{"id":180052,"date":"2017-07-27T19:04:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T00:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/27\/a-well-deserved-repudiation-of-cultural-relativism\/"},"modified":"2017-07-27T19:04:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T00:04:00","slug":"a-well-deserved-repudiation-of-cultural-relativism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/27\/a-well-deserved-repudiation-of-cultural-relativism\/","title":{"rendered":"A Well Deserved Repudiation of Cultural Relativism"},"content":{"rendered":"
A court in Ontario sentenced an Iranian immigrant for beating and raping his wife repeatedly for 18 months, well below the recommended sentence, with the justification that he was operating under the cultural norms of Iran.<\/div>\n

The appellate court overruled this sentence and gave the offender a 4 year sentence<\/a>, saying that Canadians need to behave according to Canadian standards:<\/p>\n

The woman, a recent immigrant from Iran, suffered brutal spousal abuse but didn\u2019t even realize it was against the law.<\/p>\n

After moving to Canada in 2009 her husband forced the woman, whose identity is protected by the court, to have sex with him by hitting her, pulling her hair, pinching her and forcefully removing her clothes. \u201cShe cried out quietly so the children would not hear,\u201d court was told.<\/p>\n

He also slapped, kicked and punched their two sons and hit them with a belt. Once he locked them outside the house on a snowy winter day wearing nothing but shorts and T-shirts until their mother came home and rescued them.<\/p>\n

When the husband was convicted of sexual assault and assault, Justice William Gorewich of Ontario court sentenced him to 18 months, citing mitigating factors that included the lack of a criminal record. The judge also noted a \u201csignificant cultural gap\u201d between behaviour that is accepted in Canada and in Iran, and the \u201ccultural impact\u201d of changing countries.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t cut much muster with the Ontario Court of Appeal, nor should it have.<\/p>\n

On appeal by the Crown, Justices Mary Lou Benotto, Alexandra Hoy and David Doherty found the 18-month sentence to be \u201cmanifestly unfit\u201d<\/a>and they imposed a far tougher, and entirely appropriate, four-year sentence.<\/a><\/p>\n

They also went out of their way to send a powerful, timely message to the lower courts and the public in general that \u201ccultural norms that condone or tolerate conduct contrary to Canadian criminal law\u201d must not be a mitigating factor in sentencing. \u201cCultural differences do not excuse or mitigate criminal conduct,\u201d the appeals court held.<\/p>\n

If that were the case \u201csome women in Canadian society would be afforded less protection than others.\u201d In effect \u201cit would \u2026 create a second class of person in our society \u2014 those who fall victim to offenders who import such practices.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wholeheartedly approve of this ruling.<\/p>\n

I don’t care if you come from WifeBeatIstan, there is no excuse for domestic abuse.  Ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A court in Ontario sentenced an Iranian immigrant for beating and raping his wife repeatedly for 18 months, well below the recommended sentence, with the justification that he was operating under the cultural norms of Iran. The appellate court overruled this sentence and gave the offender a 4 year sentence, saying that Canadians need to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[407,569,582],"class_list":["post-180052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-justice","tag-sexism","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}