Is that the going price for violence against children?
In a society that has more than its fair share of violence against children, 9 months home detention seems a pretty inconsequential sentence for a guy who has pled guilty to abusing a child; keeping in mind that the broken leg was only one part of the offending. It inevitably goes without saying that the broken leg was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” as it were.
Dean Ross Gray evidently twisted the four-year old’s leg violently enough to fracture his lower femur. Quite apart from the obvious physical pain inflicted at the time and the ongoing psychological effects of the abuse, the child was forced to endure two surgeries to rectify the damage which included the insertion and later modification of metal pins in his leg.
The NZ Herald reports:
According to the summary of facts, the victim was 3 years old when the abuse against him began in June 2017.
Around that time, the child was left in Gray’s care.
One day he suffered bruising to the right side of his face. When Gray’s co-offender came home, he told her the child had fallen down the stairs.
Neither adult sought medical attention for the injury.
Gray would regularly verbally abuse and swear at the child, and discipline him “harshly”, the summary said.”
In June 2018, Gray was caring for the boy and another child in Waikanae when he became angry with the victim.
He grabbed the child by the left leg and used his hand to twist the leg violently, causing a spiral fracture in the victim’s lower femur.
Gray did not call an ambulance, and instead called the other adult, asking her to come to the house.
When she arrived at the house she called an ambulance, and the child was taken to hospital.
Understandably, the child “became very intimidated of the defendant Gray and would cower when he entered the room” – hardly surprising.
“A victim impact statement from the boy’s grandparents said he walked with a limp for a long time after the injury, was “traumatised” by the subsequent operation to remove the pins from his leg, and was often kept awake by the pain from his wound.
Neither Gray nor the other adult fed the victim regularly after the broken leg incident, the summary said.
In the Wellington District Court, Judge Stephen Harrop said he would have given Gray a prison sentence if it weren’t for mitigating factors such as his own difficult upbringing.
In 15 or 16 years, how likely is it that we’ll be reading the same story with today’s victim as the perpetrator and the judge saying the same thing about his upbringing?
Until the cycle of abuse is broken, we will continue to have to deal with cases like this and before we leap onto the harsher penalties bandwagon, we would do well to consider how jailing the offender in this and many other similar cases, is going to solve anything.
Having children is not a right. It is a responsibility and an all-consuming one. By the time we’re jailing offenders, it’s way too late. The damage is done. Some of us quite simply shouldn’t have children.
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