lie in Justice Press Release 4 May re Spent Convictions Bill

tiredofthis

The Government lied in its Press Release of 4th May re Spent Convictions Bill.
http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PR12000128

This stated
"Sexual offences and offences that fall to be tried by the Central Criminal Court are excluded from the purview of the Bill"

Part I, Schedule 1 on page 14 of the Bill reclassifies several sex offences as non-sexual.
http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Criminal%20Justice%20%28Spent%20Convictions%29%20Bill%202012-P&C.pdf/Files/Criminal%20Justice%20%28Spent%20Convictions%29%20Bill%202012-P&C.pdf


The newspapers have repeated the Government's lie without question. The strange thing is that when I tried to start a discussion of the lie here on the forum, it was transferred to the legal discussion forum. The lie is not a legal issue, it's a political issue. And the thread is locked. The Government suppressed discussion of the Bill by lying about what it said. I can't understand why Boards.ie is helping the Government to suppress discussion.

KyussBishop

Discussion isn't banned, the mods already said it's been moved to another forum, and locked until the mods there can review it for appropriateness:
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=78896905

KyussBishop

Additionally, you could always try the Feedback forum, as that's probably more appropriate if you feel discussion is unfairly prohibited:
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=82

tiredofthis

A lie about legislation before the Dáil is a political matter. The Bill itself is a secondary consideration. Yet the thread is moved to legal discussion and locked for over 24 hours; no other thread on that forum has been locked for as long. It's disappearing off the second page. If you make it impossible to discuss a thread you can deny you are banning it, but the effect is the same as a ban.

It's important that the Government feels free to lie to us about legislation now laid before the Dáil. This is a forum where we should be able to draw attention to the lie and make sure that the facts about the Bill are known to anyone who has an interest in the area.

tiredofthis

Sorry, I did not realise that I had to request that the thread be unlocked when it moved to legal discussion. I have now made the request.

Still no explanation of why the Government feels safe to say that the Bill does not include sex offences, when there all of page 14 of the Bill and some of page 15 (Schedule 1, Part 1) is devoted to listing all the offences which are currently sex offences under the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2006, and which won't be when the new Bill becomes law.

The_Minister

Are you sure that "lie" is the appropriate term?

Perhaps "mistake" might be better - there is a very good chance that the person who wrote the Bill did not write the press release.


If you really want to have this addressed, there are better ways than an internet rant.
For instance, you could write a calm, appropriate letter to the Irish Times or Independent.
Or you could calmly and not-at-all-hysterically contact the department of justice.

tiredofthis

The Bill was published on 8th May and I noticed that the Press Release was incorrect in saying that it did not deal with sex offences. After a couple of days, when there was no retraction, I wrote to the Minister for Justice and to the Minister for Children. I received an acknowledgement from Minister Shatter's office, but no reply. Nothing from the Minister for Children. I wrote to Sean Kenny who can be seen in a You Tube video from last year telling the Dáil that he could not support a Spent Convictions Bill that included sex offences. No acknowledgement, no reply.

I wrote to the Irish Times and received an acknowledgement, but nothing further. I wrote to the Indo - nothing. I wrote to the Examiner and on 21 May received a reply from Cormac O'Keeffe (who had written about the Bill, taking the Press Release to be true), saying that he would look into it; I've heard nothing since. The Ombudsman for Children has not acknowledged my email.

There is a background to the Spent Convictions Bill. In 2007, the Law Reform Commission made recommendations on the subject. Sex offenders were to be excluded from the Bill. Barry Andrews brought in a Bill broadly in accordance with the recommendations.

At the same time, the Department of Justice channelled funding through the Probation Service and the charity, Business in the Community, to a Spent Convictions Research Project. The chair of this project announced at the launch that sex offenders should be included in any Bill.

The Government took over Barry Andrews' Bill. It came to its second reading in the Dáil on 18 December 2008. TDs of all parties rallied round, giving speeches in favour of numerous amendments to make the Bill more inclusive. Pat Rabbitte (then in opposition) was very keen that sex offenders should be included. The strange thing was that the speeches of TDs of all parties sounded like excerpts from the report of the Spent Convictions Project, although that report was not published until the following year. The Project recommended that virtually all convictions, including serious sex offences against children should be covered by the Bill.

I suspect that it was only the publication of the Ryan Report in May 2009 that spared us an all-inclusive Bill. TDs were not prepared to stand up publicly and vote for that Bill in the climate of public opinion at that time.

I think that once again the parties have got together behind the scenes. Normally the Opposition jumps on a Government Press Release that is demonstrably false. They've said nothing. The bien-pensants know they know best and the newspapers are happy to collude with them.

Given that they were all so keen on the lunatic Bill which was the brainchild of the Spent Convictions Project, it's hard to have faith in them now. By lying about what is in the Bill, they have shown total contempt for us.

Laminations

OP I applaud you for your perseverance on this matter and for contacting so many politicians and media persons.

But I think this section is stipulating that teen-on-teen consensual sex and things like incest will not be categorised in the same way as rape, sexual offences and indecent offences so they can be expunged from the persons record. I think it is recognising complexities like the underage sex and issues around mental competencies etc. They are very specific offences of a sexual nature that are covered under the Spent Convictions Bill

tiredofthis

If you look at the Bill (Page 14, Schedule 1, Part 1) you will see that there are a number of offences such as sexual assault, indecent assault etc which are reclassified here as not sexual offences if the offender is sentenced to less than one year in jail. So these offences are dealt with by the Bill on the same basis as burglary and theft. So the Bill is not making the distinction you see between "teen-on-teen consensual sex and things like incest" and sexual offences which everyone recognises as sexual offences.

I made this point in my original post which was transferred locked to the Legal Discussion Forum and never unlocked. It has now disappeared.

The main issue is that the Press Release says the Bill does not deal with sex offences; there is more than a page of the Bill which reclassifies sex offences as not sex offences.

I understand that the Government may be anticipating a ruling against strict liability in case where people have sex with children. But some of the offences seem to require the participation of 2 or more adults in the crime - procuring, conspiring in the defilement of a child. If we had details of how many people have been convicted of this type of crime and the circumstances surrounding the crime, it might be possible to understand what is intended here.

If people would read the Bill available here
http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Criminal%20Justice%20%28Spent%20Convictions%29%20Bill%202012-P&C.pdf/Files/Criminal%20Justice%20%28Spent%20Convictions%29%20Bill%202012-P&C.pdf

and the Press Release
http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PR12000128

they would realise just how barefaced the lie is.

I know that people will see arguments for treating convictions for sex offences as spent convictions. But no-one has proposed an argument that makes it OK for the Government to tell us outright lies about what is in legislation laid before the Dáil

tiredofthis

The Bill is now speeding through the Dáil. Reached Second Stage this week

The Explanatory Memorandum which has to accompany any Bill said on the first page that

Convictions in respect of sexual offences and offences that fall
to be tried by the Central Criminal Court are excluded from
the benefits of the Bill;

Also, on Page 5

Schedule 1 sets out the sexual offences that are excluded offences under the Bill.

If you look at Schedule 1, the first page and a third are devoted to listing the sexual offences which are not excluded offences under the Bill. This is only slightly less than the amount of space listing excluded sexual offences.

• Who are the people whose sexual offences are going to be spent?
• Why is legislation to legislation to benefit them being rushed secretly through the Dáil?
• Why can people with convictions for sexual offences not be allowed to say on applications to work in the Departments of Justice and Defence that they have no convictions?
• Why can people convictions for sexual offences be allowed to say on applications to work in the Departments of Children and Youth Affairs (in the IT section, or the Minister's Office, or other areas where they would have details of individual often vulnerable children in the care of the State) that they have no convictions?
• Why is the State deemed to be so much more vulnerable than the children in its care?

It's more than a decade since we were promised that the Children First Guidelines would be put on a statutory basis. The amendment to put children's rights into the Constitution has been promised for years. I've lost count of the Ministers who've made promises on these issues.

No Minister or TD has ever promised that the human rights of some sex offenders would be prioritised, but we have legislation speeding through the Dáil which the Government claims does not deal with sex offences but in fact makes sure that the careers and reputations of some sex offenders are protected.