What Walsh did in regard to the acknowledgement of Humphries in his book and the subsequent interview with Matt Cooper was well beyond the pale. A person in the public eye shouldnāt be commenting on an ongoing case of this nature like that, not least because it could prejudice public opinion.
But the character reference is a method of giving a fuller picture of the perpetrator based on the experience of the character referee, and every perpetrator has a right under the law to have such.
āFeelingsā is demanding that the rule of law be thrown out in favour of reactionary, headstrong demands to shoot the perpetrator or imprison them for life, both of which have been broadcast over the national airwaves this week.
You realize youāre talking to someone who believes that a 1.5 year served sentence is OK for a child sex offender, but when two people go to a hotel room drunk off their heads and have sex and one of them has regrets afterwards, the other should be locked up for far longer for rape.
Imprisonment of life, harsh as it is, is a better way to safeguard children from known convicted child sex offenders than giving them a 1.5 year sentence, given we know such offenders are very likely to re offend.
Do those writing the character references have the full picture of what took place or do they find out after they have written the reference and as it unfolds in court etc? Did Walsh and Cusack know the extent of the grooming that took place and the 16 fucking thousand text messages? ā¦ If they still want to write a reference after that to get a beast a more lenient sentence then that speaks volumesā¦ As I said before, helping the person after they have been sentenced is noble, but influencing to get a beast a lesser sentence if in knowledge of the fuller facts is fucked up.
If your problem with character references is that it could reduce a sentence, you should be campaigning for all mitigating factors such as pleading guilt and absence of a criminal record to be disallowed, because these things help to reduce a sentence.
I see you were on Twitter the other night saying Joe Brolly was ācleaning houseā.
Brolly was making exactly the same points as Iāve been making for the last couple of weeks, in fact he went further than Iāve gone.
Impact statements shouldnāt really come into play for someone that meticulously groomed a vulnerable child over a number of years as theyāve shown their character quite clearlyā¦
