"He should be shot and pissed on"

Somethin's happenin' here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a judge with a gavel over there, tellin' me that freeing a child rapist is fair. I think it's time to stop child molesters, what's that sound, everybody look at injustice goin' round.

Disgusting news from the Halifax Herald:

A judge has sentenced a 60-year-old Lunenburg County man to a year of house arrest for molesting a six-year-old girl who called him Grampy.

Judge Anne Crawford also gave Russell Frank Hirtle of Robinsons Corner two years of probation.

The child’s mother, who let out a long, piercing scream and hid behind a reporter when she spotted Mr. Hirtle entering the courthouse, wasn’t buying that argument.

"He molested my baby and they want to say that’s OK," said the woman, who cannot be named because her daughter’s identity is banned from publication.

"There is no justice."

She had an alternative suggestion for sentencing: "He should be shot and p----d on."
The little girl’s mother found Mr. Hirtle undoing her daughter’s pants last July in the chicken coop behind his home, where they had gone to check for eggs.

"I heard a blood-curdling cry from my daughter and I went running," said the 39-year-old woman.

When the distraught mom asked what was going on, Mr. Hirtle confessed.

"He indicated, ‘I’m raping her,’ " Mr. Scovil said Wednesday.

The mother, who had long thought of Mr. Hirtle as a family friend even though they were not related, immediately called police.

The small, grey-haired mill worker who has a Grade 8 education told police he had been drinking heavily and couldn’t remember what happened.

"He indicated he’d never known the child to lie before," Mr. Scovil said.

"He sometimes has blackouts when drinking," Mr. Whynot said.

Mr. Hirtle pleaded guilty to the sexual assault, which included an incident from the summer of 2004 in which he remembered touching the girl’s groin through her clothing.

The charge is extremely serious, said Mr. Scovil. And if the mother hadn’t interrupted Mr. Hirtle, it could have been "even more serious."

A presentence report indicates Mr. Hirtle "consumes copious amounts of homemade rum," as much as a gallon of the hooch every week.

The Crown wanted the judge to order Mr. Hirtle to abstain from alcohol. But the defence argued his client may be an alcoholic and such an order would make breaching the conditional sentence almost inevitable.

"You’ve done things when you were drunk that you probably wouldn’t have done when you’re sober," said Judge Crawford, ordering Mr. Hirtle to cut back on his drinking at least enough to prevent future blackouts.

Judicial liberalism is the kiss of death for any society.

-MZ