A REFORM WANTED.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 60, 12 March 1914, Page 5

A REFORM WANTED.

[To Thu Editor Stratford Post. I Sir, —One cannot help being alarmed |by the number of assaults on women, jand especially young female children, jwhich- are constantly being recorded jin our newspapers. In Wellington recently I noticed that at the Supreme Court there were four separate cases of indecent assault on children; the ages of these little girl victims (one was just out of babyhood) were" 4 } years, 8 years, 11 years, and 13 years. Their assailants were convicted and sent to gaol; but they will all be free men in about six years' time; one of the men had been convicted before for the same offence, his second victim being 'the little girl aged 4 \ years; and this man will be-free again!- In a splendid country like ours, populated by a superior class of people, and noted for its advanced legislation, the increase in the number of these assaults is a bad feature and a reflection on our laws for the protection of womanhood, and future motherhood. Without a doubt our laws for their protection are obsolete when compared with the laws of other countries; even the English law is in advance of ours. In certain States in America, Australia, and South Africa (and it is also recorded in the laws of Moses) the punishment for indecent assault on females is the death penalty. He of Nazareth also seems to have inferred that the penalty for offending children was death. If the severity of the laws in the above countries is causing the scum of their population | to drift to Now Zealand it is plainly lour duty to place our laws for these cases on a par with the laws of those countries by urging our legislators to make the death penalty the punishment for these horrible, inhuman and unnatural assaults which were commented oji in our Parliament a few years back. It is said that children assaulted are physically, and in some cases'mentally j ruined for life, apart from their innocence being blighted, and perhaps left with a loathsome disease. Then there are many cases of assault not reported, as thoi victims' parents, through family pride, shrink from publicity and police court proceedings. Jn one New Zealand city I am told that a' Mission Sister who keeps a day school for little children had to. get the police to order away low fellows who came round with lollies when the school came out. Long sentences harden prisoners; flogging is a dead letter, owing to "health reasons." Abolish the death sentenco for murder, if you wish, as it was abolished for robbery; but those crimes are not on the same plane as brutal attacks by these human ghouls on defenceless children of the poorer classes, who are lured away with a few lollies. Womanhood-was unsafe in New South Wales until capital punishment was brought in. During the South African war capital punishment prevailed. I Juries* on these cases would perform la real benefit if they recommended capital punishment to be placed on the book, because a brutal ' crime deserves brutal punishment. When visiting America recently I enquired if there were many of these assaults recorded, and I was informed that such cases were rare. Should the Government refuse to consent to the death penalty for such criminals ! they should at least be declared habi- ! tual criminals.—l am, etc., j, A NEW ZEALANDEK. ; Wellington, March 9, 1914. |j