It’s women who need protection, not barbaric criminals

ICAnnoT begin to imagine the horror of Jill Barclay’s last moments. Dragged off the street while walking home from the pub, raped and brutally injured, then left alone in the grounds of an empty property near her Aberdeen home.

Just when she must have thought it was over her assailant, 23-year-old Rhys Bennett, returned with a can of petrol and set her on fire.

This week, Bennett was jailed for the rape and murder of the 47-year-old mother of two. Judge Lord Arthurson said that the attack involved ‘extreme, sustained and frankly feral violence’, and described Bennett’s crimes as ‘unimaginably wicked and medieval in their barbarity’.

So why then, did Bennett receive a lighter minimum sentence of 24 years, reduced from at least 29?

As Bennett is under 25, and entered an early guilty plea, he has had five years shaved off his sentence in one of the most outrageous examples of Scotland’s increasingly soft touch justice system ever seen.

Sentencing guidelines for criminals under the age of 25, developed by the Scottish Sentencing Council and imposed by the Scottish Government in January last year, state that judges must take into account the ‘immaturity’ of younger offenders.

But the more we see these guidelines play out in the court, the more I cannot help but notice one unifying factor: the majority of these young perpetrators are men. And the majority of their victims are female.

Earlier this year rapist Sean Hogg, now 21, was ruled ‘too young to send to prison’ and instead handed a community payback order, a sentence that the Crown office, after considerable outcry, is now appealing. Hogg had attacked a 13-year-old girl in 2018, when he was 17.

In March, 19-year-old Lochlann Harris was given four years for raping a 15-year-old girl and sexually assaulting another young woman, with a judge telling him that had he been older, then the sentence would have been substantially higher.

And on Thursday, 20-year-old Darren Morrison received just two years after running over pregnant Julie Walsh, 40, who suffered a life-changing brain injury, had both legs amputated, was blinded in one eye and lost her unborn child as a result of the collision. It is a stark, chilling roll call. And so I can’t help but ask if this is yet another example of the Scottish Government failing the women of Scotland.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Last year’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would make it easier for biological males to access women’s spaces, made thousands of women and girls feel unsafe.

THEn there was the uproar over transgender double rapist Isla Bryson, being sent originally to a women’s prison (now, thankfully, in a male jail).

The victims of rape and sexual assault are more likely to be women and girls. And the perpetrators are more likely to be young men. This should not be a surprise to anyone. And yet forcing judges to take the age of those under 25 into consideration during sentencing seems to me to be penalising female victims, while pandering to their male aggressors.

There is a grim irony in the fact that Bennett will be 47 by the time he finishes his minimum sentence, the same age that Jill was when he killed her. That he might have the chance to live out the rest of his life, through these soft touch justice laws, having stolen hers away, is unspeakably cruel.