Actions of a panicked Government leave children to protect themselves

ON Tuesday the simple phrase, “I didn’t know she was a 14-year-old at the time” saw a 26-year-old man escape a potential life sentence.

Actions of a panicked Government leave children to protect themselves

The significance of these words would not have been lost on him or his legal team. He was fighting charges he had raped and threatened to kill a teenage girl.

Normally ignorance is a weak defence and would be laughed out of court if elsewhere a defendant had argued: “Honestly, judge I didn’t know I had drank too much before driving.”

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