I'm just pondering whether I'm being politically incorrect, chauvinistic or showing my age .. BUT .....

We are currently riding a wave of men being outed for numerous sexual indiscretions - the name Harvey Weinstein comes to mind, but maybe it all started with people like Rolf Harris.

I should perhaps preface my comments by emphasising that I in no way condone either of their actions and I fully support the rights of women to go about their day-to-day lives without being molested. I shouldn't need to say that, but there you go.

However .... I am beginning to think that the pendulum is swinging a tad too far in the other direction, and that natural justice is being replaced with a lynch mob mentality. It seems that trial by media is replacing any presumption of innocence.

I have two issues .....

1) I believe that unless there is obvious and proven evidence of guilt, we should be applying that presumption of innocence a little more often than currently seems to be the case. A case in point lies with Robert Doyle, Lord Mayor of Melbourne, who has been reduced to a mental invalid as a result of as yet unproven allegations. Perhaps he will be found to have committed the sins he is accused of, perhaps not, but should we not allow him at least a semblance of due process before lynching him in the streets?

2) The second issue is related to the first and it concerns the relative weight we apply to various crimes. If Robert Doyle is indeed guilty of touching someone's thigh and making crude and inappropriate comments, should this be prioritised over youths who deliberately bash people senseless, create havoc and mayhem and generally go out of their way to terrorise and harm the weak and defenseless on a regular basis.

Again, none of my views should be interpreted as being accepting of harassment of women, but surely there is a scale of evil which is not being applied with any sense of proportion. Sure men should not be touching women inappropriately, but there are degrees of severity in the crime spectrum and that order seems to have become confused.

A further example lies in that Olympic coach who molested all those young gymnasts. No doubt there of the crimes he committed, but does a sentence of 175 years in jail deem his crimes to be worse than murderers who get half as much, or horrendous bashings and acts of savage violence which earn a symbolic slap on the wrist ? We see it every day in our courts, and the police see offenders released, laughing, and setting off to do it all again.

Feel free to misinterpret my concerns, but I do feel that society is losing its sense of proportion here, and crimes and sentencing should be placed on a scale where crimes are punished with regard to their relative level of evil - not simply by how many papers the story can sell.