This sentence doesn’t fit Humphries’s crime

WHEN it comes to sentencing, there will always be a debate around the appropriateness of the length of sentence handed down in all kinds of cases. Indeed, in a country where a husband receives only seven years for killing his wife – as was the case with Eamonn Lillis – and where a guilty plea generally mitigates in favour of the accused, there may well be some people who view Tom Humphries’s two-and-ahalf-year jail sentence as largely acceptable within the broader context.

Yet how could such a short sentence possibly be appropriate in this case? For this was a terrible crime, perpetrated on a child and over a prolonged period of time. More than that, it was carried out deliberately and repeatedly by a highly intelligent and self-aware man, who knew exactly what he was doing. A man who understood the illegality and depravity of his actions. A man who was in a position of care and responsibility, a position that he then used to gain the trust of the child that he abused.

Fundamentally therefore, this paltry sentence sends entirely the wrong message.

On top of that, however, and further exacerbating the situation, we have a judge who talks about having ‘sympathy’ for Tom Humphries as if the notion that a public fall from grace is somehow part of the punishment. This is completely misguided. If anything, the greater the success of an individual, the higher they are held in public esteem, the less they are due sympathy when they commit a crime. Not for them the excuse of a lack of education or the struggle with addiction.

So sympathy is the last thing that anyone should feel for Tom Humphries as he begins his short sentence in prison.

For the only person who deserves sympathy is his innocent victim, a young woman who is now presumably trying to put this nightmare behind her and get on with her life – if she can. She is the only person who matters in this sordid tale of exploitation and abuse.

In the light of yesterday’s sentencing and Judge Karen O’Connor’s comments, it is difficult not to conclude, once again, that the courts are a more forgiving place for the privileged and well-connected.