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Saturday, October 16, 2010

Kirsty Paterson Has Sentence Reduced

To update a case we've been following, Kirsty Paterson has had her prison sentence removed by judges. She was convicted of the "crime" of having consensual sex with her father.

Both she and Stephen Paterson, 44, admitted committing incest after their sexual relationship was discovered and a sheriff jailed them for 16 months each.

Outrageous. This is the 21st century, and people are still getting assigned prison time for consensual sex.

But judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh quashed the daughter's prison sentence and placed her on probation for two years with a condition that she get counselling as required.

Why does someone need "therapy" for this?

The judge said it should be "immediately recognised" that incest was a serious offence and where committed by an adult on a child the adult offender could expect a prison sentence. But he added: "The situation of consensual intercourse between consanguineous adults is a different one."

Lord Carloway said the court required to mark its disapproval of Paterson's criminal conduct but ultimately had to consider whether sending her to jail was the appropriate method of dealing with her.

Of course loving sex is different than child molestation or rape. Carloway should have taken a stand against the absurdity of the law that punishes the former.

Paterson's father separately attempted to appeal against his sentence late, but it was refused.

Future generations are going to look back and wonder how these authorities could have been so hateful. Consenting adults have a right to sex, love and marriage.
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1 comment:

  1. The lesson to be learned from this is simple: don't get caught.

    ReplyDelete

To prevent spam, comments will have to be approved, so your comment may not appear for several hours. Feedback is welcome, including disagreement. I only delete/reject/mark as spam: spam, vulgar or hateful attacks, repeated spouting of bigotry from the same person that does not add to the discussion, and the like. I will not reject comments based on disagreement, but if you don't think consenting adults should be free to love each other, then I do not consent to have you repeatedly spout hate on my blog without adding anything to the discourse.

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