However, as I tend to criticize her quite freely on most occasions, I think it only fair to give Mrs. Mallick her just due when she writes something that exudes a rare streak of common sense. And I promise this is entirely sincere and non-satirical. (Although that's not going to stop me from calling her Mrs. instead of Ms.)
She has written a blistering article about William Melchert-Dinkel, the nurse who persuaded several people to commit suicide, including Nadia Kajouji, a young Ontario woman. Or to be more precise, she wrote a blistering article about the idiot, out-of-touch judge who had the nerve to sentence the man to a grand total of a year in prison. Melchert-Dinkel admits to conning seven people into their deaths, five of them shrouded in anonymity, apparently he isn't telling the authorities who they were.
The man is sick. He is twisted, broken and evil. He should be spending at least the 15 years in prison that the prosecuters asked for, if not more. Oh, to make it all better, he will be spending the birthdays of his two victims whose names we know in jail for the next ten years. Before he goes off and plays another round of golf or lectures in the nearest school on the dangers of the internet.
But Mallick says it better than I could:
Justice - Not Served
"In fact, Melchert-Dinkel had found a fresh new way to murder, far beyond the ken of a 61-year-old rural judge. To understand this killer, the judge had to grasp the dark side of online anonymity, instant messaging and complete unfettered freedom, how words are like loaded guns appearing on a screen.
Depressed people live in a personal blackness soaked with anxiety and despair. They are limp. They don’t have the strength to be suspicious or even alert...
Depression isn’t new. Melchert-Dinkel’s murder weapon is.
He didn’t hold Nadia underwater with his hands, he did it with his typing fingers. One crime would easily earn a 15-year sentence, the other gives the killer a year in jail and a pointless probation where the killer can still use the Internet for work and may speak to groups about the dangers of the online world. The mind reels. Imagine Melchert-Dinkel coming to your child’s high school.
The judge still lives in a world where blood drips from the knife the accused threw in a dumpster and arsenic dregs still sit in the coffee cup. Online is different....
The sentence is a travesty and should be appealed. Far from sending a warning to Internet predators, it encourages them. Melchert-Dinkel has been killing from a distance since he first got his monstrous hands on a computer. He’s laughing now"
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