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Crown prosecutor Colleen Hepburn had asked for a sentence of eight to 10 years, arguing that the father had penetrated his daughter. Croll said she only had one statement from the little girl to that effect, which left her with reasonable doubt about penetration.

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During his trial, his lawyer, Allan Lobel, had argued that the disease might have been passed on indirectly, through towels, dirty laundry or bed sheets, an argument the judge rejected. Crown prosecutor Colleen Hepburn had asked for a sentence of eight to 10 years, arguing that the father had penetrated his daughter.
Lobel asked for a conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the community.

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Originally posted by Omega:
I agree with Shik, except perhaps that justice is a false concept. Justice has merit. It's just not as simple as people think. What is justice? That we injure others in the same way they have done injury? But how can we do that in this case? And does that mean justice is equivalent to vengeance?

Or is "justice" just doing what's right? In which case, as a Christian, all I can think it would be is to help everyone as best you can, regardless of what they've done. Sometimes the only way to do that is to lock people up. And you frequently have to help the general populace at the expense of the individual criminal. But optimally, punishment should be about rehabilitation and protection, never about a pound of flesh.

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The best help for this creep may well be a bullet in the head-
he's got zero remorse and wont even admit to the vile act.

Plato speaks a lot (in Republic) about the often vague concept of "justice" and how it's diffrent from time to time and in various places- in many ways justice is both punishment and doing what is best for the society....the notion of rehabilitation is not seriously practiced anywhere I know of- particularaly regarding sex offenders.
He will doubtlessly recieve hours of mandatory counciling, but it's just going through the motions- serious effort is not devoted to fixing this kind of sickness and most of the state's efforts will go towards tracking him once he's released.
Meanwhile his victims live under the constant knowledge that each moment bring him closer to freedom (in this case the only recourse is probably for the mom and daughter to move and start all over somewhere).

Can this rapist of children ever serve society in a meaningful way again, or is he now society's burden to constantly watch and guard against for the rest of his life?

Depending on the nature of the crime, chances of rehabilitation and threat to society, I seriously think some crimes warrant execution (though not in this case per se).

If more conclusive evidence were available (a "rape kit" immeadeately after the fact for example), I'd have no problem condemning this man to life in prison.
People get more (and mandatory!) time for drug possession that this man got for raping his own daughter.

Probably the only way to really protect children against this happening again is to remove this man from society permanantly:
everyone talks so much shit about how important children are, yet this is usually the extent of how they're protected.

I'm sure I'm coming across as a bit...harsh, but consider that my own state is notorious for failing to protect children.

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Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon