2nd November 2008
Welcome to this new TwoPlusFive forum for relatives and partners of those who have been wrongly convicted of sexual offences. Only they can help their loved ones out of the dark tunnel they are in. Meanwhile, the stigma of the sentence remains until the person is cleared, an albatross casting a shadow over his life.
The hope is that a lobby of opinion can be built up to support change in how innocent defendants should be dealt with. There is little or no impetus within the legal system for change, despite the warnings issued by Lord Lucas. Also, probation services have lost their way and have forgotten that their proper purpose is to support and rehabilitate, not to extract false confessions from those who are innocent.
TwoPlusFive is the typical minimum sentence in the UK for a conviction of non-penetrative sex with a female known to the defendant, where she is under the age of 16 and where there is more than 4 years difference in age. The typical sentence will be two years in prison and five years on a SOPO (Sex Offender Protection Order). This does not include the final crushing blow of being placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life.
There is little effort to help juries come to true verdicts with the aid of twenty-first century advances in biotechnology within the proper spirit of the law. The purpose of this site is to bring these advances to the attention of the wider public and to the legal profession whose job it is to see that justice is done.
