MENACE TO SOCIETY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 895, 12 February 1930, Page 13

MENACE TO SOCIETY

MUSIC TEACHER GIVEN SEVEN YEARS

But for a suspicion that Sydney Herbert Norman,, aged 46, who committed unnatural offences and indecent assault on two little boys and a girl, music pupils, might be mentally unbalanced, he would have been ordered a flogging by Mr. Justice Herdman today. The judge made sure “that society will not be menaced by him for some years” by sentencing him to seven years’ hard labour. 9 Mr. Noble, counsel for the prisoner, said the circumstances were so appalling that he believed Norman to be insane. The man had been wounded and gassed at the war and counsel, could only conclude this had weakened his self-control. The judfere described the crimes as abominable and he hoped it would be a long time before a jury in that Court would bo forced to listen to a story of degradation and obscenity as was told at the trial. The parents of the children, never suspecting evil, had entrusted the children to prisoner’s care, the judge said, but he had abused that trust and had succeeded in getting one of the boys to imitate him in an infamous practice.