CHARGE OF INCEST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 3 June 1938, Page 5

CHARGE OF INCEST

MIDDLE-AGED MAN SENTENCED REFORMATIVE DETENTION ORDERED In the Supreme Court yesterday James Alexander Spence Tapp, aged 37, appeared before Mr Justice Kennedy for sentence on a charge of incest. and was sentenced to eight months’ reformative detention. .The prisoner had previously been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for a similar offence, his Honor said, but a different view »vas to be taken of this second case. ■ „ On behalf of the prisoner, Mr O. G. Stevens said the probation officer s report showed that the prisoner suffered from a definite weakness. This was the second offence on which he had been committed, but apart from that he was regarded as an industrious, honest and quiet-living man. In regard to this particular type of offence, Mr Stevens submitted that the prisoner showed definite mental and physical weaknesses. ■ The Crown Prosecutor (Mr F. a Adams) referred to the very strange circumstance that after the first offence the parties lived under the same roof for a long period. In such circumstances it seemed inevitable that the offence should be resumed. Such repetition. Mr Adams suggested, was not of the same gravity as the original offence. It was to be- hoped that in the future the two persons concerned would never be under the same > roof. The prisoner had previously been sentenced in that court to a long term of imprisonment for a similar crime, his Honor said, A different view was to be taken of this case, however. The other party had now reached a more mature age. The remedy, was that the prisoner should not again come into close association with this person. The proper course in the circumstances was to impose a short term of reformative detention so that the prisoner might be released on the judgment of the Prisons Bo r I. This would be subject to the provision that he did not again live under the same roof with the other person concerned. His Honor ordered that the prisoner should be detained for reformative purposes for eight months.