33:64 presents “Abdul Khan.”
It reminds me of Ancient Rome. When the blood-thirsty mob at a colosseum were given a sacrificial victim. One for whom the mob had long since tired, and whose only remaining entertainment value was their death. That’s what the 10 and a half year sentence given to Branded reminds me of. It seems harsh. Not to make light of the crimes for which he was convicted, because he deserves every day of that. But when compared to other sentences handed down to other rapists. Rapists whose crimes spanned many more years and ruined many more lives, but were not high-profile enough to warrant a mob that needed to be appeased.
I’ll use one example to illustrate this. Bear in mind that Branded was convicted of one rape and three sexual assaults.
In February of this year, Abdul Hakim Khan was found was found guilty of nine counts of rape, an additional five rapes of a child under 13, four counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual assault of a child under 13. All told, 21 different offences.
A former iman in East London, he used his position in the community and the religious authority over his victims it gave him to carry out his crimes. In sexually assaulting his victims, Khan claimed to some that he had been possessed. He then also threatened that death or harm would come to the victims or their families via “black magic” if they spoke out. He convinced his victims he needed to cleanse them of the evil spirits he said were in them. He also told one young victim that she had ovarian cancer that only he could cure, before taking her in his car to a secluded area and raping her.
He got a life sentence.. Deservedly so. But in sentencing him, the judge recommended he serve a minimum of 20 years in prison. So not quite life, then. Not for him the prospect of dying in a cell, never tasting free air again or having to suffer years what what he had done to others being done to him.
Branded was convicted of one rape and three sexual assaults. Sentenced to 10 and half years, of which he’ll reportedly serve 7. But if he’d been sentenced according to the guidelines the judge in Khan’s case seemed to to be following, he’d have got considerably less.
But then the mob didn’t need to be sated. The mob that had so voraciously relished every detail of his sexual exploits when they were deemed to be nothing more than an extremely extreme libido. A mob that had been conditioned to think of it that way by press with its own highly selective morality. According to which the most important moral imperative was to sell newspapers. Now though, it’s all eyeballs, content and user-engagement.
As I wrote in a previous post, rape is wrong. But not all punishments for it fit all crimes.
