Now I’m not the lynch mob type - I’ve written before about how the media should hold back on naming and shaming people prior to sentencing, and I stand by that wholeheartedly. But the guilt of Ian Watkins was never in doubt. This wasn’t one persons word against another, there was exhaustive video and written evidence, and the admissions of some of the people involved. He even admitted some of the charges in court under the (quite frankly) outrageous guise of wanting to spare his victim’s families from hearing evidence.
There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that this man is vile. I don’t care how many psychologists will argue that pedophilia is a mental compulsion, it isn’t, and this wouldn’t excuse Watkins’ behaviour even it it were. Watkins’ brand of child abuse plumped new depths of depravity. This man tried to have penetrative sex with an 11 month baby - several times.
He acted out his fantasies on the truly innocent and vulnerable. Babies who have no voice, no concept of the world around them, and no means of fighting back. Who knows what lasting physical and emotional damage these children will carry with them into adulthood. It’s perverse, morally reprehensible and heinous.
In my eyes, acts of violence or cruelty to children are often more tragic than the murder of an adult. There can be no justification and the story is entirely one-sided - that child hasn’t had enough time to create a back-story worthy of some act of retribution. Ian Watkins, and others like him, act purely out of selfish self-gratification with no care whatsoever for their victims.
When I first read about this case I was physically sick. I didn’t manage to get through the entire article as I felt too appalled. It was simply too much to take in and too graphic. This isn’t because I’m a mother, it’s because I’m a human being. As a true-crime reader, I’ve read some seriously sensational things in my time, but nothing came close to how I felt reading those articles. And these were in our national newspapers for anyone to see.
Today, this man has been sentenced to 29 years behind bars, with a further 6 out on license. But he will be eligible for parole after serving two thirds of the prison term - that’s just 19.5 years. At his time of release he’d be just 56, his victims barely out of their teens. He’ll have plenty more years ahead of him to continue destroying young lives. It certainly makes you wonder just how much worse a case would have to be in order to qualify for a more severe sentence.
Okay, it’s very unlikely he’ll ever walk our streets again - if he doesn’t kill himself when he dries out and the full realisation of his crimes hit home, he’ll be murdered in jail. But this is surely not the point.
The whole case is likely to draw comparisons to that of Baby P’s, whose mother is somehow now out of prison after serving just 4 years. Although his was a child abuse case on a different scale altogether, let us not forget that the Watkins case involves mothers too. Mothers who willingly handed their children over to Watkins to be abused. These women were sentenced to just 14 and 17 years - but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’re released after serving far less in just a few years time. Justice Royce also delivered a damning indictment to one of the women during his summing up - that she did not regard her child as a human being. I don’t care how young and impressionable these women were at the time of the crime. They haven’t simply mislaid their moral compasses, they can’t have ever had them to begin with. One of the women even carried out sex acts on her own child over webcam! This doesn’t make her complicit, it makes her AS deplorable as Watkins himself..
Watkins chose to take illegal substances, and these “mothers” chose to favour their idol over their own children, They failed to show even the most simple and natural of instincts when it comes to defenseless children. This points to something seriously worrying and complicated festering in the underbelly of celebrity culture. All those found guilty in this case need intense psychiatric support but should also be behind bars forever more. It is simply incomprehensible to have these people pass us by in ASDA or sit next to us on a bus in several years time.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I think our justice system does not go far enough.
