Posts by B Jones
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Seeing as it's Friday, I'd like to let Rihanna have her say:
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There's a fair bit of high culture which has problematic messages embedded in it, but it passes because it's respectable. Heathcliff is one of literature's great tragic heroes - he stabs his wife in the neck and hangs her pet dog. He's a finely drawn abusive partner, and Wuthering Heights is taught in schools. I hope these days teachers mention that side of the story; I don't recall it that way in 1993. The Phantom of the Opera, the great melodrama of the 80s and early 90s - the climax of the plot is when Christine returns to the Phantom to save her fiance, who he had threatened to kill. Nobody batted an eyelid over feeding teenage girls that sort of material, which not only portrays relationship violence, it romanticises it. Yet Guns N Roses and so on were looked down upon. Class matters.
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Not breaking a law and not getting caught aren't quite the same thing :-)
The Clean Slate Act says nothing in the act allows you to answer no criminal convictions if another country asks, and that it's ok to disclose to other countries' law enforcement.
I would expect more international data sharing in years to come. The Coroner reporting into Edward Livingstone's murder-suicide pointed out that if the police here had known of his Australian convictions, they could have better responded to his breach of protection orders. There was also a teenager killed by her mum's boyfriend, who had no idea of his serious criminal history in Australia. It seems likely to me that data matching becomes a lot more common.
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I think Clean Slate is fine for non violent offences, and even some minor assaults. I'm staggered it can apply to someone who broke his partner's back. There are people who have died because their partner's or family member's violent history wasn't disclosed.
Clean Slate doesn't help international travel - that's other countries' laws in play.
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Clean slate only works when you haven't been imprisoned. That does, unbelievably, seem to apply to Tony Veitch because of that fact. Doesn't mean it's right.
It's not the state's job to forgive anyone - it's their job to either punish someone or stop punishing someone. Forgiveness is a totally different concept.
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to Bart Janssen,
you are flicking between individual shunning and then back to "how the public sees..." that's a tricky ground to tread
It is. I'm a lawyer by training, if not by profession, and it's a really important distinction for me, the difference between how a state addresses a crime, and how individuals respond to it. Boycotts are a legitimate response to non-illegal social offending - look how effective Giovanni Tiso was with respect to Willie and JT's advertisers, compared with a BSA complaint. On the other hand, there's a longstanding Christian tradition of forgiveness that runs parallel to the legal system, too. It's up to individuals to decide where they sit along that spectrum, but I have some views about whether they're right to have made that choice.
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Given the way domestic violence works, the only person who's in a position to know and speak about whether or not Veitch has changed his ways is his current partner, whoever they may be. Innocent till proven guilty applies to the courts; it doesn't apply to assuming someone has redeemed their character in the absence of any evidence either way.
Look, I understand we'd all like to be reasonable, forgiving, accepting people, but the reasons people are giving Chris Brown a free pass are exactly the same as the reasons people have given Tony Veitch a free pass, apart from the racial double standard issue. It was a while ago, you can't hold a grudge forever, give a guy a chance to turn his life around and be a good role model, he makes lots of people happy. We don't do this for fraudsters. We don't do this for thieves. We don't do this for child abusers. But many of us do for domestic violence, even if we're selective about it. And then we wonder why it's so hard to get the message through that it's not OK.
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Bart, I agree with respect to the justice system. But we're talking about social not legal sanctions, and those are applied by individuals not the state.
Tony Veitch's public rehabilitation isn't a danger to public safety as far as I'm aware, but it is a statement of how the public sees domestic violence - something to be forgotten and moved on from, regardless of genuine contrition.
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to Sue,
I think neither Veitch or Osbourne were not charged in court, we not convicted, there is a difference between a person with a record and one who does not.
Veitch was charged, pleaded guilty, convicted and sentenced to nine months' supervision.
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And whatever we feel about people, it is not just to punish them in perpetuity
I'm going to have to argue about that one as well. Sometimes it is just, especially when we're talking about soft punishments like shunning rather than imprisonment. How would we feel about Rolf Harris touring here in ten years' time, assuming he's still alive? Who'd like that clever economist Clayton Weatherston working for them once he's done his time? There are plenty of examples where forgive and forget once they've done their time isn't likely to happen, where a person damages their own reputation beyond repair through their actions. Is it that non-lethal domestic violence doesn't meet that standard? Should it?