Last week I blogged about the horrific video of a woman on a tram being racist to fellow passengers on a tram. The video has been viewed over eleven million times on YouTube and has caused worldwide revulsion.
The woman at the centre of the video, Emma West, was arrested last week and has been remanded in custody since “for her own safety”. She has yet to be sentenced but if that is what the judge is thinking now, what will happen when she is sentenced? Will she be given a custodial sentence, again for her own safety? It seems likely.
Then yesterday a story broke about Rhea Page: Girl Gang Freed .
So let me get this right. You can shout “kill the white slag”, batter a woman black and blue all over her body and head and left pretty much leave her for dead on the pavement and get a suspended sentence “because as a Muslim you are not used to the effects of alcohol”. The gang weren’t even charged with racial aggravation, but just with actual bodily harm.
Shout and scream racially offensive language, get locked up. Beat somebody up whilst being racially abusive and get let off?
How is that?
Rhea is still suffering panic attacks and flashbacks, is still having counselling and as a result has had to give up her job looking after people with autism.
Yet yesterday afternoon one of the accused posted on Twitter “Happy, Happy, Happy. I am so going out. Today was been a great day”.
This is justice? What sort of a world do we live in where this is right?
I have approved the above comment but I almost didn’t. My point is not about being “anti Muslim”. I am do not want my post viewed in that way at all. I lived in Saudi Arabia for six years and had two of my children out there. I have friends who are Muslims and not for one second is this post to be viewed as me being anti Muslim or racist.
The point of my post is the disparity in sentencing on two cases that appear to be racially motivated. Not the reason they girl gang were let off.
The fact that they were not locked up, their religion, for me, has nothing to do with it.
Sorry, I can’t buy into this thinly veiled racially motivated rhetoric.
‘How To Destroy Islam…’? Give me a break. Islam doesn’t need to be destroyed. Ignorance does. Yours being a case in point.
Justice would appear to be a lottery, these days. It’s all dependant on which Judge is hearing your case on any given day.
There is a clear disparity between these cases. Whether the gang of girls were racially motivated, which would appear to have been the case, is not the issue here. The girls physically attacked another person. The lady on the train did not. That, to my mind, is the issue here. They physically attacked another person, did her actual bodily harm, and were using racially inflammatory language whilst carrying out the attack – all whilst drunk. In my eyes that should warrant a custodial sentence.
To say they are not used to being drunk is, frankly, utterly ridiculous. Does that mean that any yong person, when they come of age, is exempt from being punitively punished because they have no prior experience of being intoxicated? Of course not……add in the fact that the girls were Muslim, and make that some kind of mitigating factor in their favour, and you’re on a very, very, slippery slope.
Would the judgement have been more severe had the girls been British? We have no way of knowing – but I can make an educated guess, as can everyone else.
The lady on the train didn’t actually physically assault anyone. Yet she is in custody ‘for her own protection’? Why should she need to be protected? Are the Muslim girls offered ‘protection’? Is the justice system now saying that it’s okay to attack others if you’re Muslim and haven’t been drunk before? Will those girls feel like they’ve done nothing wrong and can now almost do as they please?
Let’s also not get started on the whole issue of legal representation being made readily available for minorities. During my time as a prison officer I saw only too clearly how the system is abused.
There are a lot of really serious questions raised by these 2 cases. From where I sit, and it’s been this way for quite some time now, the tail would appear to be wagging the dog.