COURTS AND OFFENCES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 21 May 1927, Page 3

COURTS AND OFFENCES.

SEVEN YEARS FOR SERIOUS OFFENCE. (BY TELEGRA PH PRESS ASSOCIATION .) WELLINGTON, May 20. A charge of rape, attempted rape and indecent assault against Robert Vaughan Venables has occupied the Supreme Court for two days. Venables was found guilty of attempted rape and of indecent assault. On the charge of rape he was acquitted. In sentencing him to seven years’ imprisonment with hard labour,' Mr Justice Alpers termed him an untamed beast who must be caged. AN ACTION DISMISSED. CHRISTCHURCH, May 20. Charges against three shearers, Cecil Chisholm, A. Elliott and T. Kerr, of being parties to a strike, were heard by Mr Lawry, S.M., on Tuesday.-at Cheviot. Charles Mowatt, a sheep farmer, gave evidence that the men were engaged by him for shearing, but after arrival refused to work, as he would not pay them 30s per hundred. Counsel for defendants submitted that the matter had never gone beyond the stage of negotiations, and there had been no definite contract. The Magistrate dismissed the charges, ruling that there was some doubt about the matter. The statute was penal and had to be strictly enforced.