Still Not Working
Apparently the case of the mother who beat her children with multiple implements is so horrible that some of the jury have been in tears. Though, as usual, this will be portrayed as yet another example of why we needed the repeal of section 59, it is, of course, nothing of the sort. Though I do not wish to anticipate the verdict of this case, the limited information we have from the media makes it quite clear that this is far removed from ordinary discipline. It is highly unlikely that this woman would have been able to defend her action under section 59.
Once again, all this illustrates is that the current law is NOT working, because it is very clear to me that the police are not attempting to prosecute anything but truly egregious cases of child abuse, at least, in their estimation. Police are not merely ignoring minor, light smacks, they are ignoring all forms of parental discipline that does not come into their definition of child abuse.
This is because they are not under pressure to prosecute minor infractions of the law. However, come the next socialist government…
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Oct 7 09 12:45 pm
MD, she would indeed have been able to (attempt) to defend herself using s59. What I very much doubt is that she would have succeeded in convincing a jury of the reasonableness of the disciplinary procedures she employed. After all, the very few people who did succeed in using s59 for what looked like excessive punishment did so because the circumstances were most unusual, and presumably their juries took those circumstances into account.
Comment: Damn, those captcha’s can be hard to interpret !
Ah yes. You are right. I expressed myself poorly. That should have been a defense using section 59 would not have been viable, given what we know so far. I hear that ReCaptcha renders poorly in IE – time to switch to Firefox?
Oct 8 09 9:55 am
Firefox 3.0.12, sometimes the captcha’s letters are easily confused because they are quite distorted.
Yes, my support for s59 is that it evolved with society. Today we would be less inclined to permit (that is, accept it as reasonable when sitting on a jury) hitting with implements although I can still see that the circumstances would have an impact. It is often forgotten that there were a number of failed defenses under s59, the exceptions were remarkably few for all the fuss made.