Canada Judge Openly Sentences Based on Race in Statutory Rape Case

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨GhostedIC@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨conservative@lemmy.world⁩

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/judge-knocks-year-off-metis-cree-womans-sentence-for-sexually-assaulting-15-year-old

“On the surface, this approach may look like that would be giving Indigenous women special treatment in the sentencing process. I am fine with that — and I would say it is about time,” Wolf said.”

This for statutory rape and CP.

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BCsven@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Title is misleading, article doesnt mention race. It is based on her cultural identity and the overwhelming stats that indigenous people have grown up with terrible learned abuse from residential schools, and other factors

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- tempest@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  This newspaper is a foreign owned mouth piece for the right wing in country that is openly calling for us to lose our sovereignty.
  
  No Canadian who actually believes in Canada should read this rag.
  
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running_ragged@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
“We know that as a Métis-Cree woman that Ms. Dodding has a greater chance of being physically, violently, emotionally and spiritually victimized. The information I have confirms that she has experienced incredible trauma in her life, which is not her fault,” Judge Alexander Wolf wrote in a recent decision out of Port Alberni.

“It concludes that Ms. Dodding’s personal Indigenous sentencing factors, as well as all the other sentencing considerations in general, support (a) four-year sentence. However, I believe the sentence does not adequately address concerns particular to her circumstances as an Indigenous, or in this case, Métis-Cree, woman. In my view, after having considered all the circumstances of this case, I conclude that a three-year sentence of jail is appropriate.”

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- GhostedIC@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  You’ve copy pasted rhe article as if it should convince me this judge isn’t just racist?
  
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  - running_ragged@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yes, because your clickbait version of the summary made it sound like it was about race and not looking specifically at this person’s history and trauma and accounting for that in the sentencing.
    
    When a broken society victimizes individuals, and they grow up broken and perpetuate that, punishing them harder doesn’t fix anything.
    
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rowinxavier@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
To be clear, the current system has a similar bias against non-white people. The rate of conviction is higher for non-white people, the sentences are harsher, and defence is less likely to be adequate. This is an attempt to balance things out a tiny bit and to hopefully not completely ruin the whole life of a person due to a series of bad choices. She should have known better, she has no justification for this behaviour, and what she did was wrong.

She will serve a 3 year sentence rather than a 4 year sentence. That is still 75% of the time and still has all the other associated harms such as being denied freedom, difficulty reintegrating with society, and loss of social bonds and status. She is not getting off without punishment, she is not getting off with a slap on the wrist, she is being imprisoned and will be marked as an abuser.

If the argument was “No abuser should get off with so little time in prison” or “Prison time is I effective at preventing SA” then we could have a conversation, but in this case it is all about the fact that a factor like cultural and social background resulted in a reduction in sentence when it normally results in a higher likelihood of sentencing and long prison time.

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