Breaking News

[sherrardk]

http://news.sky.com/story/1250859/max-clifford-found-guilty-of-sex-charges

[sandyRoe]

I suppose people with influence in the world of entertainment will have to put away the casting couch.

[naomi24]

Indeed they will - and that's not a bad thing. I just feel that to be judged by today's standards on what might have been acceptable years ago is harsh. I can't help thinking that if the great train robbers had committed a similar crime today their sentences would have been very different. Times change - but Operation Yewtree doesn't appear to acknowledge that.

[Ann]

Totally agree with you Naomi.

[naomi24]

Thank you Ann.

[jno]

you can't be charged with committing a crime if it wasn't a crime when you did it. And it looks as if his sentence won't be much out of line with anything he'd have got 20 years ago. So in effect he's had all that time to live as a respectable and influential citizen and make money, which mightn't have happened had he been charged at the time.

I'm shedding no tears over him; he isn't the one who's been abused.

[sandyRoe]

Totally agree with you, JNO

[shaneystar2]

He was a regular customer in a shop where I worked in South London ..He was always very charming and polite to us staff.
But his past has obviously come back to haunt him .And as the old saying goes ....you should never judge a book by it's cover .

[hc4361]

What would the punishment have been if the earliest victim complained to the police at the time and he was found guilty?

Would that have stopped his subsequent criminal behaviour?

[Brenden]

Nobody arranges elaborate sex parties and doesn't attend themselves - he will probably have a very light sentence or no custodial sentence at all due to his illness, but I should think he is very highly embarrassed that the world now knows he has a little todger.

[viv38]

^ LOL.

[ladybirder]

Surely forcing/coercing anybody to perform oral sex on you was a crime then and is now. If is wasn't/isn't it should be.

[hc4361]

Now it's the offence of rape, ladybirder. Then it was indecent assault.

[ladybirder]

He was convicted of 8 charges of indecent assault, found not guilty of 2 more, the jury could not decide on one further count, so not charged with rape then?

[whiskeryron]

Why fill our prisons & have the public expense of feeding them as well ? Would it not be better if the punishment for all sexual crimes committed by males was statuary castration ?

[hc4361]

Castration doesn't work with all rapists, Ron. I would argue that for most it is not an irrepressible sexual urge that causes them to offend, it is the desire to dominate, intimidate and degrade the victim, often there is a rage behind it.
If the rapist is castrated it won't stop him using tools to carry out acts of degradation.