Monday 10 December 2007

Little girls probably 'ask for it'

Via the F Word, the Guardian reports:
'"A judge in Australia was facing calls to step down today after she failed to jail a group of nine males who admitted gang-raping a 10-year-old girl in an Aboriginal community, saying the young victim "probably agreed" to have sex with them.'

This story has a disturbing combination of cultural relativism (cf female genital mutilation) and good old fashioned judicial misogyny. It was 1993 in the UK that Judge Starforth Hill said of an eight year old sex attack victim that she was "not entirely an angel", and gave the man two years of probation. How can stuff like this still be happening?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised at you, pj. Do you know what goes on in some places of the globe that is completely normal with respect to their culture? If it is a cultural thing, then let it be. Sure, its genital mutilation in your view, but is it in theirs? who says you're right?

pj said...

I say I'm right. No relativism here.