It’s horrifying that anyone can walk free from a Scottish court after being convicted of a serious .
Readers will be rightly outraged that one serial teenage offender has escaped with a community payback order – despite committing a spate of attacks.
The boy, who was 15 at the time of his crimes and is now 17, cannot be named for legal reasons.
The ludicrously lenient nature of his sentence suggests the justice system is also spending far too much time worrying about his welfare in other ways.
It’s just a shame his victims are not getting a similar level of attention and understanding.
One of the girls attacked by this predator is now too scared to go out and has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and PTSD. She is only 17.
Yet for some reason, society appears to have prioritised the needs of the person who did this to her.
Too little consideration has been given to the wellbeing of the victim – as well as the toxic message such a pathetic sentence sends out about the seriousness of these types of crimes.
Courts must, of course, give due weight to the age of a criminal when it comes to sentencing. But this case suggests the balance is being weighted in completely the wrong direction.
This so-called justice seems indifferent to the suffering of the victims and obsessed with the potential consequences for the guilty.
