Sex With Children 'A Foolish Lapse

How did a County Court judge sentencing an offender for sexual penetration with a child under 16 come to describe the offending as ‘a foolish lapse’? Does it mean that the courts do not take sex offences seriously or that judges are out of step with community attitudes? No. This article traces the history of the use of ‘foolish lapse’ in Victorian sentencing decisions and the consequent obligation on the judge in question to consider whether the offending in this instance constituted such a ‘lapse’. More broadly, the paper analyses the disjunction between the legal and popular meanings of ‘foolish lapse’ and the anxiety that that disjunction has created in media coverage of the case. It cautions that judges need to consider the increasing role of public opinion in sentencing policy and the potential effects of their choice of words in sentencing

Criminology · Obligation · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Sociology · Child Abuse and Trauma · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Social Psychology