AT LEAST HE DIDN’T BASH THEM ( ROP )

Daily Telegraph ^ | May 28, 2009 | Tim Blair

[george76]

Lawyers sometimes wonder why they’re held in low public esteem. Perhaps they should consider the arguments offered by Sydney lawyer Clive Steirn in defending a multiple rapist:

Taxi driver Hassan Nagi should not receive a harsh sentence for raping three women as he suffered a condition called “Don Juanism” which made him addicted to sex, his barrister said yesterday.

Clive Steirn SC also urged a District Court judge to spare the sex predator a “crushing” sentence because he never bashed his victims while he was raping them.

“There was no gratuitous violence. None of the women was physically harmed. It’s an important consideration,” he said.

The judge’s response: “He doesn’t get rewarded for not belting them.” Good, although it shouldn’t need saying. Further from Steirn, who seems to have emerged from the 17th century:

[Cicero]

I don’t think I ever quite managed to finish Byron’s entire poem, which is very long, but I don’t recall that Don Juan ever raped anyone. They had a tendency to fall into his arms.