UTIKU ASSAULT CASE.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 November 1921, Page 7

UTIKU ASSAULT CASE.

SENTENCE OF SEVEN YEARS. TEN STROKES FROM THE ■•OAT.” Thomas Gill, who was convicted of criminal assault on a married woman at Utiku, was sentenced by Mr. Justice Reed at Wanganui on Saturday morning. His Honor said that the prisoner had been found guilty of a particularly atrocious crime, and it was gratifying to find, even at this late hour, the prisoner had tried t< lo some good to the woman he had grievously wronged. The crime reminded one of the records of atrocities committed by the Germans during the late war. He went to the woman's house, wii’.ch he had visited from time to time a icr husband’s friend. He went there at night, when the woman was alone in the house with two children and her husband was away, and she was absolutely at prisoner’s mercy. Despite her struggles and prayers, he committed a beastly crime on her. Although repentance had come, it was absolutely necessary in the interests of women who are left alone, particularly in isolated districts, to protect them from passions like the prisoner’s, and to show t'hem that they could not interfere with women with impunity. The story told by the woman raised an uneasy suspicion in his Honor’s mind that this was not the first woman that the prisoner had had in this position. He had no right to take that suspicion into consideration, nor did he do so. Th'.* sentence he was about to impose would act as a warning that women were not to be molested. The prisoner was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, and was, in addition, ordered to be flogged with ten strokes of the cat-o’-nine-tails.