Was Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip be­ing too easy with a con­vict­ed rapist, dis­count­ing ten years, a whop­ping one-third off the 30-year jail sen­tence im­posed on him by the court? Fur­ther, in ad­di­tion to hav­ing his over­all sen­tence for rape re­duced, the con­vict­ed rapist is al­so the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of hav­ing an­oth­er 21 years re­ceived for as­so­ci­at­ed charges run con­cur­rent­ly with his ma­jor jail sen­tence. The rapist al­so es­caped the usu­al pun­ish­ment for such of­fences, that is be­ing giv­en strokes with the birch for his bru­tal­i­sa­tion of the woman.

Those re­act­ing to what is be­ing per­ceived to be a fair­ly light sen­tence for a par­tic­u­lar­ly das­tard­ly crime have made the point of the con­science­less bru­tal­i­ty the rapist, on­ly 19 at the time of the in­ci­dent, per­pe­trat­ed against an in­no­cent woman mind­ing her busi­ness in what she con­sid­ered the safe­ty of her home. Com­men­ta­tors have al­so not­ed that, ac­cord­ing to the judge's own state­ment, the par­tic­u­lar sex­u­al as­sault was not the on­ly in­ci­dent in which the con­vict­ed man is said to have been in­volved. But notwith­stand­ing the ob­vi­ous de­spi­ca­ble na­ture of the act, re­peat­ed eight times on the woman with­out con­cern for her hu­man­i­ty, there will be those who would be feel­ing that 20 years with hard labour is still a stiff sen­tence. Those so in­clined would be­lieve in the ca­pac­i­ty of man to for­give and al­ways hold out hope for re­demp­tion of the crim­i­nal.

Jus­tice Holdip made his de­ci­sion to re­duce the sen­tence re­port­ed­ly on the ba­sis that the con­vict­ed man, Aaron Hen­drick­son, con­fessed to the court, sav­ing the vic­tim the trau­ma of hav­ing to go in­to court to tes­ti­fy. Recog­nised by Jus­tice Holdip him­self, this kind of bru­tal in­hu­man at­tack against women is very preva­lent to­day, as it was yes­ter­day. The re­al­i­ty is that there con­tin­ue to be large num­bers of men in this so­ci­ety who be­lieve women are there to be con­trolled and vi­o­lat­ed. And they be­lieve from that po­si­tion it is their right so to do. Those who feel the judge was be­ing un­nec­es­sar­i­ly le­nient with some­one with such a rep­u­ta­tion must be­lieve that by be­ing "soft" on the con­vict­ed man he was send­ing the wrong sig­nal to those who would of­fend the phys­i­cal and men­tal hu­man­i­ty of women and so de­serve some­thing ap­proach­ing the suf­fer­ing that all women who are raped ex­pe­ri­ence.

Al­most need­less to say that the law, the State, the ju­di­cia­ry and oth­er arms of the Gov­ern­ment can­not ex­act re­venge in the same man­ner that it is hand­ed down by crim­i­nals. There would be those who say that in com­mit­ting such a crime such peo­ple have for­feit­ed their hu­man­i­ty. One prac­ti­cal way of han­dling such a dilem­ma may have well been for the judge to im­pose the full sen­tence and leave it up to the prison au­thor­i­ties to de­cide, based on the con­vict­ed man's con­duct in jail, whether or not he de­serves a re­duc­tion of his sen­tence.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, there are strong and very rel­e­vant points and con­cerns on both sides. It has not been the tra­di­tion in this ju­ris­dic­tion for judges to pub­licly ar­tic­u­late rea­sons to jus­ti­fy sen­tences hand­ed down. The stonewall of si­lence be­hind ju­di­cial pro­pri­etary has of­ten been tak­en for a num­ber of things: ar­ro­gance-the be­lief that judges can sen­tence with­out hav­ing to ex­plain them­selves; per­son­al bias in a mat­ter; the need for sav­ing the ju­di­cia­ry from hav­ing to de­scend in­to the are­na of pub­lic de­bate. The point is though that every so of­ten there are clear in­con­sis­ten­cies be­tween sen­tences and judges. At min­i­mum, there is need for es­tab­lish­ment of a clear-cut pol­i­cy on sen­tenc­ing and con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to how such a pol­i­cy is trans­par­ent­ly ap­plied to achieve jus­tice.