“AS A CHILD I too was sexually, verbally and physically assaulted. I lived in fear, without confidence and without protection,” wrote the blogger behind the mamahog site, describing how the story of the lenient sentences given to two paedophiles had left her “feeling as angry, confused, and frightened as I was almost every day between the ages of about 5 till 13”.

As ministers, the media and the judiciary sought to place blame over the cases of Craig Sweeney, convicted of sexually abusing a three-year-old, and Alan Webster, who pleaded guilty to raping a baby, she told how only now, many years after her own abuse, she could finally absolve herself from responsibility. “I can finally say, ‘I was a child’,” she wrote.

Elsewhere, bloggers tried — and, for the most part, failed — to make sense of the decision to make Sweeney eligible for parole after only five years and Webster after eight. “When someone’s guilt is so obvious . . . then they should not have reductions in their sentences simply for pleading guilty,” said the septicisle site.

“What does this say about our legal system?” asked Iain Dale. “Surely in cases like this, life should mean just that. If they’re in prison, they can't re-offend. And in the end, it is as simple as that.”

Others saw a system beyond repair. “A system which is capable of co-operating willingly in such utter, utter depravity needs to be smashed into tiny pieces and rebuilt again from the ground up,” said dangerouslysubversivedad.

“The underlying problem is that we haven’t really decided why we put people in jail in the first place,” said miketroll. “There are vague, conflicting ideas of punishment and rehabilitation. But the key concept should be banishment: we lock people up for public safety.”

Some despaired of the press reaction to the cases. “Both men received life sentences, whether they are eligible for parole after five years or eight years respectively,” wrote the septicisle site. “There is no guarantee that they will be released by parole boards, and considering that both were convicted of second serious offences, there is little hope of them being released any time soon.”

mamahog.blogspot.com
septicisle.info
iaindale.blogspot.com
dangerouslysubversivedad
blogspot.com
miketroll.livejournal.com
Blogsnaps

“We called my aunt, who works with the al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza. She was hysterical, and this is a woman who seldom loses her grip. She just spoke of blood and body parts, and how one of the cameramen at the hospital couldn’t hold it together and dropped his camera as he was filming after he heard a bloodied, batterd girl crying out for her father.”

A-mother-from-gaza after Israeli guns shelled a beach where Palestinian children were playing.

a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com

“We all agree that Palestinians are in urgent need of a state they can call their own. I suggest they call it Chaos.”

Atangledweb after Fatah security forces went on a rampage against the Palestinian Hamas-led government

atangledweb.typepad.com

The web’s best “The practices of science and art both involve the single- minded pursuit of those moments of discovery when what one perceives suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Each piece in this exhibition is, in its own way, a record of such a moment,” says Princeton University’s online Art of Science exhibition.

The exhibition includes images and sounds — “produced in the course of research or incorporating tools and concepts from science”.

princeton.edu/~artofsci/
gallery2006

ONLINE MOST READ

1 Beware: the new goths are coming
2 Apologise or we’ll cut your funding, US envoy tells UN
3 The dean of debunking
4 Ministers were told civil wedding would not be legal
5 China’s hi-tech military disaster
6 Audi TT 2.0T (review)
7 I’ve found God, says man who cracked the genome
8 Stone table of royal power lunch found in seat of democracy
9 How Iraq’s ghost of death was cornered
10 Lewd office e-mails to constitute sexual harassment

Times recommends

• Students face big rise in university fees
• Students to rate lecturers online
• Lord heads team to look at raising tuition fees