| TheGarbageMan |
12-12-2004 11:07 AM |
Six Beat Up Peeping Tom
"An alleged peeping Tom is in the intensive care unit after reportedly being assaulted with a tree branch, NewsChannel5 reported. Officials said Mario Russo, 44, was attacked after he was spotted outside a bedroom window wearing his pants around his ankles and watching a 5-year-old girl who was sleeping outside the Bunkeridge Apartments. Russo was reportedly hiding in bushes. Police said after he was discovered a group of six people, include the girls mother, aunt and their boyfriends attacked him and brutally beat him for more than an hour... The girl's aunt admitted to sexually assaulting Russo with a tree branch, police said." ?Yahoo (US)
(Thanks to jvirne for the link.)
An act of vigilantism always raises complex moral issues. On one hand, it's hard not to feel the perp got what was coming to him. Evidently he was caught red-handed in the act of masturbation while watching a little girl sleep. Why shouldn't the mother and her cronies be outraged? If you caught some creep peeping on your daughter, you'd want to beat the shit out of him too. It may even occur to you to sodomize him with a tree branch, thinking that the way to fight sex crime is by violating the sex criminal. Apparently that's what the aunt felt, and really it's hard to blame her.
But at the same time, there are good reasons why citizens are not allowed to take the law into their own hands. There is the notion that the punishment has to fit the crime. For example, the man could possibly die as a result of the severe beating he sustained, which lasted more than an hour. If he does, the vigilantes will face murder charges, in addition to assault and rape charges. And is death a proper punishment for spying on a little girl? After all, the guy didn't actually touch her in any way. He didn't rape her or even break into her room. He just stood outside an open window jerking off. So should somebody be executed for an act of simple voyeurism?
To make matters even more complicated, apparently one of the vigilantes videotaped the entire assault. Probably the taper thought he was creating a piece of evidence ? which he was ? but at the same time it seems to add an additional layer of voyeurism to the whole thing. They observed the observer and beat up the guy who was beating off.
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