Alexander: Sentences for attacking pregnant teen flawed

The sentences imposed on three young thugs yesterday who violently attacked a pregnant 16-year-old with the intention of making her miscarry show a huge amount of what is wrong with the New Zealand justice system, United Future law and order spokesman Marc Alexander said today.

The three youths, all under 18 and members of the New Zealand Warriors development league squad, were convicted yesterday of charges surrounding the vicious August 2003 attack on a 16 year-old schoolgirl.

Two received 18-month sentences and the third, 15 months, and all three were given leave to apply for home detention.

"The sentences are not long enough, and there should be no option of home detention for those who have committed violent or sexual crimes.

"This crime was horrific, and yet we are supposed to feel sorry for them, and send them home to mum and dad.

"Their actions were despicable, calculated and extraordinarily violent towards a young woman in the most vulnerable physical condition.

"The fact is that they belong in prison, not at home, and for considerably longer than 18 and 15 months. Not one of them is likely to serve a year for a numbingly sub-human attack.

"Again, one has to ask when we will get serious about violent crime in this country," Mr Alexander said.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>