Rape sentence - Judge must explain his decision

Any society that does not insist that its courts reflect its mores, humanity, its struggle to be human and humane, and its determination to hold those found guilty of the most savage attacks on others to account sows the seeds of its own downfall.

Monday’s decision by Mr Justice Paul Carney, to sentence a man who admitted raping his daughter over 10 years to 12 years in jail but with the last nine suspended and set him free on bail pending an appeal, seems to defy the very idea of justice.

It certainly challenges the idea of offering victims of crime the vindication of knowing that their ordeal means something and the small, the impossibly small comfort of knowing that society, in some symbolic way, shares the deep, deep hurt and outrage caused by the crimes inflicted on them.