Should the fact that a man is a prominent member of a religious group known for its oddball beliefs be enough to keep him out of prison when he is convicted of paedophile crimes?
Michael Porter, a 38 year-old member of the doomsday cult, admitted 24 cases of assault on children, including a baby less than two years old. A prominent member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses community in his area and used his position of trust to prey on children of church members. And yet the Judge, swayed by Porter’s pleas that he was a person of strong faith who had been tempted and been to weak to resist, and by a further plea that he had undergone therapy, decided he should not go to prison.
Porter also tried to claim his paedophile tendencies were a result of his childhood but his own sister exposed this as a lie.
It is unbelievable that we still fall for this grovelling to God act that so many Christians caught out in malfeasance try to pull. Rational people know there is no such thing as evil, there is no horned beast with cloven hooves constantly putting temptation in our way. We all know what actions are wrong and that some things are wronger than others. And abusing children, very young children who are not in a position to resist, is one of the very worst of all crimes. So forget shifting blame, Porter and those like him know what they are doing is wrong and unacceptable in any society and yet they choose to do it.
The very nature of the crime shows the perpetrators to be arrogant and manipulative by nature, they must believe they have a right to do what they do and they believe they can convince others that they are deserving of special consideration. In other words they are the most amoral of people.
When someone “of faith” commits such a crime then, would not a more harsh punishment be appropriate. Though hypocrisy in itself is not a crime, it can compound other offences.
Similarly it is not acceptable for a judge to show leniency because a criminal has “undergone therapy.” The evidence tat therapy actually helps towards rehabilitation is very shaky and too often psychologists are convinced of the success of their treatment simply because the patient is savvy enough to tell them what they want to hear. The therapy can be made part of the prison sentence but should not be an alternative to it.
In the case of both faith and therapy I am very suspicious of the rapid results achieved, especially when the criminal is a member of some fringe faith. If you remember Ted Haggard, the American fundamentalist preacher who was caught with his penis in a rent boy’s mouth; he was pronounced “totally heterosexual again” after a few weeks of prayer and “therapy.”
In the case of Haggard as with Porter, their respective churches “stood by” them. That’s fine, its up to the members of those congregations what they do. But the law must not be swayed by talk of miracle cures and the hand of God. And if people who commit crimes subsequently try to hide behind superstition and hocus pocus it shows those people are actually a long way from accepting what they have is wrong, let alone experiencing remorse. Put simply they are grabbing at anything that looks like a Get Out Of Jail card.
Ted Haggard had not committed a sexual crime but to preach homophobic sermons and ask for money to "further the church's mission" while conducting himself in that was was certainly fraudulent.
If we are to maintain any credible claim to be a civilised society and not a superstitious rabble sliding backwards towards medieval ignorance then we must add a new commandment to our moral compass: SAME RULES APPLY regradless of race, faith, class, age or sexual preference.