I'll be weighing in on other issues over the next few days, but I had to write about this:

Abuse ruins life of girl, 7

OSHAWA -- An Oshawa trucker was sentenced to 17 months in jail yesterday for ruining a young girl's life with "despicable" sexual abuse.
Raymond Pike, 57, was convicted at an earlier trial of two counts of sexual interference and one count of sexual assault on a girl who was 7 years old when the crimes were committed from January 2002 to January 2003. (. . .) At the conclusion of the jail time, Raymond Pike will spend three years on probation, during which time he will receive behavioural counselling.

Seventeen months -- actually, 11 months, ten days -- because offenders automatically serve just two-thirds of their sentences before release. This creep will be out on the street in less than a year for crimes that will stay with that girl for the rest of her life --- how is this justice?

This sentence sends a message to all the perverts out there -- abuse children with impunity because the criminal justice system (read - society) doesn't consider it a serious offence. It obviously isn't serious enough to warrant a penitentiary term, nor is it worthy of dangerous offender status -- in fact, he will serve less time than the time period of the abuse (one year) -- that must sound like a good deal to all those sickos out there.

And this happens to be the only time he's been caught -- how many other children might there be, violated by this creature, but undiscovered by the authorities. There could be many others; pervs are much like drunk drivers -- they are rarely caught the first time.

A sentence like this says that the government/judiciary is unwilling to meaningfully punish those who threaten the safety and security of our children -- one can only assume this is because they don't consider the sexual abuse of children a significant transgression.

There is no deterrent value, no punitive value and no preventive value to such a feeble sentence --- The consistently tepid sentences meted out for such malignant acts serve as an invitation, or as supplication, to all the paedophiles out there.

canadianna