Mike Penning MP calls on Attorney General to appeal sentence
23rd April 2007
Mike Penning condemns lenient sentences handed to mother and family of toddlers incited to fight like dogs.
Mike Penning, MP for Hemel Hempstead, has today written to the Attorney General calling for him to use his powers to appeal against the leniency of the sentence handed out to the mother, grandmother and aunts convicted of child cruelty in the ‘toddler fighting’ case.
“I and the whole country are outraged that such a lenient sentence should be handed out to these people. The children’s father described the video footage as ‘like watching a dog fight’. If this had been a dog fight they would have gone to prison.
“Goading toddlers to fight each other is abhorrent and it is against natural justice for the children’s mother and family members to be let off in this way.
“I have also asked for his assurances that these and other lenient sentences that we have heard about recently are not as a result of the Home Secretary’s recent instructions to the judiciary about prison overcrowding.”
The women each received a one-year suspended sentence with 100 hours of community service.
