Seven years ago I sat as a juror on the rape trial of an 11-year-old girl by her 47 year old brother-in-law. This month would be the month he would be eligible for parole after being sentenced to ‘life’. ‘Life’ unfortunately really does not mean life anymore.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking this; how he not only ruined the life of the young girl but also of her family, his family and his children.
‘X’, received the mandatory life sentence at the Crown Court because it was the second time he had been convicted of rape. The father-of-four snarled with anger as the Judge sentenced him to at least five and a half years:
"You raped a 13-year-old girl for your own sexual gratification," said the judge. You raped her whilst your girlfriend slept in the room next door. You have shown no remorse. And this is not the first time you have been convicted of rape. You are quite clearly a danger to the public and to women in particular."
Judge ‘Y’ said that by law he had to state the sentence he would have passed had X not qualified for a mandatory life term.
This, he said, would have been 12 years which would have been halved with remission. X would in fact only have had to spend 5yrs 6 months in custody because of the time he had been behind bars on remand.
Therefore, said the judge, it would be five and a half years before he could be considered for parole.
Earlier in the trial he admitted two charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Before the trial began X had been formally acquitted of a separate allegation of rape made by a woman. The prosecution had offered no evidence on that charge.
If only Sarah's Law, born from the horrendous murder of a young child by an already convicted paedophile, had been in place all those years ago perhaps the rape of the victim I looked into the face of may have been avoided.
Sarah’s Law - which allows parents to obtain controlled information on whether someone who has unsupervised access to their children has a history of child sex offences - is to be extended to be fully operational, after being rolled out in stages, across England and Wales by the end of 2011.
"Home office figures show us there are approximately 110,000 convicted paedophiles that live in Britain (experts would put the figure at more like 230,000) and only 5,000 are on the sex offender’s register. That means 95,000 live in communities and we don't have the right to know who or where they are."
The Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme has so far been tried out over the past two years in four parts of the country and despite some public concern there have not been cases of vigilantly attacks.
Hopefully when parents, teachers and family have access to information on people likely to be a danger to their children many more will be spared the horrendous ordeal others, at the hand of predators, have been subjected to. Sadly for many this may come far too late.
Image via ForSarah.com