This is an old story I ran across in my web meanderings, but it poses an interesting question.
A Spanish mother decided to dole out a little street justice to the man who raped her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint by dousing him in petrol and setting him on fire.
Believe it or not, Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, only received a nine year sentence for snatching a 13-year-old girl off the street when she was shopping for her mother and raping her at knife point. There was no serious doubt that Soriano had done the deed, and the sentence represented a plea bargain.
Apparently he was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benejúzar. While he was there, he passed his victim's mother in the street and taunted her about the attack, calling out "How's your daughter?", before heading into a crowded bar.
Mom returned to the bar, turned Soriano around to face her, pulled the bottle she was carrying from under her arm, poured it over him and then lit a match.
Soriano suffered 60 per cent burns on his body in the attack and survived for 11 painful days before succumbing to his injuries.
The mother fled to Alicante, where she was arrested the same evening. When she appeared in court the next day in the town of Orihuela, she was cheered and clapped by a crowd, who shouted "Bravo!" and "Well done!"
The woman claimed to have no recollection of the attack.
I have no information on how the case was ultimately disposed, but I ask you - was she right or wrong? What would you do if someone scarred you and one of your children for life and was walking around free as a bird and taunting you about it?
More to the point, do you think that this incident might make potential rapists in this little corner of Spain think twice before hurting someone?
This is one of those ultimate issues things I love to discuss!
I oppose vigilante justice, because I oppose mob rule. Having said that, however, vigilante justice will always fill the vacuum when the official justice system fails to do its job. So, while I disagree with what the mother did, hers was a logical response to a failed system.
ReplyDeleteAs the father of two girls I can only say this:
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning I may (that is may) have let the judicial system handle things.
At the point of the incident described in this story I would have most likely done something along the lines of what the Spanish mother did.
Only I think I might have been more brutal.
I have a daughter about that age myself. I have to agree with you Michael..especially if he was out on a 'pass' and was taunting me about it.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Rob
Not to sound barbaric, but I heartily agree with the Mother and would have done something similar or something even more in line with poetic justice. Stopping the sleaze probably saved other little girls and women.
ReplyDeleteTrue justice was never doled out to the man and would never have been forthcoming. I suppose you would call me a staunch believer in an eye for an eye sort of Christian. If it were my child, neither hell nor high water would stop me from getting to the guy. Period.
Sometimes vengeance is the right thing to do. My only regret is she claimed to not remember that she did it, which I find highly unlikely. Her lawyer probably told her to use that defense.
In a world gone insane and dark the way ours is becoming, you take care of your own.
It would be interesting to know what punishment the mother received from the judicial system, compared to the lite sentence the rapist received. Had this taken place in the US an attorney would have argued momentary insanity or whatever the legal term is and the mother would have received some counseling and been free to raise her daughter.
ReplyDeleteI too have a daughter. Had I been in the mother's shoes I would have to weigh the need to kill/punish this guy against the possibility that my child would live the rest of her life with an absentee mother serving a life prison sentence.
Also had I decided that the guy must go, I would have been more subtle, done the deed out of the public eye and left no clues.
All this assumes that my husband has not gotten to the guy first, ha.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
this woman has no imagination.
ReplyDeleteflammable liquid?
burns?
ha!
get a babe to lure the guy into an alley and perform a lorena bobbitt on him. full & complete.
IYKWIMAITYD
There are situations where the justice is largely impotent. While in general I am not a supporter of vigilante-style vengeance, I have to admit that in cases like this one justice has to take a step back.
ReplyDeleteNine years for the rape of a 13 yr old girl? Then taunted about it to your face? As the dad of a 17 yr old, I'd have done worse than this mom, and be damned whatever happened to me as a result.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, this kind of justice for a rapists would have been what would have been expected. We also had far less violent crime then too.
ReplyDeletei have never understood why the punishment for rape is as light as it is. if the system, and i mean on a global scale, could give that justice, there would be no need for these things to happen. but until then, that mother was totally in the right. that man deserved to die in a painful way.
ReplyDelete