Judge And Fury

This photograph should make each one of us angry. The little girl is five year old Mari Luz Cortes….murdered by a man that should never have been outside of a prison cell, let alone any where near this innocent little soul.

The pain visible on the faces of her parents should shame us into action on their behalf,  and on behalf of all the Mari Luz’s to follow. That photograph is the only way they can now carry their beautiful little daughter and it need not have been this way.

The man who has admitted to killing Mari Luz is contending that this little girl ‘volunteered’ to with him to his home. That he was going to abuse her, but she fell, hit her head and died before he could – so he’s not guilty; she effectively killed herself after ‘voluntarily’ entering his home.

Santiago  del Valle is the latest poster boy for what is wrong with the judicial response to pedophiles across the world. Reading an account of how del Valle was in a position to kill little Mari Luz reads like a cross between a Marx Brother’s film and a Bram Stoker novel.

In 2002 del Valle was arrested for sexually abusing his five year old daughter and sentenced to 33 months in jail. 33 months for this sick betrayal of his daughter is like a slap on the wrist, but it gets worse: Del Valle remained free while he appealed. It took the court system nearly three years to issue a ruling…there was apparently no rush, it wasn’t as if it was as serious crime like tax fraud or not paying your council tax is it?  The court eventually got round to the appeal and  upheld the conviction in December 2005. By this time, however,  del Valle had already been convicted in another case and by a different judge of sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl. Both cases were in Seville.

But it gets worse; The judge in the second case did not know about the first conviction, and gave del Valle a suspended sentence, thinking it was his first offense. Think about that….he received a suspended sentence because the judge believed it was a first offense…Men don’t wake up one morning and accidentally abuse a child, it may be the first time they have been caught officially, but it doesn’t follow that it’s their first offence. Anyone who doesn’t understand this has no job being a judge presiding over such serious crimes. Giving a suspended sentence because the judge thinks it is his first offense is like rewarding him  for not getting caught sooner and is another assault on the child and her family. We don;t let murderer’s off for first time offenses, pedophiles should enjoy the same consideration.

In March 2006, the judge in the first case, Rafael Tirado Marquez, ordered police to notify del Valle that he had to start serving that first conviction. Del Valle had moved away from Seville and his whereabouts were unknown, apparently and the judge neglected to issue a nationwide arrest warrant. Well, it’s not like it was  serious crime…no one really got hurt did they?

 The first judge in this farce, Tirado Marquez, told reporters on Friday that  he was “emotionally devastated” and felt partly to blame for the fiasco. He said that because a staffer was on leave for months and a backlog of paperwork accumulated, he was never told del Valle was on the run, and thus did not issue an arrest warrant.

A few things about his statement: He has failed to explain the three long, long years it took to decide to uphold the original conviction. He blames the lack of arrest warrant in 2006 on a staff member being away for months, and him having a replacement for only three days, but today’s news assersts that this is a lie

The Junta de Andalucía says that only one civil servant assigned to the judge’s court was away, for a 43 day period because of a sprained ankle, and that this person was replaced by the Provincial Government forty days later.

Also today, the claim that del Valle was on the run and therefore untraceable was contradicted by a report which stated

‘It also seems that Del Valle had been signing in with his local judge twice a month for the last eighteen months on a separate child abuse charge that remains pending. Del Valle had even continued signing in after fleeing to Cuenca province the day after Mari Luz disappeared.

So that’s Del Valle being charged with another crime (his third official one) and far from being on the run, he was signing in with a local judge. Incompetency can only be stretched so far. There’s comes a time when we have to start asking if something more sinister is occurring under the surface here in order to explain how a man avoids spending even an hour in jail for three abuse crimes over a six year period. His ability to avoid jail has cost Mari Luz her life.

We should no longer tolerate the derisory, pathetic sentences that judges worldwide hand down to pedophiles- whether they be ‘first time offenders’ or repeat offenders. We need to start asking why certain judges see pedophilia as on a par with dropping litter.
 

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