Another case has come before the Irish courts in which the apparent lack of proficiency in English of a person convicted of serious criminal offences has been used as a factor of mitigation in reducing a custodial sentence, and this one, to be frank, should make any decent person sick.
If you read court reports, you’re probably no stranger to the fact that defence counsels often argue that their client’s lack of English skills would make their jail term more difficult, and – if you’re like me – you’ve probably thought, “So what?”
Yesterday a “Tipperary man” as per the Irish Examiner – who is in truth a foreign national with “limited English” – was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in jail for serious sexual crimes including forcing his step daughter to watch him rape her mother.
I’d like to think I’m hard to shock at this point, but that one really hit me.
The man’s crimes were detailed as ”sexual assault, sexual exploitation of a child, oral rape, assault causing harm and making threats to kill against his stepdaughter,” as well as “offences against his wife, including rape, oral rape, assault causing harm, assault causing serious harm and making a threat.”
The court heard that the man had forced his stepdaughter to watch him rape her mother and had used threats of violence including the use of an axe to threaten on one occasion.
Not only was the man’s poor English used as a factor of mitigation in reducing his custodial sentence, shockingly – in my view at least -his work history was also taken into consideration. What’s that about? Is the standard of justice in Ireland really ‘Yeah, he’s a perverted monster who rapes his wife and seriously abuses his stepdaughter, but sure he’s never been shy of a day’s work.’?
Are we to take it, for example, that unemployed sadistic rapists and abusers would get longer sentences?
The litany of abuse in this particular case took place at the family home in County Tipperary with sentencing Judge Ms. Justice Siobhan Lankford commenting that the mother and daughter were “afraid to breathe a word of these events to anyone”.
The man’s final sentence was reduced to 10-and-a-half-years under condition that he have no contact with his wife and stepdaughter and that he place himself under the supervision of the Probation Service upon release.
It has to be said that the courts sometimes have a way of operating that to you and I may seem strange or counterintuitive, but sometimes they also operate in what can only be termed as ‘bullshit’.
That a man who unleashed a campaign of sexual torture – how else would you describe it? -on his own wife and stepdaughter should benefit in any material way from something as obtuse as his work record is beyond me.
I don’t think anyone would dare attempt to mitigate the crimes of, say, Jimmy Saville by remarking on his record of punctuality.
I have often heard judges using the ‘lack of English would make things harder in jail’ excuse, and while it probably wouldn’t make things easier – why would someone who has limited English choose to live in Ireland if their lack of linguistic skills was such a cause of distress?
Nobody asks foreign nationals who commit crimes in Ireland to do so, so why should our courts treat them with kid gloves in this regard when they do?
If anything, he has a decade to learn English now, so in reality it doesn’t actually make sense – to me at least – to make a decision based on his current level of proficiency which is clearly subject to enhancement.
This writer became conversationally fluent in Japanese within six months of living in Tokyo and didn’t have the benefit of a prison library. And even had I not, I’m not convinced the Japanese would have given me time off a sentence because I’d come to their country and committed crimes without speaking their tongue. Nor should they. And nor should we.
Oh, and I certainly wouldn’t have been referred to as a “Tokyo woman” in the news either.