The Bristol Post reports tonight about a 25 year old man called Lewis Scott from Lawrence Weston who raped a 15 year old girl after meeting her on social networks. Pardon me: a man? What kind of real man would do that? Scott, said the police, committed some “truly horrible crimes”.
It takes a lot to move me, but I felt physically sick as I saw his face on the front of the newspaper. I do not know exactly what he did, I don’t want to know what he did, but he is plainly not a very nice man.
The victims – he assaulted another woman too – will suffer for the rest of their lives, won’t they? They are not going to forget these incidents as if they were a normal part of their lives. I would imagine they have been severely traumatised and these traumas could come to haunt them again as they grow older. But what of the offender? He’s been given a sentence of six years and three months which is nothing like a life sentence, especially when the odds are that he will barely serve half of it if he learns to behave himself.
I am not, by nature, a hanger and a flogger and I will usually be one of the first to see the need for offenders to be rehabilitated. But let’s be very clear about this: we are talking about someone’s daughter here; someone’s daughter who was not just raped but raped by a paedophile who will now be on the sex offenders’ list for 10 years. Yes, even three years is a very long time when you think about it. Just think about what you were doing and where you were three years ago and it seems like a lifetime ago. The rehabilitation may give Scott to sort himself out but the judge called him “manipulative and dangerous” so the prison authorities will have their work cut out.
I have wondered for years whether our legal system takes sexual assaults seriously enough. Certainly in terms of convictions in court it doesn’t and certainly with reporting it doesn’t either. And is six years (and three months) a proportionate sentence for a serious sexual offence? I’m not sure it is, but then I am not sure what would be.
It looks like there could be more victims out there so I hope they have the courage to come forward. If I were a judge, I would throw the book at people like this.
