THIS SAYS TO VICTIMS OF ABUSE: ‘YOU DON’T MATTER, REALLY’
After a week of public outrage at paedophile Tom Humphries’s pathetic sentence, one of our foremost abuse campaigners and human rights lawyers spells out exactly why a travesty like this – and the support for the perpetrator from high-profile figures – ca
INEVER felt as low and as small about myself as when this happened to me,’ said the young woman who has managed to survive the sexual violence that was inflicted on her by Tom Humphries. At the time that he was grooming her for exploitation, and engaging in sexual acts with her, she was in the middle of her teenage years, aged 14 to 17.
Those are the years when a girl may be full of energy, selfdoubt, curiosity, fear, fun and the whole mix of emotions that come with being a teenager. Those are the years when a child – which she was – should be able to trust and depend on wise guidance from all those around her. She was entitled to expect that people of power and influence around her would use that power to protect her and promote her wellbeing.
Tom Humphries was one of those people and he abused his power and her trust. He groomed and exploited her, preparing her and then engaging her in sexual activities which only stopped when he was caught by his own family.
As a result, the child in question, now a young woman, explains how his criminal activities caused her to lose her trust in men, to become physically, emotionally and mentally ill, to lose her educational opportunities, and to lose her childhood due to the activities and the aftermath of dealing with the criminal justice system.
WHAT does our society do to a person who takes away a girl’s childhood in this perverse way? Hopefully our society recognises her need for support in learning to cope with it. And we investigate the crime, prosecute the offender who has broken the laws, convict him and sentence him. To the credit of the system, as well as the victim of the crime, the case was properly investigated and prosecuted. This should serve as comfort to those who wonder about making complaints against powerful, wellconnected people of influence. It is possible to report crimes by these people and have them investigated and prosecuted. To that extent, the case serves as a good precedent.
The sentence handed out – and significantly, the reasoning behind the sentence – has given rise to considerable discussion over the last few days. At the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, we raised our concerns and our disappointments about how light it was and also about the relative weight that the judge seemed to give to the various matters she had to take into account.
Humphries was convicted of two different offences. The first was that of engaging in a sexual act with a child under 17. The maximum sentence for that is five years. He was also convicted of ‘grooming’ the child by inviting her to participate in sexually explicit, obscene or indecent acts. The maximum sentence for that is life. Judge Karen O’Connor imposed a two-and-a half-year term for the sexual acts and a two-year term for the grooming offences, both to run at the same time. She did not impose a post-release supervision order.
Balancing all of the various factors which are relevant in a sentence is never going to be easy, and who would envy the judge who has to do it – weighing up the circumstances of the convicted person in the context of the seriousness of the crime and the harm done to the victim of the crime. The convicted person’s circumstances and a guilty plea have to be taken into account in mitigation and measured against the seriousness of the crime and the harm done to an accused. It’s a tough job and is particularly so in Ireland where judges have a wide discretion as to what they take into account and how they balance various factors.
As an organisation that deals with those harmed by rape and sexual abuse, we find Judge O’Connor’s explanation of how she balanced the various aspects hard to understand.
The sentence imposed for the sexual acts was precisely half of what it could have been. The two years imposed for grooming – where Humphries messed with a young girl’s head and abused his considerable power and trust, for which the sentence could have been much longer – is puzzling. As is the way in which the judge gave her explanation as to how she had come to the judgment.
She recognised the suffering that the young woman was still
enduring, despite being a strong person herself. But much of the reasoning concerned the suffering that Humphries has endured since he was caught and the investigation began. She felt that he had suffered greatly because of the loss of his status and reputation. According to news reports, she said: ‘It would be difficult not to have sympathy for him. That’s not to excuse his behaviour.’
We’re not on a witch-hunt in the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Of course we recognise that harm has happened to Humphries since the criminal investigation began and that his reputation was affected. But we have to wonder how important the place of the victim of the crime is in all this. How important is the loss of her childhood, the loss of her schooling, the illness and harm that she has suffered and continues to suffer? How much does that matter in this case or indeed in sentencing of other sexual offence cases in Ireland? A two-and-a-half-year sentence suggests that maybe it doesn’t matter all that much.
Since the decision on Tuesday, there have been a number of comments on whether the sentence was exceptionally light. It turns out, from the limited information available, that maybe it wasn’t. In a different case, with a different defendant, or a different judge, it might have been higher, but there seem to have been other cases where sentences are fairly similar.
What this points to is that it is really very difficult to predict what the outcome of a case will be. Other countries – including the similar legal systems in England and Wales – have clearer guidelines for judges which assist in more consistent sentencing and in more information for the public and for the victims of crime, to help them understand sentences. In Ireland, even an effort to gather information on every sentence, which began about ten years ago, has been abandoned.
It’s tough bringing a complaint of sexual assault, including rape. It’s hard to go through the justice system with it. One of the ways that we could make it easier is to build victims’ confidence that these crimes, and the harm suffered by the victim, is going to be taken very seriously indeed and reflected in clearly understood, consistent sentencing.
The opaqueness of sentencing also means that we don’t know in this or any other case what weight was given to letters of support submitted by sports writer David Walsh and by former hurler Dónal Óg Cusack.
Many people have condemned them for writing those letters. However, they are part of the normal process of a criminal case. In the balancing exercise that the judge has to do, he or she will recognise that the convicted person is more than just a criminal. These letters of support do that. There is a problem because the letters are presented as a one-sided view of the person and the person making the endorsement can’t be questioned on it. There may be a case that the person should have to come to court and be open to being questioned on their endorsement.
But in our own work at the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, we keep making the point that those who commit sexual violence crimes don’t look like monsters. They’re not aliens. They are often very good at their jobs, committed friends, excellent supports to elderly neighbours, great fun on a night out. But they are serious criminals when they rape someone. What these letters show is that Humphries had aspects of his person and personality that other people admired. This is usual. It also makes the crime that much harder to report.
THE victim has to make the report with the worry that they won’t be believed because the person they are accusing is ‘not that type of person’, a person who would ‘never do that’. The support of other highly respected, intelligent people in this case means we don’t know which of the respectable people in our midst might indeed be capable of carrying out hidden sexual exploitation or grooming and other forms of sexual abuse up to and including rape. We must be ready to believe it can happen. Because it does happen.
Happily, new legislation introduced in 2017 has increased the penalties available for the kind of sexual offences which had a fiveyear maximum penalty when Tom Humphries was committing those crimes. The same legislation has extended the description of the kind of grooming offences carried out in this case.
But sentencing for these crimes remains problematic. Just this week, in response to a question from Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald in the Dáil, Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald, who was responsible for the new legislation when she was Minister for Justice, said: ‘There is also a long history here and elsewhere of a belief that the sentencing does not reflect the seriousness of the crime. I am on record again and again as saying that I do not believe that enough attention has been paid to victims in our legal system and I reiterate that this afternoon.
‘We need a sea change in attitudes to victims across the criminal justice system.’
All of us at Dublin Rape Crisis Centre can only say: ‘Hear, hear.’ ÷Noeline Blackwell is a human rights lawyer and CEO of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.