SPCS

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

Lawmakers urged to appeal ‘pathetic sentence’ imposed by Judge MacKenzie

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Lawmakers have been urged to appeal the “pathetic” sentence handed down by Judge Alan MacKenzie on Friday in the Palmerston North High Court to a man who killed his former partner’s toddler because she wouldn’t listen to him. She suffered horrific injuries after Sean James Donnelly, 23, a former security guard, swung her around by her ankles as punishment, before letting the wee girl go after he became dizzy.

He initially denied any wrong-doing, claiming Cash had suffered the injuries after his own four-year-old daughter had hit her with a doll. As the Judge noted, Donnelly chose not to treat the toddler’s sickening injuries until a friend arrived at his house about 90 minutes after the incident.

Donnelly was handed a seven-year jail sentence on Friday after earlier pleading guilty to three-year-old Cash McKinnon’s manslaughter. But as judge Alan MacKenzie did not impose a statutory non-parole period, Donnelly could be released back into the community in as little as 18 months. In summing up the judge noted that Donnelly did not intend to kill the girl and had yet to face up to the totality of what he had done.

Sensible Sentencing Trust boss Garth McVicar last night hit out at the sentence imposed, saying it was abhorrent and needed to be reviewed. He said the sentence failed to send a strong message to the community that horrendous offences of child abuse would not be tolerated.

“What is the message in this pathetic sentence that children don’t matter, that we as a society accept and tolerate this sort of behaviour? With a stroke of the pen our judiciary has single-handedly underwritten and endorsed New Zealand’s horrendous child abuse statistics. The high level of child abuse in New Zealand is already eyed with disdain by the rest of the world. We are a pathetic little country that does not treasure its children and simply allows them to be treated as cannon fodder,” McVicar said.

Full story by Neil Reid – Stuff News: 26 March 2011 http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4813808/Lawmakers-urged-to-appeal-pathetic-sentence

BusinessDay Probe into John Hotchin using Companies Office Records and ‘surveillance’

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Convicted financier John Hotchin, former director of Nathans Finance, which collapsed in 2007 owing debenture investors $174.5m, pleaded guilty in the High Court last week to three charges brought by the Securities Commission:  making untrue statements in Nathan’s investment documents. He was sentenced to 11 months home detention and BusinessDay (The Dominion Post 9 March) reports that it understood from what was stated in court at sentencing, that it was to be served at a rented property.

Documentation readily accessible on-line to the New Zealand public has often been used by investigative business reporters to probe and raise serious questions concerning suspected and actual white collar criminal activity. They often appear to see their roles to be that of “public watch dogs”, effectively promoting and raising awareness of the need for better community standards in the area of public accountability in business, reparation and sentencing etc. They most certainly do serve the “public good” and thec best of them receive journalism awards. The public needs to recognise the vital role they play in a free and democtatic society like ours in New Zealand. [Read more…]

Firms hit by rise in fraud – NZ Herald

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Workplace fraud totalling millions of dollars is hitting firms at a time when they need every cent to climb out of the recession. According to a survey by accountancy firm KPMG, New Zealand’s top companies have been hit hard during the global financial crisis with the average reported fraud doubling in two years. Stephen Bell, KPMG’s national head of forensic practice, said the average cost of fraud at companies that took part in its survey grew from $1.9 million in 2008 to $3.8 million last year. He said the total level of fraud increased from $385 million (2008) to $441 million (2010)…

Grace Haden [who] is a director at Auckland private investigation firm Verisure Investigations says… “Companies must be being ripped off left, right and centre – but New Zealand is portrayed as being so corruption-free that people don’t believe it happens here.”

[Comment:  The Society (SPCS) believes that the myth that the NZ business and work-place environment is corruption-free must be well and truly exposed as a complete falsehood. The injurious nature of white-collar crime such as fraud etc. to the “public good” must be regularly presented so that the rationale for promoting good community standards can be understood as of real benefit to the spiritual and material well-being of society in general].

Report by Steve Hart, a freelance journalist. Tuesday Mar 1, 2011

For full story see: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10709506

Sex and Violence Overlap

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UNITED STATES. Scientists have discovered a link between aggressive behaviour and sexual arousal. Sex and violence are controlled by two overlapping brain circuits that appear to act as a “mental switch” designed to make the two behaviours mutually exclusive, researchers found.

However, the intermingling of the two sets of neurons creates a delicate balance in which too many or too few connections between neighbouring brain cells could blur the boundaries. [Read more…]

Whimp’s threats to sue – appalling and should be ignored

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A banned company director has recently targeted a number of New Zealanders with threats of legal proceedings being issued against them if they don’t follow his demands – an action described by a promiment business leader today as appalling. [Read more…]