PHILIPSBURG--A 34-year-old man was sentenced in the Court of First Instance on Wednesday to a conditional 80 hours of community service for assaulting his ex-girlfriend and mother of his two children for her relationship with another woman. In his opinion, the children are too impressionable to witness a same-sex couple.
The court found it convincingly proven that the man had shown up uninvited at his ex-girlfriend’s home on May 1. He slapped her in the face when he saw her there with another woman.
The man did not deny hitting the mother of his children, but claimed it had been a fight and not a one-sided assault.
He was questioned in police custody afterwards and told the officers that he had been protecting his children from seeing things that “are not right.” However, in court on Wednesday he said that he wanted to save his children from witnessing any kind of sexual activity, whether it is between a same-sex couple or heterosexual one.
“It is probably worse for the children to witness violence than a lesbian relationship,” the prosecutor said. “The more violence they see, the greater chance they will become a victim of relationship violence [in the future – Ed.] or the perpetrator of it.”
The prosecutor demanded an unconditional 80 hours of community service for the first-time offender, considering it proven that he was guilty of assault.
The judge deviated from this demand and sentenced the man to 80 hours of community service, of which 40 are conditional, on two years’ probation.
The judge also deducted four hours for the two days he had spent in police custody, reducing the total number of unconditional hours to 36.
