No jail time for child abuser maybe because he's an award-winning author?

According to Judge Moran, the abuser's needs supersede the victim's rights. What a wonderful fucking justice system

Desmond Hogan has been given a two-year suspended jail sentence, placed on the sex offenders register and ordered not to have unsupervised contact with children after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy...

“This is a very serious matter . . . this was an incident with a young boy who was under age, it’s completely unacceptable, it was an abuse of a relationship between a young boy and a considerably older man,” Judge Moran said.

However, he believed society would benefit more from Hogan continuing with his treatment than from sending him to jail where he might meet like-minded people serving sentences for similar offences.

“He is a person with a complex make-up and if he continues his underlying therapeutic treatment, in all the circumstances, society is probably better served than if he is sent to jail,” Judge Moran said.

Another epic fail

John Waters fails epically in theIrish Times again today.

RETURNING FROM Italy last Saturday, I took the bus into Dublin and had an opportunity to study the city from a more elevated position than usual. I was shocked by the decrepitude and dilapidation of the inner city: littered, shabby, unpainted, unloved, more like a shantytown of a third world dependency than the capital of a modern democracy after 15 years of prosperity.

No. It. Does. Not.

These are shantytowns.

Kibera

Phnom Penh

Manila

This is Dublin.

Hyperbole like that is counter productive. It's appropriating other people's lived experiences, poverty and oppression to make a point.

The rest of the article is tripe too.

Please remove your head from your ass now.

Indemnity and the Catholic Church

I've been searching through The Oireachtas website and have found the compensation act. What I have no found is the deal with CORI, granting limited liability to the catholic church. The only reference is to confidentially of perpetrators as well as survivors.

In art. 28 of the 2002 Residential Institutions Redress Arts section 6 states

A person shall not publish any information concerning an application or an award made under this Act that refers to any other person (including an applicant), relevant person or institution by name or which could reasonably lead to the identification of any other person (including an applicant), a relevant person or an institution referred to in an application made under this Act.

and to be extra clear section 9 states

A person who contravenes subsection (1) or subsection (6) shall be guilty of an offence.

So were are left with "name a criminal and you become a criminal".

Now I'm sure the agreement with CORI and the gov has to be somewhere on the site but before I find it, I have some comments to make with regard to this indemnity.

Under the laws of the land, it is illegal to rape, torture, imprison without trial, make someone a slave and many other deeds by the Church of Evil. Now as more as I might deplore it the government indemnified the church against civil suits, but as far as I know, no government can indemnify a group of accused from criminal prosecution. I propose that people write to the DPP to demand indictments. Here are the contact details

Director of Public Prosecutions,
Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions,
14 - 16 Merrion Street,
Dublin 2,
Ireland.

Tel: + 353 1 678 9222
Fax: + 353 1 661 0915

dpp@dppireland.ie

Put the pedophiles, torturers, human rights violators and abuser in prison.

__

Other posts to read:


Church of evil
I write letters
The savage reality of our darkest days

GUBU squad calling

It's been referred to as Cowengate, GUBU 2 and on twitter as #picturegate but the story of the illegal hanging of two nude paintings of Brian Cowen is what's buzzing on the Irish corner of the net. Is this the best public relations strategy in the history of the FFers or a major fuck up by people such as Michael Kennedy TD, who can only comprehend a situation when it is put in terms that he understands. His wife was kind enough to enlighten him on the grevious nature of l'Affaire Cowen.

But soon enough the smiles were wiped from our faces. Dear Leader's minions were up in arms when RTE had the temerity to report the news story.



God knows that we could do with a bit of a laugh – half the country has lost their jobs and the other half is being losing half their income on taxes. But the FFers have lost all sense of proportion and humour, assuming they had any to start off with.

Then Kennedy, the prince of village idiots, contacted RTE director general Cathal Goan and complained about bias and the obviously neferious ageda of RTE. Instead of telling Kennedy to go shite, RTE relinquished its last smidgen of credibility and apologised.

Let me reiterate that. The national broadcaster apologised to the Government for covering a news story.

The broadcaster received a number of complaints about the item on Monday’s 9pm television news, including one from the Taoiseach’s office. RTÉ had deemed the report to be inappropriate before complaints were received, a spokeswoman said last night. Consequently the report did not run on subsequent bulletins and was taken down from the RTÉ website, she said.

Here is the apology:



An impartial news broadcast on a publicly funded channel requires censorship and apologies? Difficult to believe of course since we allegedly live in a democracy, but it happened. Of course, this is the same government who claimed that dissent was unpatriotic. And this is the same RTE who requested Oliver Callan to ease up criticisms of Cowen on the satirical Nob Nation:

RTE has asked satirist Oliver Callan, of Nob Nation, to "go easy" on the Taoiseach stating that his increasingly controversial portrayal of Brian Cowen as a drunken buffoon "might be perceived to be a bit personal at this stage".

... Supporters of Mr Cowen are known to be upset at the Nob Nation portrayal of him as a hard-drinking and sometimes crude politician surrounded by Cabinet members who are also frequently portrayed in a similar manner.

Rumours which, by the way, are confirmed by the patrons of Doheny and Nesbitt's pub near Government buildings. Oh and by the way, the Government most certainly did not request that RTE censor Nob Nation. I'm sure they're insulted and appalled at the very suggestion. Yeah just like that time Conor Lenihan "assured" me that no one got a particular position through the old boys network. It's time to quote Hamlet, methinks.

So RTE apologies and proceeds to censor "in the national interest". The managers of Ireland Inc. throw their weight around like a pack of rapid rhinos, crushing freedom of the press in the process. Then the gardaí were ordered to the offices of Today FM with the dubious demand for emails and the artist information. “The powers that be want action taken”, Will Hanafin, was told.

At least one broadcaster in this country has the ethics to stand up to government bullying. Today FM refused to release any information without a warrant.

Mr Hanafin told The Irish Times he was “totally shocked” to be confronted by a garda. He said in “no circumstances could this be considered an appropriate use of Garda resources. It seems to me that the powers that be have lost their sense of humour.”

Fine Gael justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan criticised the Garda move. “At a time when the majority of gangland murders remain unsolved, to have gardaí spending their time investigating what amounted to a practical joke that offended the Taoiseach’s ego is a scandalous waste of resources,” he said.

“Today FM has clearly come under pressure to hand over e-mails about this matter, while RTÉ News has obviously been browbeaten into a grovelling apology. The way this matter has been handled is more reminiscent of Russia in the 1930s than Ireland in 2009,” said Mr Flanagan.

Wouldn't the gardaí be better served arresting the bankers, property developers and other criminals rather than persecuting an artist? Are we returning to the normalisation of a stagnant culture where books like "Brave New World" and "Gulliver's Travels" are banned? Are we regressing to the time when the powers that be decided that "Natural Born Killers" or "Clockwork Orange" was too corrupting for the Irish people.

Censorship is the enemy of democracy and with democracy, as with many other system, what is most important is the behaviour during the tough times, the bad times and the ugly times. That RTE is cravenly bowing to the government during this recession is a very bad omen for the future of democracy in this country.

Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are being stifled in this country. What the hell happened to our human rights? What the hell happened to this country where the Dear Leader is covering his government's ass at the expense of the people; where "I didn't read that part of the report" is an acceptable reply to accusations of incompetence; where a bank is nationalised to save one interest group and the Minister for Finance does not even report the report; and where artists are persecuted on trumped up charges?

I call for a general election now. I don't want to wait until Brian "I didn't read the report" Lenihan submits his third budget of the year. Third? Ridiculous doesn't even begin to cover it.

Out, out, out.

Child rapist jailed for seven years - not long enough

The judgment was meted on a truly abhorrent case of child abuse and neglect yesterday. The defendant got a prison sentence of seven years. Seven years! An appalling judgment given the crimes.

A Co Roscommon mother-of-six has been to sentenced seven years in prison after pleading guilty to incest, sexual assault and neglect of her children.

...

Judge Miriam Reynolds, who also placed the accused on the Sex Offenders' Register, said it was the first known case of a woman having been convicted of incest. She said that in imposing sentence she was bound by legislation that was 101 years old, the Punishment of Incest Act 1908.

Under the Act, a man coming before the court on this charge would face life in prison but the maximum sentence for a woman was seven years, the judge said.

She said she believed that women should be treated equally before the law.

...

The court heard harrowing evidence of how the woman had forced one son to have sex with her when he was just 13 years old and she was 36.

The judge also heard that the children who were shunned at school because they smelled and were covered with lice and fleas, were forced to live in squalor, in a freezing, filthy home, over- run with mice and rats, where there was often no food, no heat and where rubbish was dumped in every room.

...

The accused was sentenced to six years in prison on each of the two incest charges. Two sentences of seven years were imposed on the charges of sexual assault on her son - which carry a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Des Dockerey BL, counsel for the State, pointed out that three of the offences of willful neglect and ill-treatment of her children were committed before the Children's Act 2001 came into force and therefore the maximum sentence was two years.

Three further counts of neglect were dated from 2002 to 2004 and carried a maximum penalty of seven years.

Judge Reynolds imposed sentences of 18 months each for the three earlier charges and of six years each for the three later neglect charges. All sentences are to run concurrently from today.

Despite old legislation the judge had a simple way on keeping that criminal in jail, order her to serve her sentences consecutively. She is a rapist and should be keep behind bars for life. That she is only serving seven years is an insult to her victims and a travesty of justice.