Jessica's Law and Pedophilia (Read first post before replying!)

[Nancy Allen``]

I talked to my friend who fought against child porn online about this, he says that for some the attraction of children as sexual objects stems from seeing a fetish that you like. They do it because they like it, they enjoy it, and he added that the same elements that come from other acts, such as the fact it's wrong, the danger, risk of getting caught, ect adds to it.

 

As for the abused becoming abusers, BS. There'd be cases where this would happen but by and large people should be able to not rape children no matter what they went through, it's no excuse. Any lawyer who tries to prove otherwise is as bad as the pedophiles they defend.

[mur'phon]

Pedophila is a problem that cannot be solved by rehabilitation. I find that to be a load of crapola that pedophila is a mental disease that can be solved by medicating the perp.

 

I agree that paedophilia is as much a disease as homosexuality, what I disagree with is your statement that rehabilitation can't solve the problem. Sure, they'll probably always be paedophiles, but rehabilitation can help them to control themselves. Sentencing them to life in prison seems a bit to harsh to me, considering that a lot of them could return to society without causing further harm.

[mimartin]

Sentencing them to life in prison seems a bit to harsh to me' date=' considering that a lot of them could return to society without causing further harm.[/quote']

 

 

Life in prison is less harsh then what they did to the child. I believe in rehabilitation and I believe it is better for a guilty person to go free rather than there be a slim chance that an innocent person be imprisoned, but the victim will suffer the rest of their life because of this person’s “problem,” why not make the criminal suffer just as long?

[mur'phon]

why not make the criminal suffer just as long?

 

Because if the criminal can be returned to society without causing further harm and live a happy life, then isn't it better than having the criminal suffer unnecesary for a long time? Yes, they should be punished with a few years in prison to dether others, but most people don't care much about the punishment when they break the law, or they think they won't get caught.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

I was cleaning out my pics folder and found this.

 

 

 

I just think it's a testament to how much lawmakers actually care about this issue. I've watched quite a few Congressional hearings on this topic (as well as others, I find it amusing that these people govern us when they can't govern what goes on in their own votes, hearings, poker nights, etc), and I'm not inspired by the level of incompetence and lack of effort made by them.

 

I'm curious to see how many of you think these laws (ability to punish sex offenders more severely, monitoring search engines and customer records from ISPs, etc) like these will be effective. It just seems to me that since no one's bottomline is being affected by this issue, stuff like this is just hot air and just one of the latest issues being taken advantage of by politicians.

[Nancy Allen``]

Since no one's bottom line is being affected, like it would with alcohol and tobacco regulation, it should be something that's even more aggressively pursued.

[mimartin]

Because if the criminal can be returned to society without causing further harm and live a happy life' date=' then isn't it better than having the criminal suffer unnecesary for a long time? Yes, they should be punished with a few years in prison to dether others, but most people don't care much about the punishment when they break the law, or they think they won't get caught.[/quote']

 

IMO NO! Unless the same thing can be done for the innocent victim then no I don’t want to give the criminal a chance at a happy life or safe life. They obviously didn’t feel it necessary for the victim to have a safe or happy life or they wouldn’t have done what they did.

 

 

Why does the victim have to suffer the rest of their life and the guilty only suffer for a short period of time? If the punishment isn’t a deterrent then maybe the punishment isn’t stiff enough.

 

That said I do think it is the obligation of the prison system to get them help with their problem, but just because they seem to be able to control their sick impulses does not mean the crime should be forgiven. After all the harmed a innocent child and as a somewhat civilized society our most important job is to protect those that can not protect themselves.

[mur'phon]

IMO NO! Unless the same thing can be done for the innocent victim then no I don’t want to give the criminal a chance at a happy life or safe life.

 

Why not? To let the victim have some sort of revenge on the criminal? So that instead of having one persons life ruined, you would ruin two lives?

To make the criminal regret his actions for the rest of his/her life, wich he probably would anyway? Could you please answer why?

 

They obviously didn’t feel it necessary for the victim to have a safe or happy life or they wouldn’t have done what they did.

 

Paedophiles have the problem that satisfying one ofe their main desire is ilegal. This means they have to keep that desire in check, wich most of them do. However sometimes a few of them "loose controll", and even fewer don't even try to remain "in controll". Most of those not "in controll" don't think about anything except satisfying their desire, so most of them don't really think about their victim, their chance of getting caught, or anything else. After commiting the crime most paedophiles are tormented by what they have done, and how this afect the child. So most of them didn't even consider how they were ruining the victims life.

 

If the punishment isn’t a deterrent then maybe the punishment isn’t stiff enough.

 

As far as I know, stiffer punishment have litle effect on most crimes, and I have yet to see a place where stiffer punishment have made any real difference. Also were I live, the hardest punishment is 24 years for stuff like murder, and 4years to life if a person is not considered "safe" by psycologists. Yet crime is mysteriously low.........

 

That said I do think it is the obligation of the prison system to get them help with their problem

It's nice that we agree on something.

 

just because they seem to be able to control their sick impulses does not mean the crime should be forgiven.

 

Why not? If they are about as likely as anyone else to cause harm, they might as well live a good life, no?

[Jae Onasi]

The recidivism rate for pedophilia is horrendous. Pedophiles are far more likely to commit another sex crime than a murderer is to commit another murder once released.

Pedophiles have permanently ruined a child's life emotionally and quite possibly physically. I really don't care one iota if they have a good life after molesting a child. There are penalties to pay for crime, and they should pay that penalty to understand the severity of their crime and as an example to others what happens if they engage in similar behavior. Should they get help in prison? Sure. Do I want them out on the street again where they can molest my child? No way.

 

I do make a distinction between someone who's convicted of a sex offense because what he thought was adult porn turned out to be a very physically mature 15 year old instead, versus someone who actually commits a sex act with a young child. The punishment should fit the crime of course. The point of prison isn't just to punish the guilty, it's also to keep them off the streets so they don't hurt anyone else, and child molesters don't belong on the streets.

[Emperor Devon]

As far as I know' date=' stiffer punishment have litle effect on most crimes, and I have yet to see a place where stiffer punishment have made any real difference.[/quote']

 

Completely untrue. One good example of this is the practice of chopping off the hands of pickpockets in Saudi Arabia. I know a couple people who've been there, and they were amazed at how low the rate of petty theft there was. At bazaars the merchants would keep stacks of coins on their tables, in the perfect place for someone to snatch them of all things.

 

Really, it's basic logic. If there are harsh penalties for doing things people don't want to do them as much. (Not that I'm advocating that barbaric practice of cutting off hands, mind you)

 

Yet crime is mysteriously low.........

 

Perhaps because there are fewer criminals where you live which makes the lighter penalties irrelevant? I have no idea what crime rates are like where you live, but I imagine increasing or decreasing the harshness of punishments would have some effect on it.

[SilentScope001]

Pedophiles have permanently ruined a child's life emotionally and quite possibly physically. I really don't care one iota if they have a good life after molesting a child.

 

Love thy neighbor? Love thy enemy?

 

It is easy to love your child. It is not so easy to love a person who harmed your child. But really, they both are persons, and they both are humans.

[Emperor Devon]

Love thy enemy?

 

Wouldn't that contradict the 'enemy' part...?

 

But really, they both are persons, and they both are humans.

 

Humans shmumans. Whether they look like us or not, that does not excuse their actions.

[Nancy Allen``]

Kill'em all, let God sort it out if you believe in him. If you rape a child, or even an adult, if you force sex onto them then you have no right to live. Pedophiles aside who would deem such acts acceptable? I can't see anyone being able to think it's something that can be excused.

[Rogue Nine]

It is easy to love your child. It is not so easy to love a person who harmed your child. But really, they both are persons, and they both are humans.

Right, they're both humans. But let's break it down a bit further.

 

My child: someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong and nothing to deserve being made to serve the perverted desires of a stranger.

 

The person who harmed my child: someone who has hurt my child for his/her own selfish desires.

 

You talk about pedophiles just following their desires. What about my child? What about his desire not to be molested, not to have his innocence taken away from him? What about me? What about my desires not to have my child molested? Why do the pedophile's desires trump those of mine and my child?

[Jae Onasi]

Love thy neighbor? Love thy enemy?

 

It is easy to love your child. It is not so easy to love a person who harmed your child. But really, they both are persons, and they both are humans.

 

God can forgive them if they're truly repentant. I might be able to forgive them through God's grace after some time, but God help the person who I catch in the act messing with my children, because I will not hesitate to do what I need to in order to protect my children from such evil.

 

Furthermore, one can love the sinner indeed, but that does not in any way excuse the sin. It does not give the sinner carte blanche to continue sinning. It does not mean I abdicate my responsibility as a parent to protect my children from evil in the world for his pleasure. Do you honestly expect me to make any other decision about protecting my children from molesters? If I had my way, I'd remove their ability to commit a sexual crime entirely. I absolutely refuse to justify a pedophile's right to molest my child.

 

Just because pedophiles happen to be fellow members of the human race doesn't mean they belong on the street with access to other children. That doesn't excuse them for their atrocious, evil behavior, for their emotional and physical injury of a child, for the destruction of the child's trust in adults and/or family members. The safety and protection of innocents in society completely outweigh the rights of an individual to indulge in his sick desires to commit a violent sexual crime on a child.

 

This is the kind of moral ambiguity that is devastating to any culture. When we can honestly say in all seriousness that our relativistic thinking allows us to believe that we're actually infringing on the rights of a molester to commit a crime against a child, and when we can somehow justify the idea that the duty to protect a child is outweighed by an adult's desires, then we have a serious problem with moral decay in this country. No amount of mental gymnastics is ever going to make pedophilia a moral action.

[El Sitherino]

Chemical castration isn't simply "pop a pill, can't reproduce". It's a series of hormone therapies that lowers sexual desire and even performance (Erectile Dysfunction). This has been a method used to punish sexual predators for a while. It's actually under consideration for being "cruel and unusual", which would then make it an illegal practice.

 

Anyway, they've hurt kids in a most horrendous way. Pardon the expression, but who gives a **** about them. They've selfishly placed their desire over someone else's. The child, in the US, is allowed the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and I'm fairly certain that the kids idea of life, liberty, or happiness isn't equated to being forced into sexual acts with an adult.

[mimartin]

Why not? To let the victim have some sort of revenge on the criminal? So that instead of having one person’s life ruined, you would ruin two lives?

To make the criminal regret his actions for the rest of his/her life, which he probably would anyway? Could you please answer why?

 

Yes, I’d like to ruin the criminal’s life, but it would not be me or the legal system ruining his/her life. It would be the criminal’s own actions that ruined his/her life. I’m not saying I don’t want to help the person with their problem. I’m just saying that the victim is way more important to me then the pedophilia.

 

I'm no expert on the criminal system or mental illness, but I do know a victim of rape. Twenty years later and she is still very affected by what happen to her. She was in her early twenties at the time; I can only imagine how it would have affected her if she would have been younger. The slime ball got out after a few years and today she still looks over her shoulder for him. Her life change because of another’s action, she didn’t choice it, but he did. Why should he be allowed a happy life when he deprived another of the same?

 

That is where my rational about this comes from. The VICTIM should have more rights than the criminal. IMO the criminal forfeited some of their rights when they robbed the victim of their rights.

 

Why not? If they are about as likely as anyone else to cause harm' date=' they might as well live a good life, no?[/quote']

 

Like I said before, unless they can undo the harm done to their victim then they should not be forgiven. Only after they’ve served the sentence then they can be released back into society, but the crime should not be forgotten. They should be monitored for the rest of their life.

 

To me society should protect those that can not protect themselves (such as children and the elder). Normally I believe in giving people second chances, but not in the case of our children’s welfare. In the case of Pedophilia’s I’m for the one strike and you’re out rule.

 

Love thy neighbor? Love thy enemy?

It is easy to love your child. It is not so easy to love a person who harmed your child. But really, they both are persons, and they both are humans.

 

Sometimes you are showing more love towards someone by punishing them. You are protecting them from their own destructive behavior.

 

If the Pedophilia was a friend or relative of mine I’d want the penalty to be just as harsh as a stranger. I’d still try to love them and support them, but I’d want to make sure they did not ever have access to children again.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

I know I'm going to take flak for my views here, but whatever the Heck, I'll shoot.

 

First of all, I don't consider pedophilia a disorder. To explain my view here, I liken it to psychopathy (which admittedly is a mental disorder). Neither psychopaths and pedophiles, I believe, can help being what they are.

 

But of course that does not mean I condone sex with children. And I support the rapid finding of a 'cure' for pedophilia, and the encouragement of employing such a 'cure', while keeping it voluntary. Like psychopaths, pedophiles simply need to make the best, morally, of their situation. For psychopaths, that means playing nice. For pedophiles, it means leaving the lolitas to themselves. It's probably not easy, but it's necessary.

 

As for having sex with teenagers, I'm less sure. Like it or not, there are people 14 and 15 years old who have had happy, mutual relationships with far older people. So on one hand - if they are happy together, who are we to say they can't be boyfriend and girlfriend? On the other hand, there are teen girls and boys of forced marriages in the Middle East who are happy together, too - does that mean forced arranged marriages are OK?

 

As a side note, I think young teen-grown person relationships and arranged marriages can be compared quite effectively:

 

Happiness:

-A significant number of teen-to-adult relationships end up working fine.

-A significant number of arranged marriages end up working fine.

Consent:

-Many teen-to-adult relationships are not voluntary.

-Many arranged marriages are not voluntary.

 

So I think, personally, they can be treated equally. If one is wrong, so is the other. The problem is I can't really decide when it comes to either.

 

As for death sentence for child abuse - no. As a matter of fact, I recognize it for the emotion-laden quest for revenge that it is, and, despite my temptations to condone it, I choose to oppose it 100%. As a side note, it also reeks of eugenics-style 'rooting out the bad' - I think what we really want with such a law is to kill the pedophiles to clean up the gene pool. So seeing I'm against measures of eugenics, not to mention revenge-based justice, I vote no to death sentence for child abuse. Castration of offenders, probably. All offenders, pedophiles or otherwise. However, I recognize this as revenge-based as I've got over half a dozen friends who have gotten raped (I go to a school for people whose lives haven't been kind to them), so don't take my view on that too seriously:o.

 

As two last notes:

- I believe adult-to-child sex is wrong.

- I believe in finding an effective, actually-working way to 'cure' pedophilia, but that it should be voluntary.

 

...So this is why I really don't know if pedophiles should be punished. The pedophile only wants to be happy, and because of that, he causes lots of harm to civilization and to childern. But the pedophile wants to be happy. To go and imprison him, and even KILL him, just because he wants to be happy, nay, because he is BUILT that way by having his sexual desires directing him to do such a deed...and to call it wrong without worrying about the unhappiness we are causing to the pedophile by placing such an artifical law...

OK, I know I'm irritatingly tolerant when it comes to pedophiles, but this is just wrong.

 

If we were to follow this rhetoric, then no one can be punished, buddy. Robbery makes people happy. Beating innocent homosexuals up makes bigots happy. Heck, destroying the WTC probably made Bin Laden very happy in his cave, to the point of singing and dancing and throwing wild parties. Yet we invaded Afghanistan to capture him and execute him.

 

Everything would be legal if we were to think this way. Literally everything.

 

Oh, and just so there won't be any mistakes: Freud was a moron. He was hopeless as a psychiatrist, losing countless patients, and his ideas have been proven wrong. I don't care if he essentially founded psychology - his own ideas in the field were, to say the least, misguided.

 

Also, I think alerting people in the area they live should only be done when the person have been convicted more than once.

Perspective. The fact that people want this only for rapists of children and not for other sex offenders (clicky and scroll down page to last sign), terrorists, murderers, and so on, proves it's an irrational desire not founded on logic, rate of repetition notwithstanding.

 

The pedophile believes what he is doing is right.

Far from it. While people do hurt others while trying to do good (fundie parents sending their homosexual kids to be tormented in de-gayification camps is but one example), most sexual molesters, like thieves and murderers, perfectly well know that what they are doing is not right. I can nick a candy bar from someone and still know it's wrong. I don't do it because it's right, I do it because of my drive for something tasty. Not that that makes it morally right, of course:o.

 

I agree that paedophilia is as much a disease as homosexuality

For your information, sickness of the mind is called a mental disorder, not a disease.

 

Love thine enemy?

A splendid proposal for society. Let's invent some flying elephants to go with it. Both are equally plausible.

[Nancy Allen``]

With pedophiles not being able to help what they are, actually that's not the case. I spoke to my friend who fought child porn and he said that pedophiles know what they do and have the power to stop themselves, they just choose not to. He's gotten into their minds and had come to the conclusion that lack of self control is not an excuse, especially in premeditated cases of kidnapping rape and murder. In short it doesn't come from a lack of self control, it comes from a calculated plan with no regard to the child or their family.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

I'm not talking about actually raping and downloading child porn, I'm talking about being attracted to children in the first place. Evidently abusing someone and downloading pictures is voluntary.

[Nancy Allen``]

That too stems from pedophiles seeing something, child pornography, and it being something that appeals to them. This stems from seeing people who have dealt in it, downloaded it and fantasised about it and they had knocked it until they tried it and now they look at it as any other type of legal fetish, knowing full well that it is illegal. Can the mere fact that it appeals to them mean something is wrong with them? Absolutely, no question they have problems if they like kiddies, but when I spoke to my friend who fought child porn he said that while someone who enjoys this type of material is disturbed he's not sure if this can be pinned down to any mental condition, as many pedophiles are otherwise very normal people and defy any signs of being a, his words, a 'rock spider.'