No Christine, I don't misunderstand you. I acknowledge that you think that she committed a crime. I only disagree with your approach to dealing with her crime, and with your opinion regarding the relative severity of what she did.
My point is that she was initially given the type of lenient treatment you mentioned, more or less. Probation, counseling, and so on. I think this was fair and just, and I would not say that she should have been imprisoned at the outset. However, once she accepted the terms of her probation (not to see the child again etc. on pain of going to prison), she was bound by her word. This was in a sense a contract between the state and the criminal, "this" in exchange for "that." These were protections that the state put in place to protect the child. To all evidence, when apprehended the second time, she was not only trying to see him, she was planning on running away with him, severely compounding the crime. Our system of law, while certainly not perfect, rightly places emphasis upon issues of intent and premeditation. What sort of life was she going to coax him into? A 14-year-old in hiding?
As to your contention (in #9914) that she could marry him in two years with his parents' permission, and that this somehow mitigates the crime, that's sort of like saying that a bigamist's crime is mitigated by the fact that his first wife goes and gets a divorce. Does that somehow lessen the crime he perpetrated on his "second" wife?? Is her marrying him at sixteen going to somehow undercut the damage she has already done to him, which is the reason it was a crime in the first place? Or simply increase it? |
