<< You appear to think touching up young girls is just fine... >>

That goes beyond your normal polarised statements Poirot, into territory that you ABSOLUTELY KNOW is not true.

Shame on you.

All right Ludwig,

WHAT I MEANT was that you appear to think it's all right that Rolf Harris touched up girls.

I apologise if it came out otherwise.

Although....as Pericles has mentioned:

"At which point it is equally reasonable to ask why, then, have you spent so much time and energy in defence of someone who did?"

Ludwig,

Pedophilia is indeed a very serious charge, people can go to jail for a very long time for such actions, etc. You rightly say, and I agree, when accusations of this kind are leveled they have to be dealt with, with extreme caution. I believe in this case Harris was treated correctly as far as possible, given he is a high profile individual. I can not accept the lines of argument that says, others are doing the same thing and getting away with it, or some other crime is just as bad and people got away with that. Those lines of argument are irrelevant to the matter at hand and no court rightly will accept that kind of defense.
You did say; << It is indeed quite fascinating how our values and perspectives change over time, and how they vary in different societies and cultures around the world.>> That is true, but what is relevant here is what applies at this time, and in this society. On that criteria alone Harris has been found guilty of very serious offences and has received a substantial penalty (I note the authorities in Britain are not going to contest that penalty, with the view of extending it).
I believe we are a better society, although a more painful society, today because we can own up to the facts that such disgusting people as Harris exist today and have in the past, and we can now deal with them appropriately but painfully, something we just could not bring ourselves to do previously. Not that society condoned pedophilia in those days, it simply tried to hide it, the Catholic Church is a prime example of that fact.
I can not defend what you have said, and you have come across on this as a defender of Harris's action, and by default the actions of pedophiles per-se, and that has got you a fair amount of condemnation from others, including me.
con't

con't
You may have only wanted to "liven" the debate with your posts, and you have achieved that, but in doing so you present yourself extremely badly.
I attended Catholic school in the 1950's and 60's and was caned and belted repeatedly by nuns and brothers, something that they certainly would not get away with today. but that's another subject altogether.

Thanks Poirot.

I don’t see my position so much as defending Harris. It is more a case trying to put it in context.

I started out in the same position as you when the news broke and when the jury brought down its verdict. We diverged after reading the judge’s sentencing remarks. You saw his comments as being totally good and proper, while I saw a whole series of potentially disturbing things, including a couple that just rang very loud alarm bells for me.

For example:

Nine months for Count 1, which was a first offence, is just outrageous.

Six months for Count 2 – the simple squeezing of a girls buttock, goes beyond outrageous into the realms of preposterousness.

And the nature of his relationship with ‘C’

Then what is one supposed to make of the prison time for half the charges being concurrent, and hence amounting to no penalty… and then the prison sentence being effectively halved, as he is only required to spend 50% of it in jail… which effectively means that he is being penalised for the equivalent of only 3 of the 12 charges against him?

Ultimately I think that his sentence is reasonable, as everyone else seems to. But we have arrived at that view in quite different ways.

As I have said: exploring all the aspects of this case which could POSSIBLY be interpreted differently or which could POSSIBLY not be as they have been purported to be, is a perfectly good and proper thing to do.

It is really very saddening that I have copped such beating around the head on this thread for doing this.

By way of comparison with the nature of Counts 1 & 2, I think that the mongrel who caned me at primary school in ~1970, should have copped about five years jail time, just for that one action, and about another five or so, because it was clearly standard practice for him to do that, and it is most probable that he did it many times to other innocent kids.

Ludwig, I copped some vile canings at schools as well. The first of them while I was still 4 years old (and not for anything that could validly be considered an offence), if ever these was a person I'd like to have had some one on one time with as an adult it would be that vile critter.

I suspect if my parents had believed that I'd been caned at the time my father would have ended up in jail, they got confirmation of of the caning via other means many years later. At the time though teachers were allowed to cane, there did not appear to be any safeguards around that process to keep the fruit loops restrained. Society has learned a bit from those kind of abuses that far to many of us suffered from as children and teachers no longer have the power to inflict physical punishment on children. At the time it was legal and to an extent socially accepted so there is no legal recourse against those who used it as an opportunity to abuse.

As has been pointed out Harris actions were not legal nor generally socially acceptable and something can be done about it.

Not sure how much I want to bother debating the claims you keep making anymore, you continue to base what you are posting here on an apparnt belief that what Harris did was not all that bad which is not a view others of us share. There does not appear to be a shared understanding of childhood development.

The concept of a first offence having some bearing in the consequences in Harrris case seems like a nonsence, he kept on abusing children for many years after. First offence makes some sense as a wakeup call for someone who appears to have only offended once, shows some remorse and is dealt with quickly, it has no valid meaning for a long term offender.

R0bert