Tag: sorry’:
More than 1,000 sex offenders including child rapists escape justice ‘just by saying sorry’, shocking figures reveal
SHOCKING figures reveal that at least 1,000 sex offenders avoided getting a criminal record over the past two years due to apologising to their victims.
Cops handed out “community resolutions” in 1,064 such cases in 2021 and 2022, several of those involved child rape.
The use of out-of-court sanctions for sexual assault have doubled in just 12 months (stock image)[/caption]
Following the murder of Sarah Everard by Met Police officer Wayne Couzens, promises were made to take violence against women and girls seriously but the use of out-of-court sanctions for sexual assault have doubled in just 12 months.
Home Office figures show the number of times the penalty was used in all sexual offences increased by 53 per cent, the Daily Mail reports.
A community resolution, which involves an offender admitting responsibility, is meant to be used by police for low-level crimes.
This could mean an agreement to pay compensation, a rehabilitation activity or a “restorative justice” meeting involving the victim and offender for an apology.
The figures show the sanction was used to settle 643 sex crimes, which included rapes, sexual assaults, grooming and flashing offences, in the 12 months to March 2022, a rise of 53 per cent from the 421 dealt with in the year before.
The number of times it was used to resolve sexual assault cases by the police in this way has doubled from 178 in 2021 to 371 in 2022.
Lincolnshire Police handed out the penalty in four child rape cases last year, one of which involved a girl under 13.
The sanction was used after two rapes of girls under 13 by officers in Nottinghamshire.
Police in Norfolk also used it in the case of the rape of a young boy in 2020.
Some of the sexual offences could have occurred between consenting underage children where, while the incident is recorded as a crime, cops believe it would be too severe to take the teenager to court for their punishment.
The figures, though, also reveal that community resolutions are being handed out for adult offences, including sexual exploitation of a child.
Police bosses say the penalty is usually used in relation to sexual offences only if the victim consents for the crime to be handled that way.
However, the chief executive of Rape Crisis England and Wales Jayne Bulter said: “We do not believe that restorative justice or community resolutions are appropriate remedies for sex offences, or other forms of violence against women and girls.
“Justice solutions such as these minimise the severity of sexual violence and its impact on survivors and fail to acknowledge the inherent power dynamics at play in these types of crimes.”
She added: “It’s important to understand that even so-called ‘low-level’ forms of sexual violence can be extremely traumatising.
“Whilst perpetrators are being given second chances, victims and survivors are left to deal with the impacts of their experiences.”
Commander Alison Heydari of the National Police Chiefs’ Council though said community resolutions were “typically applied where schoolchildren share inappropriate images or in cases of sex between underage children”.
She added: “We have made it clear that out-of-court disposals are not to be used in serious cases.
“Officers take into consideration all circumstances of a case, with victims’ wishes at the centre of our decision-making.
“Community resolutions and other out-of-court disposals are only used in a very small number of sexual offence cases.”
The recent report into Scotland Yard which was overseen by Baroness Casey painted a disturbing picture of the force and how it deals with sexual offences.
Rape cases are being dropped because samples are kept in “over-stuffed dilapidated or broken fridges and freezers”.
One officer told the review that rape detection rates were so low “you may as well say it is legal in London”.
Couzens exposed himself to two frightened attendants at a McDonald’s drive-through in Kent, just three days before he snatched Sarah from a South London street in March 2021.
Scotland Yard were given a description of him, his car registration number and bank card details but cops failed to investigate until he was arrested for the abduction and murder of Sarah.
A woman flashed by Couzens said: “If he had been held accountable when we had reported the crime, we could have saved Sarah.”
Couzens is serving a whole life sentence for the murder of Sarah.
Sarah Everard was snatched off a London street and murdered by Wayne Couzens[/caption]
Bob Metcalfe, The Man Who Discovered Network Effects, Isn’t Sorry
Sorry Trekkies: Bad news about the ‘real-life Planet Vulcan’
Scientists Katherine Laliotis and Jennifer Burt didn’t set out to anger Trekkies with their new study of exoplanets in other solar systems.
It just so happens the data pointed them and the rest of their research team to a logical — most logical — conclusion, they said.
Five years ago, a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society reported the existence of a planet orbiting a star about 16 light-years away. The star was 40 Eridani. That might not be a familiar name to everyone, but fans of the original Star Trek series know it as the host star of Spock’s fictional planet, Vulcan.
The trouble is, after a reanalysis, the new team found the discovery was likely a mistake. That’s right: They couldn’t just let Spock live long and prosper in a real world. They had to go and wipe out his home planet from existence.
“We apologize for that,” Burt told Mashable. “We’ll find other cool planets.”
Their research, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, is intended to support NASA‘s future Habitable Worlds Observatory, a mission that would use a space telescope to image Earth-like planets around relatively close stars. The project, decades in the making, aims to study these balmy worlds for signs of life. It’s slated to launch sometime in the 2040s.
Credit: CBS via Getty Images
The group pored over a huge public data release to look at exoplanets in the southern hemisphere. Their goal was to vet some of the best bets for the future telescope. In the process, though, they found a few previously documented exoplanets were likely errors.
One of those was 40 Eri b, the official name the original authors gave to Planet Vulcan. The new paper formally refutes it.
Planet Vulcan ‘discovered’ in 2018
In 2018, the original authors described the exoplanet as the closest super-Earth orbiting another sun-like star. It was said to be twice the size of Earth with a 42-day year within the star’s habitable zone. A super-Earth is a type of planet that is up to 10 times more massive than our blue marble but is lighter than ice giants like Neptune and Uranus.
Any rocky planet within this other Milky Way system would have a triple sunset because 40 Eridani actually includes three stars that circle each other.
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“We’ll find other cool planets.”
Credit: University of Florida
Laliotis, Burt, and the rest of the new team used radial velocity to check solar systems for viable candidates. It’s a method of exoplanet detection that looks for subtle changes in the frequency of starlight as seen from Earth. The gravitational tug of an orbiting planet is thought to cause little wobbles in the light measurements.
Their analysis found features indicative of stellar activity, not evidence of an exoplanet.
“They will look like planetary signals, but it’s actually not a planet,” said Laliotis, who was a NASA intern during the research and is now working on her doctorate at The Ohio State University. “It’s something like little spots on the surface of the star.”
It’s not known whether the original researchers who published the exoplanet discovery agree with the new analysis. Mashable’s attempts to reach the first two authors, affiliated with the University of Florida, weren’t successful.
Search for Earth-like exoplanet continues
Since word has spread of the new results, the scientists involved have gotten somewhat razzed by fans, including family members. Laliotis said her father proceeded to give her a lesson in Vulcanian “history,” explaining that the planet was headed for destruction, but that wasn’t supposed to happen for a couple more centuries.
Burt, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said her mother refused to read the article.
“My mom was a Trekkie,” she said. “She maintained this is why I’m an astronomer. She said, ‘I watched a lot of ‘Star Trek’ when I was pregnant with you, and so, clearly, that came through.'”
Credit: CBS via Getty Images
Despite their findings, the search for Spock’s home can continue, Laliotis said. Though they may not have a starship Enterprise to seek it out, more sensitive instruments and detection methods in the near future may make it possible to find another smaller exoplanet in that star system — perhaps one that is more Earth-like — to rename Vulcan.
After all, if 40 Eri b’s detection were correct, it would be much too hot for life as we know it.
“There is still hope that there might be a Vulcan there,” she said. “This actually is maybe promising that there might be a better Vulcan there.”
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VW Says Sorry For Child Carjacking Fiasco, Makes Safety Service Free
“Volkswagen must and will do better for everyone that trusts our brand and for the law enforcement officials tasked with protecting us. In addition to a full investigation of what went wrong and actions taken to address the failure, we want to make it right for the future. Today, we are setting a new standard for customer peace of mind. As of June 1, we will make these connected vehicle emergency services free for five years as one significant step we can take as a commitment to our owners and their families,” Zaluzec said in a statement sent to Ars.
Most MY2020 or newer VWs can use connected services, apart from MY2020 Passats. From June, owners can sign up for five years of free Car-Net Safe and Secure, which uses the vehicle’s onboard modem to connect to the emergency services via the car’s SOS button. In gasoline-powered VWs, there is also an anti-theft alert. VW says it will make Car-Net Remote Access free for five years as well. This lets owners interact with their car via a mobile app and can lock and unlock the doors, honk the horn and flash the lights, and, if fitted, remote-start the vehicle.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.