Bilal Skaf Gang Rape Report

26th February 2014, ‘The Australian’ newspaper reporter, Adam Vilder reported that one of the Bilal Skaf gang rapist known as “H” attends for his first parole report. This newspaper article reminded the people of the series of sickening sexual assaults which took place in the early 2000. A gang up to 14 teenage Lebanese Australian terrorized Western Sydney by committing a four-week rampage of sexual offence; At least six young ladies were a victim of the gang rape. The youths headed by the19-year-old Bilal Skaf were caught gang raping, put on shame and humiliating the victims with violence and racist taunts.

Rape has a definition of a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of penetration initiated against

When an arrested person is found guilty, the judicature has a responsibility to come out with an appropriate punishment for the criminal on a case-by-case basis. There are four purposes of sanctions, which are deterrence, retribution, protection, rehabilitation and reformation. The Court of appeal was told that almost a quarter of all the sentences were too light, and the average sentence of imprisonment for rapist are said to be too lenient. The average imprisonment sentence for rape between 1999 and 2008 was just over five years; only 10 offenders out of 56 rape cases were sentenced to more than six years of imprisonment. Today, it was argued that the most appropriate imprisonment sentence for rapists is life imprisonment. After the abolishment of “death penalty”, life imprisonment is now known as the most severe sanction as the ultimate penalty. The average duration for the term “life imprisonment” in Australia ranges between 13 to 17 years before they may apply for parole. Therefore, the main question now is that whether or not life imprisonment should be imposed on rapist to fulfill the purpose of

Confinement prevents offenders from committing further crimes while they are locked up in the custody and it is a form of temporary removal of threat from the public and society. Furthermore, statistics shows that the average age of arrested rapist is 31 years old. If the sentence of life imprisonment is imposed, which means the offender will have to spend at least 20 years in the custody before release. By the time of release, the offenders would be around 50 years old; according to the statistics, there is only 7.3% of rapist that are above 50 years old, which simply means that life imprisonment may reduce the reoffend rate of rapist. In this other case, the society is also protected where the rapist, Sanoussi is electronically monitored and he is banned from any form of contact with people under 16 even after his parole.

However, life imprisonment does not mean that the offenders will be in the cell for life, it just simply means that offenders generally do not know when they will be released. Therefore, even if it is life imprisonment, it is only for a temporary period, the offenders will still be released eventually, and they may still reoffend in the