A SERIOUS MENACE.

Observer, Volume XXVII, Issue 38, 8 June 1907, Page 3

A SERIOUS MENACE.

Criminal Assaults and Inadequate

Sentences,

HOWEVER regrettable the fact may be, it is nevertheless apparent that cases of criminal, or indecent, assault are becoming more frequent. Every calendar of the Supreme Court in this and other large centres generally contains more than one charge of that kind. It is, of course, impossible to altogether stamp out this particular class of crime, but it should surely be possible for our Supreme Court judges to minimise the evil by passing sentences sufficiently heavy to act as a deterrent. Only a shore while ago, Bishop Neligan advocated flogging as a punishment for those who had been guilty of cruelty to children. Although such a doctrine may not be exactly iv accordance with strictly Christian principles, a discreet dose of flagellation administered periodically during their incarceration to the human brutes who have been guilty of criminal assault upon children would undoubtedly tend to lessen the number of ca&es ot this nature.

Unfortunately, the sentences which have lately been passed by judges here and elsewhere in cases of criminal assault appear, to say the least of it, to err upon the side of leniency. At Wanganui last week, a man named Roger Pope was brought up before Mr Justice Cooper on a charge of this nature. tie was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. When we consider that, in the event of the prisoner's good behaviour during his term of incarceration, the period uf imprisonment will be materially reduced, it is quite evident that the punishment does not by any means fit the crime. In fact, under the circumstances, the sentence may be looked upon as merely a nominal one. Contrast it with the sentence of three years' hard labour passed at tha February sittings of the Auckland Supreme Court by Mr Justice Denniston on a man for stealing a portmanteau from a hotel. The disparity is startling. ' ••• •» ■ *v .

.' But it is not necessary to go from home to find that the crime of assault upon children is being visited with undue leniency. ■ Last week, Eveland Taylor was brought before Mr Justice Denniston on this charge. In this case there was another significant feature. In the course of crossexamination, Mr Tole elicited from a witness the statement that Taylor's conduct in regard to children was not good. Further, from the utterances

of His Honor in passing sentence, it would appear that although Taylor had not previously been convicted of a similar crime, still, it was reasonable to suppose that this was not his first offence. After such a remark, it might have been expected that an exemplary sentence would have been passed. But it was not. This man, who had been found guilty of criminally assaulting a child, and whose conduct towards children, according to the constable in charge of the district in which he lived, was not good, was given the surprisingly lenient sentence of two years' imprisonment.

Further, His Honor, in passing sentence, said that the case called for substantial punishment. Is two years' imprisonment, with its probable remissions, His Honor's idea of " substantial punishment"? Are degenerates of Eveland Taylor's type to be deterred from committing their unspeakable crimes by the imposition of a light penalty of this kind? In less than two years, this man will be again at large, a menace to society. In less than two years he will once more be at liberty to exercise his degenerate tendencies in the direction of the corruption of children. And so long as the moral perverts of the community know that their crimes will only be visited by alight penalty of this nature, so long will this class of offence continue to be a blot upon our boasted civilisation. There is no crime more detestable than that of the corruption of children, and there is no crime which should be more severely punithed.

When Mr Justice Conolly was on the bench it was a common event for brutes of Taylor's type to be sentenced to comparatively long terms of imprisonment, with substantial floggings thrown in. Th'i method may have been a Spartan one, but nothing but a Spartan method is adequate to deal with this class of crime. It appears to us that there is need for a legislation by which a judge would have the power to sentence offenders against the purity of children to confinement in a mental hospital. Criminals of this nature are essentially degenerate, and degeneracy in this direction implies a form of insanity. Some such legislation as we have suggested may come into being in the future. In the meantime, if the chastity of the children is to be protected, it will be necessary for our judges to take more strenuous steps in the future than they have done in the past to root out an evil which is becoming more pronounced every year.