SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.
How can good community standards be upheld if an order imposed by an enforcement agency is knowingly and deliberately flouted? One company director with a high profile, now disgraced, and whose company owes thousands of dollars to creditors, has learnt the hard way. He is heading off to jail for one month as punishment for failing to comply with such an order.
For full story see: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10714976&ref=rss
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
“Phil Goff’s political judgment deserted him when he allowed Darren Hughes to be a member of the parliamentary team arguing “politics is a grubby business” for a high-profile earthquake fund-raising debate when he knew the MP was already involved in a behind-the-scenes probe into sexual misconduct allegations…..
“Goff’s inability to apply consistent standards has also left him facing charges of hypocrisy. Unlike the Richard Worth affair, Hughes has not been accused of operating a political casting couch.
“But in Worth’s case, Goff showed no mercy when demanded why John Key did not take his Cabinet minister’s warrants from him the moment he knew he was facing allegations from two women.
“Goff now says he got it wrong and that “people are entitled to be regarded as innocent until they’re proven guilty”.
“It is a pity that the Labour leader did not apply that reasoning in 2009 when he failed to supply any real evidence to back his own allegation that Worth tried to entice the “strikingly beautiful” Labour activist Neelam Choudary with the offer of a job on the Lottery Grants Board. But that was then.”
Source: NZ Herald Opinon Piece by Fran O’Sullivan. Saturday 26 March. “It’s all about the country – not the sleazy politics.” For full article see: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10714939
A banned company director with a chequered business past and who has threatened many New Zealanders with court action, is shortly to face a battle in court over his business activities. [Read more…]
Lawyers representing the Securities Commission will go to court today to try and prevent Bernard Terence Whimp, a convicted burglar, former bankrupt and current banned company director, taking control of any shares through his latest “low-ball offers”. [Read more…]