Yes, you did read that headline correctly. The UK’s Mirror is reporting that a few days ago a 53-year-old man named Peter Bayliss was convicted on child cruelty charges for forcing a child to watch George Romero’s classic zombie film ‘Night of the Living Dead’. The charges have come 20 years after the night he showed the film to the girl, 6 at the time, as a punishment for misbehaving.
Bayliss’ alcoholism was blamed for his lack of judgement at the time of the incident. He was convicted and sentenced by the Shrewsbury Crown Court, receiving a six-month suspended sentence, as well as 160 hours of community service. There is no word to why it took 20 years for charges to be filed.
This was not sustained abuse but you, quite deliberately, made a child watch a horror film as a punishment for behaving like a child.” The court said to Bayliss. “And she suffered, not in a long-term psychological injury, but from evidence she suffered nightmares for some time afterwards.”
For the life of me, I can not understand why the court would even bother with a case like this. Let’s be honest, it’s completely ridiculous. To make things worse, Bayliss will now have a child cruelty charge permanently on his record, over a movie.
I feel the need to point out that the young girl, Kyra Schon, who starred in ‘Night of the Living Dead’ was not much older than the “victim” when Bayliss made her watch the film.
