Posted on 04/11/2011 3:53:37 PM PDT by wagglebee
UNITED KINGDOM, April 8, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An English judge has ruled that a 24-year-old male pedophile was “seduced” by a 13-year-old girl after the man watched the teen perform intimate acts over a webcam.
Twenty-four-year-old David Barnes of Darlington, Co Durham was arrested in 2009 when police began investigating communication the 13-year-old was having with older males on the internet. Police found over 600 downloaded photos and videos of child pornography in Barnes’ possession and later charged him with 17 counts of making indecent images and forcing a child into sexual activity.
Despite the evidence and Barnes’ probation officer having advised the judge of the pedophile’s “high risk” of sexual harm to children, Judge Peter Fox let Barnes go with a suspended sentence.
“Many people must be puzzled to say the very least at the leniency of the guideline sentencing,” said Fox. “If I sent you to prison it would be for a matter of a few weeks only, hence, as I say, the puzzlement that many people would have about that.”
“The few weeks you would spend in prison would do nothing to stop you doing this again. My concern is for the future - the protection of other children,” said the judge, who argued that the sex offender treatment program Barnes would be required to go through would be better than a prison sentence.
Judge Fox said he accepted the man’s claim that in the “perverted activities over the internet with the 13-year-old” the minor “appears to have seduced you.”
About the child pornography found on Barnes’ computer, the judge said it was “the worst kind of abuse of very small children for the perverted lust of people like you.” He added: “How you could be attracted to that kind of material beggars belief.”
Fox’s ruling has sparked huge fury among critics who say Barnes should have been given a much sterner punishment.
“Thirteen-year-olds have to be protected. It goes without saying, they are children,” said Neil Atkinson, spokesman for the National Victims’ Association. “Intellectually, ethically and legally, this girl - or anyone of that age - could not possibly have been on the same level as a man in his 20s.”
“No 13-year-old can be realistically accused of seducing a man of this age. We find it incomprehensible that a judge could say so,” Atkinson added. “It is abhorrent that anyone in their 20s should, in effect, go unpunished for something that could have led to a far more serious offence.”
Judge Fox has reportedly been known for giving light sentences to sex offenders in the past. In 2001, a 23-year-old man who assaulted three teenage girls was given a suspended sentence by Fox, who called the girls “silly.” In 2009, he gave another suspended sentence to a 21-year-old man accused of sexual relations with two girls, age 13 and 15. A 40-year-old woman accused of sexual relations with a 14-year-old boy also got off easy, with Fox reportedly saying the boy seduced the woman. An appeals court later overturned his ruling and gave the woman a one year sentence.
An intelligent person would have realized that this thread has NOTHING to do with the Catholic Church. That being said, the responses on here really aren't that surprising.
He is forced by the rule of law to do SOMETHING, so makes a feeble token attempt to enforcing the law because he has to. I don’t see that that it the fault of anyone but him.
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I'm sorry to say that I think that you may be right. To think that someone could be so corrupt that they would rule so as to spare a pedophile rather than protect a child is horrifying, but it is difficult to imagine any other motivation.
“I can understand why some judges are inclined to want to go easy on certain non-violent criminals under the idea that they can be reformed; however, this is NEVER the case with pedophiles.”
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That is my understanding as well. It seems that sexual perversions of all types tend to be very difficult to cure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia
I guess the haters weren’t getting enough action in the religion forum so they’ve spilled over to the news. Not surprising. Some people are so foaming at the mouth they’ll seize any opportunity to flame.
Prayers for their misguided souls.
He doesn’t have the religion moderator to help himself on this thread, either.
I think that there actually is a “History of Christian Thought” aspect to this.
Among the Scholastics, the core gateway into the concept of justice is Aristotle’s dictum from the Nicomachean Ethics: Justice is to render to each his due.
This is a proposition which can be argued about and examined by reason informed by revelation.
There may be differences of opinion about the actual age of consent, but most would agree that, no matter what the behavior of someone below the age of consent, what that person is “due” is the consideration by someone above the age of consent that, in this case, she cannot really understand what her seductive videos imply, etc. That is, she is “due” a kind of temperate mercy and justice from an adult, and he does an injustice by treating her invitations as though they were given by an adult.
Further, unchastity (=illicit sexual intercourse) is an injustice for two reasons:
(1) To treat the organs of generation
(1.a) as if they were suited for exploitation and amusement;
(1.b) as if they were mere appendages useful principally for pleasure; instead of as what they are, namely organs with which we are privileged to share in the creation of a new human, a new image of God and with which we are also blessed to be able to pledge a personal covenant is
(2.a) to pay the gift of our bodies less than what is due their giver’
(2.b) to desecrate or depreciate the image of God in each of us.
To me, the latter (2.b) is especially important. Sexual intercourse is usually a lot of fun. But what makes it IMPORTANT is the union of wills and commitments which corresponds to the union of bodies. And it is too great a good to be made unimportant.
Now with Nominalism came a kind of agnosticism about reason, and with that came the Reformation. The Reformation derogates reasons and stresses its fallibility.
So the whole structure which supports chastity is thrown out and in its place is only, “It says in the Bible ...” There is scarcely even a possibility of saying, “And here’s why you should take the Bible seriously.” So any notion of justice, of what is ‘due’ to a girl or to chastity itself goes out the window.
It all becomes a matter of opinion. YOU believe the Bible, so of course YOU think that, but we do not believe the Bible, so there is no reason that we should consider the mercy due a child (so why not kill it?) or the reverence due the act of generation.
The girl performed sexy videos. The man was aroused. Well, what are you doing to do?
If one uses reason, one understands why there is a grave wrong in running over a neglect toddler making his way down the street. But when reason is thrown out of court, it becomes, “Sorry about the kid, but how could we expect the driver to brake?
BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA
Amazing how you always show up right after the RM over there.
And have the documented ability to edit your posts on FR after the fact.
Everyone in the Catholic and Orthodox Caucus is aware of this.
Don’t think you’re fooling anyone ;-)
I didn't think it was that funny.
We already know that the leftists want to cause Christians to fight
we have a few leftists here posing as Christians. They only post articles that make Christians look evil (distortions mostly) or that cause Christians to fight.
They may pretend to be Protestant, which is a joke as Protestants are our Christian brothers, but under this mask, this group of leftists says the following about Christians and Jews (more details on my profile page)
:
This an entire cover-up of religion to keep their group's true agenda of fomenting discord hidden -- just like the Westboro Baptist Club
The difference is that you are Christian, which is the exact group that the leftists despise. The left knows that it cannot stand against united
I've just seen the way these guys operate day in and day out. When Catholics stay off for lent then the attacks are on Pentecostals, on Adventists, on Methodists, on Lutherans, on Baptists etc. in short, the next largest group, to keep the Christian infighting going on and on
We've allowed the left to get uppity by not standing together -- we've allowed them to bring down the Anglicans, the Presbyterians and now attempting this on Lutherans and Catholics (and of course the regular attacks on Pentecostal preachers and the Rev. Billy Graham), but the Left has overplayed it's hand.
LOL!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2703188/posts?page=57#57
Even though the Catholic Church promotes global warming, evolution, Democrat candidates, Obamacare, state funding of churches, illegal immigration and amnesty, and a United Nations "with teeth", all while declaring that both the American way of life and capitalism are heresies, it's hard to remember that Catholics are the only true conservatives which must be why they want to take away voting privileges from anyone not Catholic. Because it's not possible that anyone would disagree so stridently with the Catholic Church, and not be a "leftist posing as a Christian...."
BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA
What a racket! Shout down and obliterate the opposition by force, all while whining about being discriminated against. We've had RCs on this forum cheering the socialistic agenda of Ratzinger's "global authority" encyclical; RCs championing a return to a monarchical system of government; and RCs demanding that the Religion Forum be shut down.
Did any of you see William Donahue's ugly diatribe in the New York Times Monday? He took out a full-page ad defending these pederast priests, saying the scandal has been blown out of proportion by "enemies of the church" while insisting that most of these sexual abuse cases involved consensual sex because, he bizarrely asserts, these boys weren't children; but willing "adolescents."
A full-page ad denying wrong-doing, blaming the victims and STILL whining about "anti-Catholic bigotry."
Clearly, Donahue didn't read the 2011 Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on pederast priests. Anyone with children should read this report. To ignore it simply enables more children to be raped by wolves in sheep's clothing.
Sadly this scandal will never end if the attitude in the pews is the same as Donahue's defiant, willful blindness to this corruption within the RCC.
Here's a response from one of the attorneys in the case, with a link to the ad in the response...
If dozens of Presbyterian pastors were suspended at the same time in the same presbytery in the same town, what would we call that?
We'd rightly call it a criminal cabal, an organized and corrupt conspiracy.
But where are those words in the Philadelphia diocese where more than two dozen priests were suspended in one town?
Why does nothing change in the RCC? Why do these scandals not boil over? Why is Ratzinger not criticized for his communist manifesto? Why is "Catholic social justice theory" becoming the law of the land? Why is this once-Protestant republic being turned into a third-world socialistic, authoritarian hierarchy of the upper class and the peasants? Why is the middle class being destroyed?
Just who is in charge here?
I'm not so pessimistic.
Non-Denominational churches are growing at the same time the anti-Scripture Protestant churches are dying. The RCC is already an empty husk. It's membership rolls are questionable for a lot of reasons and what membership it maintains in the USA is due to immigration, legal & illegal. Latin immigrants are predominantly RC, but increasingly are seeking the Truth and leaving this sect.
Wisconsin is a huge turning point. A traditionally left leaning state has started to take control of it's govt workers instead of just raising taxes. The elections in 2010 are going to continue in 2012 and the "moderate" Pubs may get a POTUS that is a moderate Pub, but the House and Senate will be more conservative.
Demographically you will see the RC's concentrated in the declining number of blue states and the Evangelicals will be found in the growing number of red states.
The future is ours.
Already here. IIRC, a while back there was a judge that let a pedophile go after concluding that his 11 year old victim was a seductress, or something like that. Its probably somewhere in FR’s archives.
Ever since we decided to tolerate pervs, we’ve been sliding down the slippery slopes every bit as fast as the UK.
Demographically you will see the RC's concentrated in the declining number of blue states and the Evangelicals will be found in the growing number of red states.
The future is ours.
AMEN, William!
We'll make a postmillennialist out of you yet! 8~)
AMEN!
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