SHOCKING CRIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 72, 25 March 1936, Page 14

SHOCKING CRIME.

YOUTHS ATTACK GIRL.

SIX' SENTENCED TO DEATH. SYDNEY COURT DRAMA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, March 20. At the Central Criminal Courts this week sentence of death was pronounced upon six youths whose ages ranged from 16 to 20 years. They were charged with being concerned in a peculiarly revolting crime which, under New South Wales law, carries with it tho death penalty.

Late on the night of January 3 an agitated young man stopped a labourer nalned Harrison, who was walking to his homo in Parramatta and told him that a number of men had attacked a girl in the park. Harrison went there and found a man following a girl who was evidently attempting to escape from him. Harrison drove the man away. He was assisting the girl to walk from the park when they were met by a man who proved to bo the girl's brother and who then took charge of her. They were Italians and as the girl could not spoak English Harrison had no idea of what was going on.

It appeared that the brother, believing that his sister's presence in the park al; 2 a.m. had been of her own freo will, struck and abused her. However, the girl's helpless condition and her protests soon put a different complexion on the case and she had to bo taken to the hospital where sho remained three weeks. During this period the police; acting on tha information supplied by tho girl and Harrison, arrested seven young men and charged them with assault and outrage. Held For Four Hours. The girl, who has been in Australia only six months, is still quite unable to make herself understood in English. Through an interpreter she stated that about nine o'clock on the evening 'of January 3, she went out to look for her brother, who keeps a fruit shop in Parramatta. She was stopped by a number of youths, who ordered her tr> go with them into the park, which was not far away, and in spite of her attempts to scream and to attract attention, they succeeded in dragging her there. She was then criminally assaulted by at least six of them, and in spite of her struggles they kept her there for over four hours, till she was found by Harrison. Her story, when it was translated, was coherent enough and she identified positively the seven youths whom the police had arrested. Their own account, of course, was that in all that happened at the park the girl was a consenting party.

Mr. Justice Stephen thoroughly instructed the jury as to the care they must exercise in the girl's evidence, and made all possible allowance for the objections raised by counsal for the accused. During the trial the evidence appeared to indicate that one of the young men, Maloney, aged Ift, had not been guilty of the major offence, while in the case of Bennett, a boy of 15, who turned out to be the agitated youth who had first given the alarm to Harrison, the charge was altered by the police to one of indecent assault.

In the end the jury, after deliberating for some hours, gave a verdict of guilty against six of the accused. They were evidently much impressed by the emphatic assurance of the Crown prosecutor that "it was incredible to entertain the story of consent," but they were clearly reluctant to pronounce the conclusion to which the evidence so manifestly pointed. Judge's Responsibility. The judge, too, was obviously distressed by the terrible responsibility that he was thus compelled to assume, and he announced that though the law compelled him "to go through the formula of pronouncing sentence of death," he did not expect that the sentence would be carried out. Still, the penalty must go on record —and so six of the youths charged received the capital sentence, while the youngest—the boy who had first given the alarm —received three years' imprisonment for indecent assault.

Naturally this terrjble decision has caused a great outburst of feeling in the Court, where many of the relation's and friends of the youths were present; and at one time the police were attending to no less than six women prostrated by hysterical seizures and fainting fits on the lawn in front of the building. Naturally also the sentence has been the signal for a revival of the. protests against capital punishment that always accompany any attempt to exact the death penalty in this country. It must be remembered that a great many people who' object to capital punishment on any pretext are quite adequately impressed by the horrible nature of such a crime as this, and are prepared to support other penalties or deterrents of the severest nature, so long as they do not mean the forcible termination of human life. On the other hand it is not easy to suggest any other form of punishment which will act effectively as a deterrent and at the same time express adequately tbe weight, of moral reprobation which all civilised communities must, for their own safety, bring to bear upon such atrocious anil monstrous misdeeds. No doubt the accused will be reprieved on account of their youth, but even if they escape the gallows their go°d tune will contribute little to the solution of one of tbe most difficult judicial problems that the modern world has to face.