🇨🇦 Newfoundland bridal shop owner who hung boy on a coat hook gets absolute discharge

A seven-year-old ends up hanging by his coat hood until his face turns purple, misses school, has neck pain, fears returning to the mall, and the system calls it horseplay. That is not justice. That is elite-tier discretion for the respectable businessman class, as reported. The court admits child assault discharges are rare, then hands one out anyway because the offender is 54, locally respected, and apparently needs to keep travelling to bridal trade shows.

Notice the pattern: endless lectures about protecting the vulnerable, then a judge bends over backward to minimize harm because the offender is the right kind of offender. Not malicious, no anger, continuation of horseplay, diminished moral blameworthiness. Bureaucratic euphemisms are doing heavy lifting here. If this is how public interest gets defined, ordinary Canadians are expected to clap while common sense is strangled by credentialed compassion for the adult who did it, not the child who wore it.

🍁 Maple Chronicles