An Ontario man who sexually abused his four-year-old daughter live over the Internet as an undercover police officer watched online was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday.

"I don't think I'll call him daddy anymore,'' she's quoted as saying in a report filed by a psychologist.

Link (http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/TopStories/ContentPosting.aspx?feedname=CTV-TOPSTORIES_V2&showbyline=True&newsitemid=CTVNews%2f20071220%2ffather_sentencing_ 071220)

Four years?!? Personally, I think trash like this should get life. Or death.

Ugh. There's nothing particularly profound that I have to say, but I wanted to express my general disgust. I almost think that life would be a better option, as long as he suffered the entire time; I don't actually believe in hell or any sort of tormentuous afterlife, so death would be far too nice of a thing.

There's nothing particularly profound that I have to say, but I wanted to express my general disgust.

I know. I wasn't expecting anything particularly insightful here, but like you DJ, I just needed to vent a bit.

Ugh. There's nothing particularly profound that I have to say, but I wanted to express my general disgust. I almost think that life would be a better option, as long as he suffered the entire time; I don't actually believe in hell or any sort of tormentuous afterlife, so death would be far too nice of a thing.

Ugh is right. I really don't have anything more to say other than this is the kind of sick s..t that makes what I'd usually call sick s..t look like Tom & Jerry in comparison. The online thing topped it all.

Is that the stranded league sentence for child abuse in Canada? I get the feeling it's not.

Vigilantism am your friend.

Four years is fairly common as a starting point for sexual assault in Canadian jurisdictions. But it's exactly that, a starting point.

What troubles me about this is that:

1) the fact that the perpetrator was the girl's father means that he held a position of trust in relation to her

2) The girl's very young age

3) That he attempted public distribution over an internet medium

would all be significant aggravating factors that should push the sentence up. Maybe the judge found mitigating factors that have not yet become a matter of public record, though without seeing the court record I can't imagine what those would be.

Thanks for the elaboration, Beren. But yes, what sickened me more than anything were the three factors you mentioned (and especially #1 and (even more disgusting) #3)

Vigilantism am your friend.

Considering that I don't live too fare away from the town mentioned, that's very tempting. Truth be told, I'm appaled by the sentence. The article suggested less than three years incarcerated (or maybe parole eligibility), then three years probation after that. I believe that justice was not served in this case...

In the netherlands(Holland)the dead penalty is a taboe that never must be lifted(has something to do with WW2). At least, so say the left wing politicians and the people who vote on them. But seriously, a deed , a crime of this kind just cannot be sentenced whit prison. This is someting for the dead penalty. This kind of sickness cannot be cured whit therapy(talking) or medicine(hoping he will take it) How is it possible that anyone can be against dead penalty in this case. I mean reasonble doubt okay, but this, on the internet.

Against death penalty. Even if it were a part of the system, in this case it would be too harsh. Besides, as much as we find abominable what some sick people are doing, we ought to remember they're sick people. Sick people are to be medicated, not punished. This is to say they ought to be punished within the scope of their guilt. Whatever exceeds the scope of their guilt and originates from their illness, without much choice being involved, cannot be punished - as far as it was involuntary, or cannot be punished the same as a fully chosen act if the choice was present but reduced.

Chev is right.

There are some crimes where we, the public, do not want rehabilitation. We do not want medication or psychotherapy. There are some crimes where the public simply want punishment -- harsh punishment at that.

This is one of those crimes. I have never heard of a pedophile being rehabilitated or cured. These people need to be removed from the public and NEVER have access to children again.

"We the public" I'm sure have a varying amount of views on the death penalty and when and where it should be implemented, many of them probably won't be the same as yours.
Needless to say that lynchmobs are not in my opinion the correct way for the justice system to work.

In my opinion rehabilitation should be allways the goal of the prisonsystem and not retribution, however at some cases rehabilitation might be difficult if not impossible and at those cases it is necessary for the justice system to have a way of keeping these people locked away from the public.

I can live whit the concept lock up and trow away the key. However that always ends whit things like good behaviour.

In the netherlands we have a system in which the client is helped(sedated or talked to by people who get paid to do so) until there is no more room in the system and are released. One even got a job on a school and a house next to a playground.

Redemption is noble, but in some cases you really have to extract that person for good, and really for the rest of his life. And in a few cases, far less than the people in death row, permanent termination is needed.

When a man robs a store, shoots someone while escaping the police, I can get redemption, I even applaud it. this person deserves a second life after prison. But if he has tortured the owner thus killing him, raped his wife, the dog and sprays his sporting product(sub machine gun) into a crowd death row is his place.

There are cases of course where even I would be inclined to accept the death penalty. How can you even attempt to redeem serial killers? The trouble is though that once you implement death penalty you have trouble deciding the lines, and even then you have the eternal dilemma of the possibility of innocence. No justice system is so perfectly refined that it allows no false convictions to get through the cracks. Who pays the price when someone is falsely convicted to death penalty?

Oh and good behaviour does not really count is someone is deemed psychologically incabale of dealing with society, it's not a matter of behaviour it's a matter of being mentally ill.

And in this case, given the limited knowledge that we're given of the man and his home life, he must have seemed like a genuinely healthy person; after all, he convinced someone to marry him (someone who, from her statements, does not in any way find his behaviour acceptable) and she willingly procreated with him. I wouldn't apply the statement 'good behaviour' to someone who obviously excelled for many years at putting on a front of good behaviour; and to some extent, it would be difficult to trust the 'redemption' of such a person. In any case, I will admit that my opinion is somewhat touchy, given that my knee-jerk reaction as a parent is to call for his bits on a stick. With him attached.
And yes, the death penalty issue is difficult, because yes, how do you apply it to someone who's mentally ill, where do you draw that line between someone who's capable of being cured and someone who will live their life continuing to give in to their impulses, how do you know which person is which? We really can't and so we really shouldn't. However, my concern in cases of pedophilia--like this--is how many times a person who has been 'cured' and released will continue on with their behaviour as soon as they can. It seems to be one of those diseases that at this time we just don't understand enough to cure. Again, as a parent, I think the prison sentence should be higher; and I think they should absolutely 100% be kept away from children forevermore.

This is one of those crimes. I have never heard of a pedophile being rehabilitated or cured. These people need to be removed from the public and NEVER have access to children again.

Removed and prevented from accessing, yes. But what purpose does a punishment serve if it's not a consequence of guilt? This is the iconic oldschool DM problem: is there an alignment shift or loss of paladinhood or whatever else you have, when the character is being mentally dominated?

I will agree, however, that in most cases there's enough choice by the perpetrator to warrant his being punished.

When a man robs a store, shoots someone while escaping the police, I can get redemption, I even applaud it. this person deserves a second life after prison. But if he has tortured the owner thus killing him, raped his wife, the dog and sprays his sporting product(sub machine gun) into a crowd death row is his place.

Is he so evil... or is he perhaps mentally ill? The incident which happens is a horrible tragedy and if it is willing on the part of the perpetrator, it's a horrible crime. But what if the perpetrator is driven by some mind-altering personality disorder or clinical insanity? Suppose it's medically possible to cure him and at the time he was unable to control his behaviour. Do we still want to eliminate him because we can't bear his sight any more? There will be very few such situations, of course.

Again, as a parent, I think the prison sentence should be higher; and I think they should absolutely 100% be kept away from children forevermore.

Yup. In my mind, protection of the peaceful citizens ranks higher than attempts to redeem the offender. Even if he's not (fully) culpable, it still doesn't mean he should be left alone to do what he has been doing so far. This is something that some proponents of rehabilitation don't get: the retributive penalty is one thing, protection is another. While we may dispense at times with the retributive value of years of prison, we can't let a violent criminal continue his deeds. Nor can we leave a mentally unstable person, with tendencies towards violence and/or other abuse, in a condition in which he's able to continue to pose danger.

For this reason, while I agree all violent criminals should be isolated, I maintain that some of them are not fit to be criminally punished - which doesn't diminish the need to prevent them from posing danger. Sometimes the difference between locking someone in prison and locking him in psychward will rely only on whether we assign the guilt or not. And it is my belief that the guilt should only be assigned where it actually can, depending on the perpetrator's state of mind. No one should ever be punished for what he didn't choose to do - without prejudice to locking him away in psychward on the grounds that he poses danger. I just don't believe that victims should ever be allowed to "heal" by exaggerating the perpetrator's actual fault or making him look more evil than he really is. That's no healing, that's another trauma. Facts need to be stuck to.

Very well said Chev. I might add though that protection of the victim and rehabilitation sort of go hand in hand, you can't rehabilitate someone by allowing them to continue with their past ways that's hardly rehabilitating that's ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.

I agree that in SOME cases people have mental illnesses that render them not criminally responsible for their heinous actions, but I also firmly believe that there are a lot of rat faced bastards out there who use that line as an excuse for stuff that they knew full well was wrong and they did it anyway, counting on our society's pathetic, weak kneed inability to make a firm decision and actually hold people accountable for the evil they do.

In this case, and in similar ones, I really don't care what state of mind the fellow was in when he did it. He needs to be removed from the society of decent people permanently, and 4 years isn't even close to that. It makes me ill.

Four years? What would he have got for raping an adult woman, a rap over the fingers?? Heck, we're talking about a four year old girl, and his own daughter to boot - this means the gravest imaginable misuse of trust.

I find it hard to believe an "insanity" defence in this case. He has set up a Web camera and invited others to watch over the net; this makes his crime deliberate and premeditated, and with an economic incentive. That is not an act of a mentally unstable person acting on his impulses. He is not insane, unless we accept that all criminals are insane to some degree.

Four years? What would he have got for raping an adult woman, a rap over the fingers??

Yeah, rape sentences have been a joke as of late. However, Poland's recent criminal code amendments have upped the penalty for violent sex crimes. Now plain rape is 2-12 years, by 2+ perpetrators is 3-15 each, also "exceptional cruelty" makes it 5-15. In fact, in the latter case, it doesn't have to be full rape. While sexual coercion (below rape) is 0.5-8 years normally, it's still 5-15 in case of exceptional cruelty.

Unfortunately, forcing someone into prostitution is 1-10 years, which means that if you force someone to prostitute himself but you don't actually rape the person, you get less than for rape. But they got their digits almost right this time.

I don't know how much they hand out in Canada in a typical case, but I suppose here it would be about the same for a first-time offender. And I don't think insanity is necessarily true in his case. In fact, I find it doubtful, although there's not enough data to say.

First of all according to the article, it's less than 3 years. The article says the man has already served 14 months in prison, and he has been sentenced to serve another 20 on top of what he already served. By my math, that's 34 months, which is actually less than 3 years. While I do not know of an identical case here in the US, it is my opinion that he would have received far more here than he did in Canada.

I think this is the time he will serve before being eligible for parole. I don't know the practise in Canada but in Denmark a prisoner would typically serve two thirds of the full sentence before being released on parole.

First of all according to the article, it's less than 3 years. The article says the man has already served 14 months in prison, and he has been sentenced to serve another 20 on top of what he already served. By my math, that's 34 months, which is actually less than 3 years. While I do not know of an identical case here in the US, it is my opinion that he would have received far more here than he did in Canada.

I just noticed AFI's post.

Aldeth, what you probably don't know is that, in Canada, time spent in prison prior to being found guilty is counted as double. So the 14 months that he already spent in prison is actually considered to be 28 months; add the other 20 months gives 48 (i.e. 4 years).

I'm not really sure why the double credit - maybe it's an attempt to speed trials up, or maybe it has someting to do with "innocent until proven guilty". Beren could shed more light on this, I'm sure.

There's at least three prongs to it. One is the presumption of innocence. If the accused obtains a not guilty verdict, then it becomes in effect a punishment undeserved.

The second prong is that its dead time. If you're convicted, you can at least try to spend your time doing rehabilitative programming and the like. There's no opportunity for that during custody pending sentence.

The third prong is that time spent in custody is deemed to involve a heightened sense of apprehension relative to time sentenced. In prison, its more or less settled that you did it and that you know what to expect. Time in custody, a person can fairly be expected to have a greater sense of apprehension, his future, providing for his family, and so on.

Thanks, Beren.

The only one that doesn't make much sense to me is the first you mention:

If the accused obtains a not guilty verdict, then it becomes in effect a punishment undeserved.

If the accused gets a 'not guilty' verdict, then getting double credit for time served prior to the verdict is pretty much irrelevant, since he/she isn't going to jail afterward anyway. "Time served" or "double credit for time served" doesn't make any difference in that case. Some sort of other compensation would make more sense to me.

If the accused gets a 'not guilty' verdict, then getting double credit for time served prior to the verdict is pretty much irrelevant, since he/she isn't going to jail afterward anyway. The point, I believe, is that the double credit for time served prior to conviction is meant to serve as a deterrent to overly lengthy trials. If the prosecutor takes too long in the trial, the criminals are not going to get a sufficient punishment for their crimes. Since the prosecutors, under this system, have a vested interest in providing a speedy trial, it means that the innocent (or at least the ones that are found not guilty) will also be held for as short a period as humanly possible during their trials.