A GIRL yesterday criticised the Judge who freed her sex attacker
because she was ''not entirely an angel''.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: ''It's not fair
really because I should not get the blame for something I didn't do.''
She said the man, who admitted attempting to have sex with her when
she was eight, should have gone to prison for two or three years.
Judge Ian Starforth Hill, QC, provoked outrage when he gave Karl
Gambrill two years' probation on Tuesday at Winchester Crown Court.
He said he would have jailed Gambrill but for his age, 18 at the time
of the offence, and ''information which leads me to think she was not
entirely an angel herself''.
The sentence is now being reviewed by the Attorney-General, Sir
Nicholas Lyell.
He has 28 days to decide whether to refer the sentence to the Court of
Appeal.
The girl, now 12, said of the Judge yesterday on GMTV: ''He should
have really thought of what I was first, and he should have seen me face
to face.''
Her mother said: ''Judges shouldn't get away with things like that.
They're not God.
''You can't say things about another human being when you've never met
them, never spoken to them, just on the evidence of a barrister.''
Both spoke with their faces blacked out.
The mother said her daughter was confused and distressed by the
judgment.
''She's very upset, very guilty, she thinks it's all her fault now.''
The Judge has refused to comment.
The case has provoked calls for vetting of judges who try sexual
offences and for revised guidelines on sentencing.
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