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Crown Office to appeal sentence of Sean Hogg who was spared jail for raping 13-year-old girl
Fury as man, 21, who raped 13-year-old in park walks free as he is deemed too YOUNG to be sent to prison and is only made to carry out 270 hours of unpaid work in 'insult' to his victim
Sean Hogg (top), 21, was found guilty of pouncing on the vulnerable teenager at Dalkeith Country Park (bottom right) in Midlothian, Scotland. But judge Lord Lake said the age of the rapist, who was 17 at the time of the attack, had to be taken into account when passing sentence. It means Hogg, of Hamilton, Lanarkshire, will only have to carry out 270 hours of unpaid work. Prosecutors were yesterday weighing up whether to challenge the sentence if it is considered 'unduly lenient'. Opposition leaders described it as 'an insult' to the teenage victim. Sandy Brindley, chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, said: 'This is an extremely serious case and we are shocked this perpetrator has not received a custodial sentence. At Hogg's sentencing at the High Court in Glasgow (bottom left) yesterday, Lord Lake said that he had considered guidelines on offenders under the age of 25.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11935437/Fury-man-21-raped-13-year-old-park-walks-free-young-sent-prison.html
Sean Hogg (top), 21, was found guilty of pouncing on the vulnerable teenager at Dalkeith Country Park (bottom right) in Midlothian, Scotland. But judge Lord Lake said the age of the rapist, who was 17 at the time of the attack, had to be taken into account when passing sentence. It means Hogg, of Hamilton, Lanarkshire, will only have to carry out 270 hours of unpaid work. Prosecutors were yesterday weighing up whether to challenge the sentence if it is considered 'unduly lenient'. Opposition leaders described it as 'an insult' to the teenage victim. Sandy Brindley, chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, said: 'This is an extremely serious case and we are shocked this perpetrator has not received a custodial sentence. At Hogg's sentencing at the High Court in Glasgow (bottom left) yesterday, Lord Lake said that he had considered guidelines on offenders under the age of 25.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11935437/Fury-man-21-raped-13-year-old-park-walks-free-young-sent-prison.html
Comments
He most certainly was not "too young" to be sent to prison. However, the age does need to be taken into account. I expect that the Defence claimed that various acts were consensual, whereas the young age of the victim makes that legally very difficult. But age of the offender is important.
We haven't seen all the facts. Nevertheless, on the available facts, I am surprised that no prison sentence was imposed.
It seems a very lenient sentence, particularly as the court described the victim as a vulnerable 13 year old, although it provided no further details, and that a number of attacks took place over a period of 3 or 4 months.
Prosecutors were yesterday weighing up whether to challenge the sentence for being 'unduly lenient'.
Court papers state that Hogg attacked the girl on various occasions between March and June 2018. They also say he assaulted the teenager by threatening her and pulling down her clothing.
He then seized her by the wrists and forced her to commit a sex act before going on to rape the youngster.
'This young girl will be scarred for life by this horrendous attack. Her and her family now have to suffer the indignity of this criminal only being handed down a community payback order, many of which are often written off by this SNP Government.
“I have been working in the high court for around 20 years and I have never seen anybody avoid prison for rape until yesterday.”
https://news.stv.tv/west-central/why-was-man-sean-hogg-who-raped-teenage-girl-in-dalkeith-handed-community-service-order
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/humza-yousaf-wades-into-child-rapist-sentencing-row-after-jk-rowling-slams-snp-s-scotland/ar-AA19tccw?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=7e2a477952554e4989c44fad9cc9ecd4&ei=121
The case of Sean Hogg (pictured), 21, sparked anger from people including JK Rowling this month when he was spared a prison sentence despite being found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11977545/Rapist-young-sent-prison-Scotland-fathered-two-children-awaited-trial.html
I can see why younger offenders should be treated less harshly than older ones. I can see why rehabilitation should be a higher priority for younger offenders.
But it is important to put that into perspective. Punishment is just as important as rehabilitation-if not more so.
I don't believe every rapist should go to prison. But I do believe the vast majority should. Similarly, if that Judge said that an older offender would have got 4-5 years inside. I can quite see why the "individualistic approach" might result in a prison sentence of less than 4 years. But I cannot for the life of me understand how 4-5 years becomes no jail time at all.
His age might well result in a smaller penalty than otherwise. But not that small.
The only circumstance that I could see that an offender should escape jail, is maybe in the case of statutory rape, where the offender and the victim are of a similar age, and there was consent.
Although this may be a particularly pointless topic for discussion, when you consider current charging rates, you would have to be a particularly unlucky rapist to even get charged, let alone end up in court.
There are a few more exceptions. I've dealt with cases where the 15-yr-old has had 100 sexual Partners, and the 40-yr-old none. In addition, the sad fact is that the majority of paedophiles were abused themselves as kids. But the starting point must always be prison.
But, as you rightly say, the focus needs to be on how to get more people who commit sexual offences charged, sentenced and jailed. And, for all the talk, and the political point-scoring, no-one seems to actually have any suggestions as to how to achieve that. Just why the SNP or Conservatives or Labour are "soft" on crime.
You would think it could be as simple as the powers that be sitting around a table and coming up with solutions in respect of what is going wrong.
Something has to be going radically wrong.
If a senior police officer wrote a book entitled "How to get a charge on one and a half percent of reported rapes", it would never be published.
This is made so much worse when you consider that a very small percentage of rape victims even report the crime.
This may be as low as one in six.
So they charge one and a half percent of the one in six.
Any UK rapist will probably consider themselves fairly safe from arrest.
How could anyone be satisfied with these stats.
The below is very grim reading.
Statistics about rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse
https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/victim-raped-age-13-speaks-124035716.html
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/man-avoided-jail-raping-13-120800175.html