A short term act by some rare criminal freak, no matter how repugnant it sounds to the general public, generally has a minor impact on the child compared with the tremendous damage abusive parents routinely cause. This sounds like an elected judge going for easy policitical points.

The most damaging child abusers are parents who abuse their own children. This is regardless of whether the abuse is sexual, psychological, or serious physical abuse. And parental child abuse is by far the most common type of child abuse by adults against children.

The worst cases are where the abuser is the person charged with caring and protecting the child, abuse persists over many years, and the child sees no where safe to turn for help.

Earlier abuse, beginning before the age of 3, or before the age of 5, causes even more damage.

A healthy parent-child relationship is necessary for a healthy childhood.

When judges start sentencing abusive parents accordingly, then I'll be impressed. I'm not going to hold my breath though. There are too many abusive parents and they can vote.

The worst abusers are those who're given the children removed from homes, often on the back of hearsay evidence. Let me put it this way, a single parent trying to bring up 3 kids is forced to work nights to make rent or mortgage payments, buy food, pay the bills.

Probably qualifies for daycare assistance of some kind, but was denied by some moralistic arsehole who doesn't believe in sex outside of marriage (yes - seen it happen) or can't find a daycare that will accept government assistance (because local governments are notoriously slow in paying their bills).

So being forced to leave her kids at home or in the car by themselves gets reported and end up losing them. The kids then end up with abusive foster parents (happens a lot) and that is the worst you can do to a child.

You've ripped them away from their family, and into the home of an abuser that in their eyes has all the authority to do as they please. Obviously they've done something bad in order to be taken and the abusers are punishing them - or at least that's what they end up being conditioned to believe.

Seen it, been disgusted by it and there's absolutely nothing that gets done about it. There's no accountability and the kids end up getting shunted around from family to family. Forget an education, forget a stable upbringing, if child protection officers actually understood that taking a child from a family ought to be the action of last resort perhaps it wouldn't be so bad.

They ignore laws about giving the children choices (like living with friends or relatives), and not a single person receives even a reprimand for failing to check up on foster parents or those that adopt.

Oh I'm sure the job is as nasty as it gets, and I'm sure there are not a few that do give a shit. Unfortunately they don't seem to have a clue how to do their jobs.

> The most damaging child abusers are parents who abuse their own children.

Yes, but a parent can only abuse a few sons/daughters, while in a case like the one reported a pedophile can abuse hundreds. The impact per child might be smaller, but the total combined damage can be enormous.

> You both seem to be seriously suggesting that paedophiles should not be prosecuted because their actions are not as bad as something else. As far as I know there are no good crimes are bad crimes, simply crimes. Break the law and in an ideal world you should pay the price. I, for one am glad for every abuser that gets locked away.

No, I don't think Keith T and Andy Bright are suggesting any such thing.

What they are suggesting is that "wallies" who propose the sort of "Zero Tolerance" approach which *you* seem to be advocating are actually applying a "Zero Common Sense" system whereby "breaking the law" is the *only* thing that is taken into consideration.

This is the sort of "crowd pleasing" political nonsense we frequently from our leaders who are more interested in getting good headlines than actually dealing with the problems that exist in society (which often result from their *previous* "get tough" policies!).