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.

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.”