Following my blog on child rape, and multiple gang rapes in brothels being labeled “prostitution”, and multiple rapes within the home being labelled “forced marriage”, I wanted to show why all of this matters in practice.

It’s not just some PC blog about nomenclature. It’s about the fact that in the UK, rape and sexual abuse is happening every day and literally being ignored by the law.

The news in Britain today is of a teacher who has been given a police caution for viewing 143 sexually abusive images of children on his computer. A civil service panel, independent of politicians, has decided he will be allowed to return to teaching. Here is the story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jun/06/teacher-child-images-schools-panel

The focus of most news coverage is why the “independent panel” said this man can work again in schools. I hate almost all quangos; I believe politicians should be in charge whenever possible, and/or positions should be elected. You can fire your MP or councillor, but not a quango. This panel is unaccountable to anyone.

But I don’t want to digress. Politicians are saying they will attempt to intervene, but what happens to this individual child abuser is not as important as demanding a change in the law.

He received a police caution, for:

1. Visiting a website and viewing six images of child abuse

2. Accessing, downloading and viewing 143 sexually abusive pictures of children at the lowest end of the scale [the COPINE scale, which means pictures of children viewed for sexual gratification]

3. Having a further 46 images of children being sexually abused by having nude or underwear photographs taken of them secretly in places they are supposed to be safe, such as playgrounds or nurseries

For all of this, the abuser receives a police caution. Of course there are gradations in the severity of child sexual abuse, just as there are aggravating factors to a crime as horrific as rape. Gang rape or twenty instances of rape are even worse than one instance of rape. There are gradations to any crime. It is even worse to murder twenty people than one person, it is even worse to torture a person before murdering them than to murder them.That does not mean, however, that the initial crime is made less severe because there are even worse gradations of it.

Here are the CPS’s gradations of abusive images:

“Level one: Images of erotic posing, with no sexual activity;

Level two: Non-penetrative sexual activities between children, or solo masturbation by a child;

Level three: Non-penetrative sexual activity between adults and children;

Level four: Penetrative sexual activity involving a child or children, or both children and adults;

Level five: Sadism or involving the penetration of, or by, an animal.”

Here are the sentencing guidelines. Prepare to be very shocked.

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/indecent_images_of_children/

I understand if you cannot bring yourself to read the insanely low sentences mandated for owning child abuse pictures, so here is just a single example:

“Type/nature of activity: Possession of a large quantity of level 4 or 5 material for personal use only Large number of level 3 images shown or distributed  

Starting points: 12 months custody  
Sentencing ranges: 26 weeks – 2 years custody”

The British public is often being accused of being in a “paedo panic” or of Brass-Eye type hysteria being whipped up where no child abuse exists. This may be true. But these links I am posting are not tabloid exaggeration. They are Crown Prosecution Services sentencing guidelines.

Children are abused and tormented for photographs and films because there is a market for those photographs and films. Any man (and the occasional woman) who deliberately, and for gratification, views one of these images is guilty of the abuse in the image.

There are real, actual children in these images. At present, for owning a “large number” of images sadistic, penetrative rape of children by adults and animals, the Crown thinks you should get a year in jail. With good behavior, out in six months. Top sentence, two years. Out in one.

What the hell?

For viewing and owning pictures of children viewed abusively, this child abuser, who fully admitted they were child abuse pictures, received a caution. A caution. For abusing 143 children, or a smaller number of children abused 143 times when photos, like swimwear, are grouped in the context of gratification. A police caution. And the right to go back to his job.

I would like you, the reader, to try to imaging one hundred and forty three children. Is that, for example, half the children in your local village primary school? Every child in your local nursery school? This man abused that many children by creating a market for abusive photos of them, and he gets a caution.

In my more serious example, you can actually distribute large numbers of  Level Three images of children being sexually abused by adults (note terminology “sexual activity between children and adults” – there is no such thing, there is “non-penetrative sexual abuse of children by adults” – and your maximum sentence is two years. Out in one.

Now let’s look at sentencing for the ongoing gang-rape of women trafficked into brothels (CPS language – “forced to “work as prostitutes” ie to be daily gang-raped by men).

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/human_trafficking_and_smuggling/#a09

Here is their sentencing guideline for the most serious cases.

“The following cases provide guidelines on sentencing and reflect the degree of coercion, force and violence used in the exploitation of their victims:

R v Plakici [2005] 1 Cr.App.R.(S.) 19, Attorney General’s Reference (No 6 of 2004) dealt with a series of individual offences that amounted to an extremely serious case of trafficking. The offender had arranged for the illegal entry of women and young girls into this country in circumstances that involved both deception and coercion and forced them to work as prostitutes. Counts of illegal entry attracted sentences of 5 years, of living on immoral earning 5 years, of kidnapping 10 years, and of incitement to rape, 8 years. A total sentence of 23 years was imposed.”

Right, so, what we have here are human traffickers who kidnapped girls and women and had them raped again and again, every day, in their brothels. Try to imagine being one of those girls. Being raped perhaps ten times a day. Every day. Year in, year out. Knowing other women are suffering as you are suffering.

“Who’s counting?” says the British justice system. For all of those rapes together, the convicted gang rapist gets…. eight years.

This is the reality of rape and child sexual abuse and rape in the UK today. We don’t have a “pedo panic” we have institutionlised, state-sanctioned blind eyes turned to horrors Stephen King would shy about describing. We have joke sentences for the worst crimes imaginable against the bodies and dignity of women and children. Don’t settle for “Level One images”. Fuck your clinical terminology. Those are actual children being actually abused. A thousand rapes deserves life in prison, no parole.

When will get judges and politicians who see rape for what it is? Women must rise and demand a change in the law.