Talking bollocks

The round-up of Today on the web in Wednesday's Guardian was entitled "Lenient Sentencing" and quoted various comments concerning the sentencing of Craig Sweeney, who abducted and sexually assaulted a three-year-old girl.

Before we go any further, much of the commentary on this case has proceeded as though Sweeney had received only a five-year sentence for his crime. In fact he was sentenced to life imprisonment, and may be considered for parole after five years. His actually being granted parole, given the appalling nature of his crime, must however be considered highly unlikely. To describe this as 'lenient sentencing', as many of the tabloids have, reminds me of the line in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" where Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) has just sentenced Robin Hood (Errol Flynn) to death.

Gisbourne: There are some who might regret the cutting short of a young life such as yours but I...

Robin: You consider the sentence to be extremely lenient. I understand.

However, what I really wanted to comment on was one of the quoted blog posts, from Matters Of Opinion. The quote runs:

I know my comments about castration seem extreme to some people, but if this pervert had been castrated when he first offended then he'd not have subjected another child to his harmful brand of 'child love'.

It doesn't bother me that Serai's comments are 'extreme' (and by the standards of the Sun and the Daily Express they're really not), more that they're completely wrong-headed, shackling together two common misconceptions and showing that they really don't make a right.

The first misconception is that Sweeney's crime was primarily about sexual gratification. Rape, and I think the sexual assualt of a three-year-old can be squeezed into that category here even if a lack of penetration or whatever technically excludes it) - rape is almost always about the exercise of power. I can do this, says the rapist, and you can't stop me. When men rape 80-year-old women, it is unlikely that their hormones carry them into uncontrollable lust, and far more likely that they want to carry out an assault with a convenient and easily-carried weapon. The same applies, I submit, to sexual assaults on very young children. I'm not talking about the "Humbert Humberts" who prey on pre-pubescent teenage girls. There, there usually is a sexual aspect to the offence, and the coercion is as likely to be by psychological pressure as by physical violence. But someone who kidnaps and assaults a three-year-old hasn't decided that she is a hot chick; he's decided that she's someone he can intimidate. And how better to intimidate a small child than by a sexual assault?

I remain convinced that if British courts treated rape in general as a crime of violence which happened to be carried out with a penis, rather than classifying it with sexual offences like indecent exposure, we would have less courtroom intimidation of victims, a better conviction rate, and more robust sentencing.

The other misconception is that castrating someone renders them unable to have sex. It doesn't: while it takes away the ability to ejaculate and thus to have an orgasm, it doesn't usually interfere with the ability to achieve an erection. Presumably, too, the penis retains its sensitivity, so intercourse would still be transiently pleasant if ultimately frustrating. (To the best of my knowledge, the same holds for modern chemical 'castration'.) I recommend a viewing of Farinelli, which I understand to be accurate regarding the fascination which mutilated males and their abilities - and inabilities - held for the inquisitive ladies of the time, and their willingness to satisfy the ladies' - er- curiosity. (As a matter of historical fact, while there were plenty of sexually active castrati, Farinelli does not actually seem to have been one of them, despite his rock-star-like fame.)

So if Sweeney was mainly interested in violent domination, and if castration left him with a penis with which to do his dominating, the fact that he wouldn't have an orgasm at the end of it would not necessarily make the idea of repeating his offence any less appealing. So castrating him would have provided no extra safety for anybody. Safer to lock him up, however pleasingly retributive (to Serai and others) the idea of castrating sex offenders might be.