SEXUAL OFFENCES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 673, 27 May 1929, Page 8

SEXUAL OFFENCES

Sir, — Much has been written on the subject of sexual offenders and it is good that public opinion is being awakened. This class of offence may be divided into three groups: (a) Against infants of the 3-11 period: (b) against children from 11 to 15 years of age; and (c) against those between 15 and 20.1 n case fa) the offender should be flogged without mercy as a brute. Only physical suffering will be understood by him. In case (b) a close examination is necessary for reasons which are more or less obvious. The age of the man should be taken into consideration also, Jf he is but a youth, he should be punished severely but not necessarily flogged, but where

a man of 25 or 30 so offends he should be made to feel,- through his skin, that he is a low-down blackguard. Case (c) calls for very serious consideration and to my mind should be dealt with by a court comprising a judge and two assessors, one to be a doctor or a pharmaceutical chemist, and the other a social worker —either a clerk in Holy Orders or a deaconess. Such a court would be fairly certain to find justly. It would have an accurate conception of present-day conditions and a good measure of humanity. It would make the punishment fit the crime. As for aged sexual perverts. I think they should be put away until a merciful death releases them. The late Bishop Neligan once said: “The meanest hound that lives is the hound that tries to destroy the faith of a little child.” What would the Childlen s Bishop have said of the hound that destroys the purity of a little child ? DR. NIKOLA.