Tom Says: “Please tell the truth…”
Every once and awhile, I take issue with Canada’s mainstream national media. (This is that once and a awhile.)
Last week, prior to going to bed, I spent some time watching one of Canada’s national newscasts. A reporter who’s name I can’t remember off hand, (and it’s a good thing because if I had, I would have included it in this little rant) was telling us all about a forbidden love affair between a 32 year old man from Belgium and a 13 year old girl from the Montreal Area. It seems the two “lovers” met on the internet, exchanging hundreds of emails which eventually lead to him coming to Canada.
He arrived on our shores with his life savings, which amounted to 32-hundred bucks, a lap-top and a webcam. It seems the 13 year old girl disappeared shortly after his arrival, and her mom called the police. They organized a frantic search and somehow managed to find she and he in bed in a seedy hotel near the local bus station. He being 32, and she being 13 in this country is “a no-no,” so he was charged and appeared in court.
He plead guilty to a series of six charges including kidnapping and sexual interference. The presiding judge decided that 20 months in jail was an appropriate sentence.
Here’s where truth enters the picture…
The reporter, who I’m sure has been well schooled in how to write and present a news story, told all of us who were watching that this Belgian man was going to spend the next 20 months in a Canadian jail. Seems like everybody in this country except three people, know that’s not the case. The three who don’t know would be the reporter, the camera man and her editor.
Every Canadian besides them understands that a 20 month jail sentence in this country means nowhere near 20 months in jail. It could be six months, eight months, maybe even ten months, but unless this guy is one of the most incorrigible prisoners locked up in the Canadian prison system, we all know he’s not going to spend anywhere near twenty months in jail, hopefully in eight months he’ll have a one-way ticket to Belgium without his 32-hundred bucks, his lap-top and web cam and an invitation from Canadian Border Services not to darken our shores ever again.
Common’ you hot shots, who work for the national networks — it’s only one story a day — so please get it right!
I’m Tom Young.