Man Jailed for Blackmailing His Abuser

[talisyn]

Man jailed for blackmailing pensioner who sexually abused him - Times Online

Here's what I totally object to

How can a 45 year old man have a “mutual sexual activity” with a 13 year old???

The court heard that the pensioner had “run out of options” financially and the judge said that he must have been “at his wit’s end”.

Poor guy! To be blackmailed all these years by someone he sexually abused! The cruelty! The shame! What could the abuse victim possibly have been thinking???

EU people, is this common judicial practice over there? I know we have out share of bad judges in the USA but I can't remember any cases like this.

[prisonchaplain]

They should have just called it even, and the abuser should have gone away from that deal smiling.

[Loudmouth_Mormon]

Well, if we're falling all over ourselves to sympathize with people who do bad things, perhaps we should look into the reasons why the guy molested the boy in the first place. Good odds, he was abused as a boy himself.

Perhaps it's easier to sympathize with malicious revenge than it is to sympathize with the multigenerational symptoms of child sex abuse at first glance, but if we're going to glance, we might as well take a good long look.

LM

[prisonchaplain]

A grown man molests a 13 year old, enlisting his mother in the act. Get this...it's now the victim all alone in that house, with the abuser and the woman who bore him on the other side. Anger and bitterness--and all he did was siphon off a small percentage of the wealthy man's fortune? Does the blackmailer need to repent? OK, yes. 6 years in prison, while the abuser gets a slap on the wrist, and the promise that he'll get most of his money back??? If I had to be an attorney in this mess, yeah, I'd rather represent the blackmailer.

[Loudmouth_Mormon]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not at all defending the abuser at all. Nor am I happy with someone molesting a 13 yr old getting a 'police caution'. (Our mortal probation and earthly systems of justice just make it impossible to nail someone for abusing a child 25 years after the fact.)

I'm just saying that if we're going to be extending sympathy to people for doing bad things, merely because they have suffered pain and injustice in the past, then we'd better dang well avoid being hypocrites, and extend it to everyone who has suffered pain.

LM

[prisonchaplain]

I think we do. It's called "mitigating circumstances." The crime is still a crime, and the perpetrator is still guilty, but there is sometimes leniency in sentencing, due to such matters.

[Loudmouth_Mormon]

Fair enough. If it turns out that the abuser was himself abused as a child, does that count as a mitigating circumstance?

[talisyn]

It means he should have stopped with himself, like countless others who have been abused as children do every day. 6 years seems extreme, especially considering the abused guy could have taken a crow bar to the abuser's head and got the same sentence.

[prisonchaplain]

Originally Posted by Loudmouth_Mormon

Fair enough. If it turns out that the abuser was himself abused as a child, does that count as a mitigating circumstance?

Absolutely. How much is for judge or jury to decide. The case in the OP just seems so very skewed--the abuser seems to have gotten all the mitigating circumstances, whereas the victim appears to have had the proverbial book thrown at him.

To give an opposite example, near the University of Washington, there was an particular cluster of homes that the landlord intentionally rented out to released sex-offenders, who were part of an accountability program. She said that they were much better tenants than college students were, and having a cluster of safe homes to live in proved successful in preventing recidivism. A professor found out who was in the neighborhood, made a call to his bud, the Gov., and behold, the landlord was ordered to evict her tenants. In this case I absolutely side with the abusers (i.e. the tenants).

[boyando]

At the risk of sounding very LIBERAL, I think the judge did the right thing. No matter how much I hate the molester, the statute of limitations had run out on the sex crime. Or maybe I am wrong, cause I don't know UK law.

Here is another thing that will make me sound very LIBERAL. If the sex crime had happened in the states, I think that the victim should have used the courts to "blackmail" the sex offender. He would have got more money and the (put your own profanity here) pervert would have been ruined.

I hate sex offenders so much, I think that I might have gotten off track from what my original point, is. Two wrongs don't make a right.