Auckland's Crime Calendar

NZ Truth, Issue 999, 17 January 1925, Page 6

Auckland's Crime Calendar

Preventive Punishment

Problem Of How To Protect The Child

"These cases are hard to equal for unadulterated indecency, declared the learned Judge at the last sittings of the Auckland criminal sessions, when, out of twenty -five cases on the calendar, no fewer than twelve were concerned with' sexual offences, some of which were of an entirely revolting nature. Particularly serious was the number of sexual offences perpetrated by lustful perverts against innocent children, and it may be here observed that the year was the worst on record known to Auckland m regard to sexual offences generally. It is a disquieting and a shameful situation.

The need of more salutary punishment (writes iF. D. M.) for grave sexual offences, and more particularly for offences against children, has time and again been emphasised by responsible people. The question of. desexualisation, it will be remembered, was gravely discussed by the Medical Congress, sitting at Auckland last •year, but the consensus of opinion, expressed m papers read to, the conference was that operation upon perverts could not be guaranteed to prevent (hem continuing, to offend— the perversion being more a matter of mind than body. : 1 SHOULD PUNISHMENT BE INCREASED? But threats of increased punishment Cor sexual offenders have been met with expressions of indignation' by people who consider that the pervert is not. responsible, and that' he should be treated not as a criminal, but 1 as a mental case. However, it is said to be a remarkable fact that after a Judge had ordered a flogging for depraved sexual offenders some years ago, the number, of these offences dwindled rapidly, and remained fewer m number for a long : time. Of late years, however, sentences have been very lenient, when the 'nature of the crime is considered^-app.arently lenient even m the most shocking cases — and the number of sexual offences perpetrated increased greatly,, until a record number was dealt with at the Supreme Court m Auckland m August last. • . Judges are human,, and they . hate to order floggings, although-. 'such .'punishment' was ordered m one or two cases tried m Auckland last year. And against the cry for increased severity of punishment there is a' dreadful argument put forth. -.■'■' ■-■'■' Itis this: That if a pervert; after the gratification and partial ' return -to reason, stays to think that a flogging and many / years of imprisonment await him if convicted, he may- at once determine to destroy the principal witness by. murder— such principal witness being very often the only witness. Indeed, it is said that one man, thrice convicted of an offence against little girls, swore. , that there would be no evidence, against him the next time, and that, after release (he should never have been released, it would- appear) he kept his oath by

murdering the little child he had brutally ravished. This case,, it should be explained, has no relation to the last hanging- at Auckland, wherein a young man went to his death — -truly and sincerely repentant, if his last words on the scaffold are to be believed — for having strangled a child whom he had made the victim of his fearful Hist. What madness moved him to strangle this child may be left to the psychologist to \determine. However, the argument, shuddersome as it is, seems reasonable. The man who is cowardly enough to ravish a defenceless little maid, may be coward enough to murder her if he thinks that by so doing he may escape punishment. , The situation seems a dreadful one either" way. Continue to deal leniently with sexual perverts and they continue to offend, and to repeat the offence. Order flogging or other fearful punishment, and you bring the possibility of horror upon horror into view. The problem of the sexual pervert is one that must be taken up by science and thrashed to a conclusion. DESEXUALISATION AND : PERPETUATION. But to refer again to desexualisation. There is one point m regard to that which cannot be overlooked. Whether or not such operation renders a man powerless to tamper with children, it certainly renders him powerless to reproduce his dreadful species, and if we could desexualise all these monsters we covild wipe out the breed m a generation, save for the few ■ who would spring up now and again (possibly the "throw backs" 'of vice) as weeds will grow even m the best cultivated gardens. But m addition to the desexualisation of male offenders, something would also have to be done to deprive of reproductive power those females who have no control whatever over the sex impulse., who are utterly ■ without sense of sex morality, and who are habitually and by choice promiscuous m their intercourse. These strongly-sexed and weakly -minded females are astonishingly prolific, and tliey produce their like from generation to /generation, to be a blot and a burden': on the .nation and a source of unceasing anxiety and danger to society. . j :

It "must be remembered that the number of cases of offences against chil-

dren which come before the Courts are only a percentage of those perpetrated. Such a dread have parents of the shame which they imagine must attach to their children who have been tamrered with by men, that comparatively few of them will bring the offenders to public justice, or even report the matter to the police. In these days not even the public parks provided for the little ones are safe; and the beastly horror of it is that not only girls, but boys also, are m danger from prowling disciples of unrestrained and even unnatural sexual lust.

According to a Court official, if people knew of the real nature of the vicious sexual offences which often come before the Court — if they could only hear the evidence of revolting crimes of this character — they would be paralysed with disgust and horror, an:l there would be "less hysterical nonsense heard about the punishment fitting tie crime." The trouble, he added, was that the punishment did not fit the crime. There must be salutary punishment of such offences, for the real crux of the whole situation was that children must be protected.