Tuesday 26 September 2017

Going To The Dogs?

The case of Lavinia Woodward calls to mind that of Andrew "Picard" Boeckman, who made and distributed real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dogs. He could not have accessed those sites using the server of any state school. Get your act together, Eton. The laxity in these matters of at least one, extremely expensive and world famous, fee-charging school calls for a further investigation into that sector by journalists and parliamentarians. 

But the main point is this. Boeckman was given suspended sentence, and not even much of that. He was also made to pay a pocket money fine towards the prosecution's costs, effectively an insult to the taxpayer. But there was nothing under the Proceeds of Crime Act. There was not even a requirement to sign the Sex Offenders Register. Read that last part over again.

Does anyone on Fleet Street or in Parliament fancy looking into what other 18-year-olds were sent down for, in the week that Boeckman was not? Those figures ought now to be available. Or at least, that was the assurance given to me when I submitted a Freedom of Information Request last year. Boeckman was even tried under his mother's maiden name, in order to protect the reputation of his father's law firm. How was that legal?

The court system hands down far harsher sentences to youths convicted of relatively minor, or even relatively major, offences, than it imposes on one of their immensely privileged peers. An immensely privileged youth who was not even required to give his real name at his trial, nor to sign the Sex Offenders Register upon his conviction, but who had made and distributed real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dogs.

If he has not gone to prison, then I'm sure as hell not, and nor should anyone else, pretty much. I am not even accused of making and distributing  real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dogs. Nor did I do the thing of which I am accused. Nor, it is universally accepted, did that thing ever happen at all.

On the other hand, Boeckman, the Etonian son of a high-powered lawyer, made and distributed real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dog. Yet he was spared prison, and he was not even required to give his real name at his trial, nor to sign the Sex Offenders Register upon his conviction.

I could only be convicted by a corrupted jury, and since there is not going to be a corrupted jury, then it is absolutely impossible for me to be convicted. Therefore, this whole business is, as much as anything else, a scandalous waste of public money. That money would have been, and would be, better spent on the incarceration of Andrew Boeckman.

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