This is so upsetting
Josef Fritzl Pleads Guilty to All Charges
Read at your own discretion.
There is much that could be said about this situation. Where do you even start? Maybe with “How?” How can a man brutalize his own child so horrifically and brutally for so long? How can a mother living upstairs not realize what’s been going on for 24 years under her nose? (Can anyone actually be that oblivious?) How can a woman give birth to seven children with no pain killers, no aid but scissors and nappies? How can children who spend the entirety of their young lives in a rat-infested, damp, dank cellar, without ever seeing the outside world, exposed to pornography, violence and rape, with no education, no friends, no life, be expected to cope in the world? There is so much. Much too much.
What upsets me equally or possibly more than the horrifying, heinous nature of this crime are the laws that govern the sentencing of it. Josef Fritzl pleaded guilty to murder [by negligence] of one of the 7 children, and so is eligible for life in prison. But this is a recent development. Had he not done so, and had the jury convicted him on every count of repeated rape, incest, and locking his daughter and their children in a dungeon for TWENTY-FOUR years, but not on a murder count, the maximum sentence would have been 20 years.
I don’t understand that. It is not fathomable to me that the maximum sentence for rape is 20 years. Repeated, violent, incestuous rape. How little does Austria value its women that it sees it fit to make the maximum sentence for rape only 20 years? (I understand that a woman can rape a man, too, but let’s be realistic, it is not the common trend. It is men who are, by and large, shielded by inadequate punishments for this brutal crime). Besides, it’s well-known that rapists are very likely going to be repeat offenders.
In general, why should there be a fixed term for a certain type of crime—not all crimes are equal. Rape is horrible and unjustifiable under any circumstance. But a random stranger raping a girl once is not the same as as a father raping his daughter over 3000 times. Shouldn’t the specifics of the case warrant a change of punishment, so that the punishment actually fits the crime?
How bewildered sometimes I feel to be part of a species whose members are capable of such vile and reprehensible acts and whose corrupt and crumbling institutions are far too inadequate to shield the most oppressed of its own kind.
Read at your own discretion.
There is much that could be said about this situation. Where do you even start? Maybe with “How?” How can a man brutalize his own child so horrifically and brutally for so long? How can a mother living upstairs not realize what’s been going on for 24 years under her nose? (Can anyone actually be that oblivious?) How can a woman give birth to seven children with no pain killers, no aid but scissors and nappies? How can children who spend the entirety of their young lives in a rat-infested, damp, dank cellar, without ever seeing the outside world, exposed to pornography, violence and rape, with no education, no friends, no life, be expected to cope in the world? There is so much. Much too much.
What upsets me equally or possibly more than the horrifying, heinous nature of this crime are the laws that govern the sentencing of it. Josef Fritzl pleaded guilty to murder [by negligence] of one of the 7 children, and so is eligible for life in prison. But this is a recent development. Had he not done so, and had the jury convicted him on every count of repeated rape, incest, and locking his daughter and their children in a dungeon for TWENTY-FOUR years, but not on a murder count, the maximum sentence would have been 20 years.
I don’t understand that. It is not fathomable to me that the maximum sentence for rape is 20 years. Repeated, violent, incestuous rape. How little does Austria value its women that it sees it fit to make the maximum sentence for rape only 20 years? (I understand that a woman can rape a man, too, but let’s be realistic, it is not the common trend. It is men who are, by and large, shielded by inadequate punishments for this brutal crime). Besides, it’s well-known that rapists are very likely going to be repeat offenders.
In general, why should there be a fixed term for a certain type of crime—not all crimes are equal. Rape is horrible and unjustifiable under any circumstance. But a random stranger raping a girl once is not the same as as a father raping his daughter over 3000 times. Shouldn’t the specifics of the case warrant a change of punishment, so that the punishment actually fits the crime?
How bewildered sometimes I feel to be part of a species whose members are capable of such vile and reprehensible acts and whose corrupt and crumbling institutions are far too inadequate to shield the most oppressed of its own kind.
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