase women in lingerie around parks and millions would tune in to enjoy it.
It shows the general mood and attitudes of the time.
And yes there was a lot of outcry about Mandy Smith, but it wasnt an issue like it would be today, it was the start of those attitudes towards such things gaining momentum, resulting in the law now being a maximum of 10 years today instead of the 2 it was then.

It does demonstrate how attitudes in UK society have altered since the 70's, and that the morality of the seventies particularly towards women was noticeably different than today's.
Which is why the law I highlighted exists- so people who commit crimes at one point in history are not judged by the prevailing currents of modern society.

I think that argument is fundamentally flawed. and wrong.

Then presumably you must think the law is flawed, as that law exists precisely for the reasons I have highlighted.

Do you therefore believe that a person should stand trial under the current law for that crime, not under the law at the time the crime was committed?

yes I do think that. you cant retrofit the law to suit your weird sense of justice.

Well obviously its not my weird sense of justice if there is a long standing principle in UK law addressing the issue.

no idea what you are talking about.  

This legal/ethical line will always be muddy. Extremely muddy.

We're facing it now in Washington state where there are thousands of people in prison for marijuana crimes that are no longer crimes under the new law.

Should they be free to go now that the law has changed, or does the fact that they committed a crime and were convicted and sentenced under existing law at the time still mean they owe a debt to society?

That's just one small example of the confusion that's inevitable when laws are changed. The sentencing you're talking about is another. It's never black and white.

there is nothing muddy about child abuse.

I didn't say that Mrs Figg. My point was intended to be that the line between what's legal and what's ethical is muddy, and that Petty's efforts to draw a clear legal line would never address the ethical line (the one you're talking about).

oh sorry, I miss understood.  

Petty's efforts to draw a clear legal line would never address the ethical line- David

I agree there is always tension between the two- but the law is trying to be fair.
From doing a bit of reading on it the basic principle is that when someone commits a crime- they do so in the knowledge of the punishment for it. But its not fair to expect someone to predict what crimes or sentencing might be at some future date.
Therefore you can only be tried under the law when the crime took place (although I cant seem to find out what would happen if you committed a murder before the repeal of the death sentence in the 60's)

Petty wrote:but the law is trying to be fair.

Of course it is (mostly), but it will still fail on a regular basis because it's reactive by it's very nature.  Laws are changed only because there are perceived to be existing ethical gaps in the existing laws, and because they can't be made retroactive they'll never catch the first generation of perpetrators.

I'd personally love to write retroactive laws that would force some of the people who got obscenely rich while undermining our economy in the 80's and 90's to make restitution and do community service for the  rest of their lives.  But we can only try them under the existing laws at the time, which they'd systematically disabled beforehand.

I guess my point regarding child abuse is that I think it was at least partly the outrageous abuses of the 60's and 70's that forced the sentencing to become tougher.  So viewed in that light, it makes sense to me to throw the book at these creeps.  

The fact that they may be partly protected by old sentencing guidelines doesn't lessen their guilt. It underlines it.

if people can only be tried with the law of the time it was committed, how come nazi war criminals today are not shot or hanged as in the Nuremberg trials?

I think the underlying principle is that you don't violate a person's rights with a sentence more lenient than what they might have expected at the time, but that there's something basically unfair about a more severe penalty after the fact.

Yeah thats seems to be basically the thinking behind it Dave.

I am not sure Figg what happens when the punishment is no loner permissible- same goes for someone who committed a murder in the 1950's but doesn't get convicted of it until now- then they would have faced the death penalty. I am guessing the Court decides what is a reasonable comparison (life I would assume in such a case)

''but that there's something basically unfair about a more severe penalty after the fact''. .Dave

I dont understand that. if the crime is the same as a contemporary crime, why is it unfair? I am not really understanding either Pettys or your arguments on this one.  

Basically Mrs Figg- if you commit a crime you know the punishment for it at the time- say its 2 years.
If it then later changes to 10 years the law deems it unfair to judge you on that basis- as the 'deal' was when you committed the crime that you could only get 2 years for it.

thats unfair in my view, why should people get a 'discount' on the sentence just because the law changes, my point is, the crime is the same so why is it unfair to be judged under current laws, anyway its a mute point, it is what it is.

OK Mrs Figg, please forgive me.  I'm going to pick on you for a second to illustrate the principle, because to truly understand it you've got to put yourself in the shoes of the victim, just like everything else we've been talking about.

From time to time you've mentioned in your stories certain things that happened in your youth. No details necessary but I believe one of them involved a hockey stick.

Now imagine there was a rash of crime involving sports equipment that led to a new law with mandatory prison time. Now imagine that your old teacher, who is still holding a grudge after all this time, smiles wickedly and  decides to press charges to get you locked up for the rest of your life.

In that case I'd hope that a judge would say, "Hey, this isn't fair. Young Figgy had no idea at the time that she was committing Criminal Assault with Sports Equipment that could cause her to spend the rest of her life in prison, because NOBODY did!  ( If she did it now of course, we'd throw the book at her. )"

Now let's go one step farther and say that this teacher ran for parliament for the sole purpose of getting revenge on you by passing such a law. Can you see how easily the law could be abused for revenge? Humans are spiteful creatures, and the abuses would quickly become the norm if laws could be made retroactive like this.

Justice is supposed to be blind in the interest of being fair, and sometimes that means that a few rats escape. But it's the price we pay to keep it fair.