A FATHER’S CRIME
“BEHAVED LIKE A BEAST”
THREE YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT
Having pleaded guilty in the Magistrate's Court to a charge of incest, a labourer named Phillip Scorringe appeared before His Honour Air. Justice Alpers for sentence in the Supreme Court yesterday. The prisoner was represented by Mr. S. A. Wiren, who remarked that the crime was one which appeared to be quite inexplicable. The prisoner was forty-six years of age, had resided in New Zealand all his life, and so far had had a clean record. He married when he was only nineteen years of age, and had had a family of nine children, of whom the girl in the case was the sixth. ‘‘He has been in every respect a model father,” said Mr. Wiren, ‘‘and has brought his children up as well as can be expected from a man in his position.” The prisoner, continued counsel, had expressed his very sincere contrition to his family for having been the cause of the breaking up of his home. Further, he had made a frank admission of his guilt to the police. "I.think your counsel has said for you everything that could conceivably be said in vour favour,” His Honour told the prisoner. ‘‘lt is very terrible that a man who has had a large family of children, and who is said to have behaved well to his children, should in middle life have been seized by this horrible sexual perversion, and have behaved like a beast. If you had lived in a sterner age the cat-of-nine-tails would have been administered to you with some vigour. Fortunately you do not live in such times, and I personally think that punishment of that kind brutalises a man, rather than gives him any chance of recovering himself. You must be kept apart from society for a time. . I will have to sentence you to imprisonment, with hard labour, and I hope, for your sake, that the labour imposed upon you will be as hard as possible, so that you may purge your system of some of the filth which now runs within it.”
His Honour sentenced the prisoner to imprisonment, with hard labour, for a term of three years.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19261126.2.133
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Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 53, 26 November 1926, Page 13
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367A FATHER’S CRIME Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 53, 26 November 1926, Page 13
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