Source: The Sun
First and foremost, this is one of the most sensible articles I've seen written by the Sun. It's seemingly unbiased but the fact that it wasn't rated as a significant story slightly irritates me. Moving on though, the story is about an online group called the Online Predator Investigation Team who posed as a 14-year-old girl called Ellie. The defendant and alleged Paedophile, James Hanson, started inappropriately talking to Ellie and asking her for such things as pictures and asking her to touch herself in her 'privates' meanwhile sending sexual pictures of himself.
From the sounds of it, the defendants points were absolutely atrocious, saying it was 'out of character'. Well no shit, it's not exactly something people go around advertising as a feature of their personality on Tinder. The real disgusting part of this story is the fact that Hanson was let off with only 120 hours of unpaid work and 60 days rehabilitation. The Judge justified his decision by mentioning that there was no real girl and thus, no victim. In my opinion, this changes nearly nothing. He genuinely believed that he was speaking to a 14-year-old girl and thanks to this vigilante group, he was caught before anyone was hurt. But if they didn't catch him, he could have just as easily found a real girl who may have been even younger and some real damage would have occurred. He was let off easy for a minor technicality that shouldn't have been taken into account. He was let off especially easy considering that if he lived in the US, it was still entirely possible he could have received the death penalty.
Good article, but what representation group does it come under?
ReplyDelete