Judge calls children "the aggressors" in sexual abuse case with adult man

[Madner Kami]

How does the behavior of 13 year olds relate to the sentencing of a man who fucks 13 year olds?

Leading someone into commiting a crime practically always is an arguement for reducing a sentence, rightfully so. If those underaged prostitutes wouldn't have made themselves available, he probably wouldn't have had sexual intercourse with them. It's not hard to figure out the math behind that.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

How does the behavior of 13 year olds relate to the sentencing of a man who fucks 13 year olds?

Leading someone into commiting a crime practically always is an arguement for reducing a sentence, rightfully so. If those underaged prostitutes wouldn't have made themselves available, he probably wouldn't have had sexual intercourse with them. It's not hard to figure out the math behind that.

This wasn't entrapment, and your argument boils down to "He should get less jail time because those 13 year olds were whores".

[Admiral X]

I read it as they basically blackmailed him into it, at least by what that second article said. Either way I hope they go after the older sister for pimping her younger sisters and the mother for negligence.

[Madner Kami]

This wasn't entrapment, and your argument boils down to "He should get less jail time because those 13 year olds were whores".

If you want to read it that way, that is your perogative, but that is not what I was saying. What I am saying is, that if I fire a gun in a direction where noone can be hit and you jump in front of the flying bullet, then I am not a murderer.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

No, that is >>literally<< what you are saying, that because these particular underage girls engaged in prostitution, this man should get less jail time for boinking them.

[LittleRaven]

Ok...whoa. Time out. Let's tone down the rhetoric a little bit.

Nobody is calling these girls whores. Nobody is saying this guy shouldn't go to jail. Nobody is saying that these girls should be prosecuted.

What I'm saying, anyway, is that getting yourself worked into self-righteous outrage based on clickbait articles is generally a bad idea, because the press almost always has more interest in making you mad than making you informed. There is a whole lot of stuff about this story that we don't know, because we haven't actually been in the courtroom and watched this whole sordid story play out over weeks. This judge has. Sure, maybe he's some kind of idiot, or a monster. That does happen. But it doesn't happen very often, so it probably shouldn't be our default assumption.

We don't know how mentally competent this offender is. We know he's impaired, but that covers everything from 'not as quick as he used to be' to 'this guy can't give legal consent to anything either.' We don't know the full story of what's going on in this family, although it seems fairly clear that whatever it is, it's appalling.

Either way, he's 67, and going away for at least 5 years. Honestly, I'm willing to bet that the actuarial tables would label this a death sentence, and I'm fine with that.