I’m a few days late with this one. I had a very social weekend NOT spent on the PS2, which meant I also took the time to read the weekend paper rather than winning a second Champions League Cup with FC Schalke 04. Front page of the Weekend Australian: The Killer Story We Could Not Publish Until Now. Wow, gotta read that. And then, to a certain extent, I wish I hadn’t.

Stories regarding child deaths at the hands of their parents seem to be a dime a dozen these days. Where saturation often leads to desensitisation, this seems to be having the opposite effect on me. This story is fourteen years old but under NSW law it was an “offence for media outlets to publish the name of a dead child who had been the victim of a crime, no matter what the circumstances.” Let’s face it, without a name it just becomes a story about your cousin’s bother-in-law’s girlfriend’s best friend’s sister, twice removed. Hopefully you’ve read the story (link provided) and are not wondering what my problem is. Or maybe you are.

The couple who savagely beat this child to death are up for parole. Fourteen years in jail for killing a little boy who would be twenty by now and embarking on the amazing (and amazingly bizarre) journey that is adulthood. Fourteen years, the difference in age between the child and one of the perpetrators. Fourteen years is all this child’s life was worth after his would-be father placed a phone book on his head and smacked it repeatedly with a hammer. Still wondering why I have a problem?

Yes, I have a huge problem with adults who beat up on little kids. You don’t fuck with kids. EVER.

Yes, I have a problem with anyone who resorts to violence to resolve a situation.

Yes, I think people of a troubled socio-economic standing and/or with a history of ausue/violence should have to apply for a license to breed.

But most of all, I have a problem with a system that would prevent us, the general public, from knowing that this happened. When it happened. I can appreciate that every effort must be made to shield a child from further stress post crime, but what are you protecting when the child is dead? Or rather, who are you protecting? No-one except the killers and a few ineffective government employees. Thankfully, the NSW Parliament saw fit to amend the relevant laws, albeit in limited circumstances.

Still, fourteen years just doesn’t seem enough, does it?

Sometimes you hear stories that defy imagination, defy all logic and common sense, that you assume that they must be made up. There are times that the law is so flawed, so fucked up… in post-industrial democratic societies like the United States these miscarriages of justices no longer occur. Things like this aren’t allowed to happen, are they? Unfortunately, they do. Which brings us to the tragic case of Genarlow Wilson. What has been allowed to happen to this young man is truly a crime.

At the age of seventeen, Genarlow Wilson had his entire life ahead of him. Honour student, Home-Coming King and football star for his high school team. He was being recruited by all the leading colleges to join their football program. Then, on the day he was due to sit his SAT’s, his life changed forever. He was arrested. In Douglas County, he was accused of inappropriate sexual acts at a News Year’s Eve party. A jury acquitted him of the allegation of rape but convicted him of Aggravated Child Molestation for a voluntary act of oral sex with another teenager. He was 17, and she was 15.

Imagine the scene. Genarlow Wilson and his friends checked into a hotel/motel for New Years. Some girls, some bourbon and a little marijuana. One of the young men turned on a video camera.

On tape, cops saw a 15-year-old girl, a 10th-grader, performing oral sex on a partygoer and, after finishing with him, turning and performing the act on Genarlow. She was the instigator, according to her mother’s testimony. Problem was, the girl was a year under the age of consent. Local prosecutors called the act aggravated child molestation, following the letter and not the spirit of the law, which was designed to prosecute pedophiles. A week later, on the first day of the second semester of his senior year, the police went to the school and arrested the boys. Wilson was charged with four felonies and taken from the building in handcuffs. Not long before, he’d been in the newspaper for being all-conference in football. Now, he was on the front page, branded a rapist and child molester. (more…)