Well said both of you.
There is a scale of wrongdoing, and that will be reflected in the sentence. However, being at a 'better' point on the scale does not make what he has done any less serious. It is the same for any offence. Just because there are worse offenders out there (either now or historically) does not take away the wrongness of what AJ has done. He is a grown man who knowingly and willingly took advantage of a child. Like others have said, if he was a younger man himself with a much smaller age difference, and if he had been unaware of the crime he was committing, then that may have been mitigation (mitigation not pardon). None of that applies in this case though.
The comparison with Saville seems more than a little irrelevant. You could extend the example out and apply it to other offences to show how silly your argument is. If AJ had committed a murder in cold blood (a relevant wording in that it was planned and done in full knowledge of being wrong) then we would not be condoning him and saying 'well at least he isn't a mass murderer'. We wouldn't be letting him off the hook because he wasn't a serial killer. We would probably expect mass murderers and serial killers to get more severe sentences (ie never being eligible for release), but we wouldn't be expecting anything less than an extremely severe sentence. If he had met her in a club and thought she was 18 then we may well think there were some extenuating circumstances, just as we would for an accidental killing that would be classed as manslaughter. Even manslaughter is a criminal offence though.
To suggest that we are picking on him because he is a Sunderland player is beyond stupid. The same conversations would be going on regardless of what club he played for - including Newcastle United. Perhaps if you visited your own board more often then you may realise that exactly the same comments and conversations are going on on the Sunderland board too. So far you are the only person who has tried to defend him on either board!
