{"id":3238,"date":"2010-03-25T00:34:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T04:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=3238"},"modified":"2010-03-25T00:34:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T04:34:51","slug":"the-belgian-version-of-asking-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/03\/25\/the-belgian-version-of-asking-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Belgian version of “asking for it”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent Belgian court decision<\/a> is remarkable:<\/p>\n

\n

The crime victim, a businessman named only as Laurent, had been living in a suburb of Charleroi, in Belgium’s depressed French-speaking southern region of Wallonia.<\/p>\n

He moved north after a series of violent attacks and robberies on his family but was taken to a local court because he had not paid back a grant to renovate his house in 1998.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It sounds fair that you’d be expected to repay a grant for renovations if you leave the area without good reason. I’d have said that these incidents would qualify for the “good reason” criterion:<\/p>\n

\n

In 2001, the victim was attacked and his BMW car was stolen. Shortly after it was recovered, armed men stormed his home and stole it a second time.<\/p>\n

In 2006, his wife and children were threatened by armed raiders, who stormed his home at night and dragged him away in his pyjamas while his horrified family looked on.<\/p>\n

He was later freed and dumped on a industrial estate as the thieves made off with another one of his cars, a Jaguar.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It might be questioned how someone who was able to own multiple expensive cars would be able to qualify for this kind of grant, but that’s a separate issue. But maybe not, as the presiding judge implied:<\/p>\n

\n

“It is perhaps not sensible to draw attention to oneself by driving a Jaguar and living in a big house, making an ostentatious display of one’s wealth in a poor and damaged region like Charleroi,” said the judge.<\/p>\n

The businessman’s lawyer accused the civil court of supporting “hooligans”.<\/p>\n

“In Charleroi, you must drive in a Trabant, wear a tracksuit and live in a slum to be safe from criminals and above reproach from judges,” said Cl\u00e9ment de Clety<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the judge really does think he was “asking for it”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent Belgian court decision is remarkable: The crime victim, a businessman named only as Laurent, had been living in a suburb of Charleroi, in Belgium’s depressed French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. He moved north after a series of violent attacks and robberies on his family but was taken to a local court because he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,9],"tags":[52,523,343],"class_list":["post-3238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-law","tag-absurd","tag-belgium","tag-crimeandpunishment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-Qe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3239,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions\/3239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}