6 Months for Rape? Oh no!

If it were a black man, he'd be put in jail a lot longer. So either it is not a long enough sentence, or there is institutional racism against black people. Or both.

For real?

He most certainly implied it.

To me it looks like the only one being intellectually dishonest here is you. Ironic that you'd accuse the other user of that.

lol. it's called the straw man fallacy i believe, when you assume someone holds a belief they don't neccesarily do, and them attack them based off that.

How did she know she was raped if she was unconscious during the rape?

Only in America could this happen. Good thing we have EU minimum sentencing that we have to adhere to. Seems like a much better system than America's varying state laws.

This case was clearly cherry picked out of a huge number. I could find about 15 cases from my city alone, through news sites and my local police force, mostly within the last year, that did get lengthy jail sentences. Yet no one wants to talk about those simply because they were not committed by VIPs. People are only enraged by this one because he's wealthy. Also even if they did give him a longer sentence the general public would react in the usual way they do on the Facebook pages of police forces and news sites whenever a convicted sex offender is brought up with their usual cry of 'BUT X NUMBER OF YEARS ISN'T LONG ENOUGH!' or 'CASTRATE HIM!' or even 'BRING BACK HANGING!'
Where do you draw the line? Even if he got 10 or 12 years they would still be unhappy.

Also if you look at the reaction from feminists, they are so quick to jump on the case when an athlete is committing the crime compared to when it's anyone else whether they're a VIP (rich, celebrity) or not because they really hate sportsmen. If you look at the way Ched Evans was treated for a crime he might not have even committed, compared to how high profile sex offenders like Rolf Harris, Dave Lee Travis, Garry Glitter, Max Clifford and (Jimmy Savile) managed to escape the same level of scrutiny from them for stuff they most definitely did do. How were they any less deserving of the same criticism? And as for sexual offenses committed by normal everyday people, they won't even get off their arse to condemn those, you might as well piss in the wind.

Sorry chaps, rant over.

Is it even the true purpose of imprisonment to provide equivalent suffering, or is it to rehabilitate? Which is most important?

Well, she was unconcious at the time. Maybe no-one should have told her it happened

You can't hate Rolf Harris no matyer what he does.

Animal Hospital was the bedrock of so many people's childhoods.

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Right.

It's called being a dumbass for denying what something obviously looks like.

Doesn't even matter what the meaning was. What matters is how something comes across.

And lord, you are one of those people that cries straw man and ad hominem and thinks it makes you look smart and right. Just stop. Please. It's seriously unbecoming.

Haha, I don't cry anything, I just call out ********. You sound very tense.

Oooh tense. Yea, how about you rub my back?

I agree on this point. I don't think people are properly considering what they really consider to be the purpose of prison etc. Although next to other crimes as they are punished in the US this sentence falls laughably short of proportionate.

I do, however, think it is legitimate to bring this story up to discuss how race and class can affect Americans' treatment at the hands of their justice system. The story of the black student who came out and discussed how he'd been sentenced to ten years (on the basis of a false accusation) has to make one think.

It is a very short sentence, yes. But the point of my post is that it doesn't necessarily bother me that it's short - I'm not outraged. What I was trying to convey (at 2am Eastern) was that I'm not always on board with the masses calling for blood when the authorities show (maybe too much) mercy. The mob takes a very emotional stance on these things: "He caused suffering, so he must suffer to make it right!" But what's done is done to that poor girl. A ten year sentence won't change that. Honestly I'd rather this stint in prison scares him enough to set him straight again, and that he re-enters society as a productive member. I personally wish him no suffering out of revenge or retribution, nor do I hate him. I only pitty him. But that's not how most people think. Do you follow?

As for the race element, it may or may not have been a factor. What I am against is people claiming to know for sure, despite the absence of proof. Like I said, black people can be treated leniently, and whites harshly, too.

Out of curiosity on this point what is your view?

Suppose the flip side of it would be, if a girl doesn't explicitly say "yes", has she consented?

It is a very short sentence, yes. But the point of my post is that it doesn't necessarily bother me that it's short - I'm not outraged. What I was trying to convey (at 2am Eastern) was that I'm not always on board with the masses calling for blood when the authorities show (maybe too much) mercy. The mob takes a very emotional stance on these things: "He caused suffering, so he must suffer to make it right!" But what's done is done to that poor girl. A ten year sentence won't change that. Honestly I'd rather this stint in prison scares him enough to set him straight again, and that he re-enters society as a productive member. I personally wish him no suffering out of revenge or retribution, nor do I hate him. I only pitty him. But that's not how most people think. Do you follow?

As for the race element, it may or may not have been a factor. What I am against is people claiming to know for sure, despite the absence of proof. Like I said, black people can be treated leniently, and whites harshly, too.

I'm a little bit late on this story, but I want to make a point that 6 months is far too leniant a sentence for the scale of the crime he has committed. He fails to blame anything on himself, and has suggested that peer pressure and alcohol are the reasons for the crime which is going to the ******** as college students would go through peer pressure and alcohol on a regular basis, and not all of them would go on to rape somebody. It's been studied that rapists actually make the attributions about their behaviour that point away from themselves and towards either the victim or alcohol/drugs.

It's been reported that he has had encounters with the police before, running from them, using drugs and alcohol and all sorts of things, obviously you have to take these things with a pinch of salt - but with the above paragraph describing his criminal ideology, I wouldn't be surprised if these things are true.

Then there's the reason that the judge said for giving the short sentence, that it would have a severe impact on his future. That's just a bizarre reason, when in court, the sentence should reflect how the victim was affected by the crime and not how the defendant would be affected by the crime in his/her future. This entire reason is just complete garbage in my opinion, and I suggest the judge felt sorry for the accused after they were judged as guilty by the jury, which should not be something that affects the final sentence given. Whilst yes, a sentence for sexual assault will have an impact on his future, as it already has through him being banned from swimming etc. any sentence for a crime would carry those sorts of effects.

I don't believe race has much of a factor here, considering how laughable the judges reasoning for the sentence is, but, I don't recall ever seeing a black person, or a person of a non-white race for that matter, being given a too leniant sentence for rape (in Western countries).