Editor’s note: This article is the final installment in a three-part series on the ramifications of a case decided recently in Melbourne’s County Court. The first two articles show how corrupt the verdict was and describe the culture that allows this to take place.
This article looks at the results of an adult woman using a 13-year-old boy for sex, grooming him with drugs and alcohol, and manipulating him to leave his parental home and father three children for her before he turned 18. Shortly after that, she dumped him, and now he cannot see his own children.
Her punishment for these crimes was a suspended sentence.
Since we began looking at this case, another example of this type of leniency happened in South Australia. This shows how commonplace these situations are. In the latest incident, a woman befriended a boy, his mother, and his sisters when she worked at the school canteen. She organised with the mother for the boy and his sisters to stay overnight at her place. At the appropriate time, she put the girls to bed and then proceeded to have sex with the boy.
“In some respects, you are a person to be pitied – life has not dealt you a good hand,” [the judge] said.
No, he was not talking to the victim. The person to be pitied was the criminal, Kylie Fiona Henry. She was let off with a suspended sentence. The other excuse proffered was:
The court heard jailing the woman might force her children into state care.
In both of these cases, the attention was firmly focused on the problems of the perpetrator. When the boy’s issues from the first case are discussed, they are minimised and discounted.
The teen became a father at 15, and again at 16 and 18, which the judge said would have had a profound impact on him.
“He had to deal with the pressures of fatherhood at far too early an age,” Judge O’Neill said.
This does not even begin to describe the boy’s problems. First of all, the judge puts his problems in the past tense. This is manifestly untrue.
At the tender age of 13, he was given frequent access to drugs and alcohol. The following is taken from the Victorian Education Department’s website:
Drinking alcohol during the teenage years can cause permanent brain damage. Damage to the brain could be responsible for memory problems, inability to learn, problems with verbal skills, alcohol dependence and depression.
Alcohol can affect a teenager’s social development if they start drinking at an early age. They may spend their time drinking instead of participating in sports or other recreational activities. They may turn to alcohol as a form of coping with problems and be more open to using other substances. The learning difficulties caused by teenage drinking can result in poor school performance and an increased risk of social problems, depression, suicidal thoughts and violence.
According to Drinkwise Australia, a Professor Ian Hickie of the University of Sydney believes that
… alcohol can disrupt brain development during the critical phase of growth that occurs from around 12-13 years of age until our early twenties. As the brain shapes itself throughout adolescence it needs the most positive and alcohol free environment to thrive. Professor Hickie’s advice for parents and influential adults is to avoid introducing alcohol to teenagers for as long as possible.
That the young boy should run this risk so that the woman could have sex with a child is abhorrent. The judge citing the woman’s problems of low IQ and maturity to excuse his lenient sentence surely must rub salt in the wound. Clearly, the family court didn’t see any problem in allowing the same woman sole custody of three children. Perhaps her IQ was better on that day.
It is difficult to imagine that the boy—living an adult’s life with sex, booze, and drugs—was putting in a great effort at school and getting good grades. Of course, now that he is an adult, the expected low income and lack of career as a result of that lifestyle will be just his own bad luck. It is also hard to imagine this young man feeling that society respects him as a citizen with full rights. Instead, he must feel like there is a permanent “Kick Me” sign on his back.
But the other problems will only come to light as the young man gets older. One major factor will be his own guilt. The truth is he probably enjoyed the sex, booze, and drugs at the time. Therefore, there will always be, in his own mind, a place for blaming himself. As he gets older and realises the damage done not only to himself, but also to his children, there will always be some blame for himself because he willingly went along with the paedophile’s games of deceit to hide their sexual relationship from the authorities.
Also, note that the young man no longer has access to his children. Not only did he get “the pressures of fatherhood at far too early an age,” but he also learned how to lose all contact with his children in his first year of official adulthood. While any mature, fair-minded adult would have been able to predict that his foray into fatherhood at 15 would not end well, the teenage boy would have never seen it coming.
In the South Australian case, the young boy is quoted as follows:
I felt ill. I can’t trust women and I hate them[.]
How long before that phrase is used against him as evidence of misogyny, with the patriarchy to blame?
And yet, as the true nature of this betrayal sinks in to these young men, how can it not warp their lives in numerous ways? This is not simply a question of how they perceive women. The courts have held their problems as insignificant compared to that of their abusers’ issues. How does that affect their self-esteem? How does that impact their view of the authorities?
Can you imagine that these young men will grow up with a respect for the courts? Can you imagine that these young men will believe in our justice system?
And can you imagine that the feminist courts will give these young men the same amount of slack given to their abusers? Will a judge tell them one day they are to be “pitied” as life, their abusers, the authorities, and the courts have not dealt them “a good hand”?
And further, is it possible for these young men to mature with an attitude of self-respect given that their society has treated them as disposable dildos?
The truth is that these victims are also suffering thanks to the feminist view on sex that seems to inform our society these days. This view sees men as thinking only with their penises. They will be grateful for any sex they can get, regardless of how tawdry the affair might have been.
This view also sees heterosexual sex as somehow tainted because the man penetrates the woman, thus somehow always injuring her. For this reason, the young man from Melbourne will see cases make the headlines like those recently involving Rolf Harris and Robert Hughes. The crimes these men are being publicly denounced for do not compare to the injustices he suffered. In Hughes’s case, he indecently exposed himself to some girls and sexually assaulted one girl.
That’s one girl. Once. No rape. No pregnancy. No children. No leaving home. No alcohol or drugs to warp a developing brain.
For the hard-of-thinking, or more accurately for the acutely bigoted, this does not mean that I condone in any way Hughes’s actions. But his crimes are a far lesser evil than those inflicted on this young father of three, and Hughes was sentenced to 10 years and 9 months jail time, along with significant public humiliation.
These young men will have to revisit their situation again and again as they mature and their understanding of sex, sexual politics, and other matters grows. If they are lucky, they will find forgiveness for themselves for participating in acts that they couldn’t begin to understand the ramifications of. They may eventually understand that they succumbed to a temptation that should never have been put before them.
Perhaps even the day might come when they will realise that they have value just for being human, irrespective of what the media, the courts, and the feminist ideology they kowtow to dictates.
What they should never do is turn to feminist ideology for answers because there is nothing but bigotry and hatred and indifference for them there.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-06/single-mother-avoids-jail-for-sex-with-15yo-boy/5505318
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/teachers/health/factsheet12011.pdf
http://www.drinkwise.org.au/research/alcohol-and-the-teenage-brain-safest-to-keep-them-apart/
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/woman-escapes-jail-for-sex-with-13yearold-20140523-38t1c.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/robert-hughes-found-guilty/5372728
http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/boys/have-your-victims-child-in-order-to-avoid-jail-the-verdict/
