The depths of depravity...

[sp1814]

The response to the recent recent Muslim teenage girls 'grooming' stories are pretty horrific and disturbing...but are our responses to those disgusting crimes muted by the sheer <insert appropriate word> of stories like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...-bucks-herts-18712853

I cannot fathom why someone...anyone would get their kicks by raping a four month old girl - is this becoming more frequent, or is it just being reported more frequently?

I recall a story from last year where a (female) nursery school teacher was found to be part of a paedophile ring - and again we're talking about her abusing toddlers.

What...is...happening...?

[jno]

boxtops, there's a thread on that one, where I was one of very few people saying the judge might have got it right; at any rate he was better placed to pass judgment than people who have neither heard the evidence nor seen the defendant

http://www.theanswerb.../Question1149029.html

As for paedophilia, it's not a crime and shouldn't be. Nobody should be locked up for having antisocial thoughts. Acting on those thoughts is however a serious matter. Can child molesters be rehabilitated? I don't know. There's some useful discussion here

http://www.goodtherap...ation-therapy-0615126

but it doesn't really reach a conclusion. I don't believe in the death penalty, but there's a case for locking offenders up forever as a public danger.

[jno]

(apparently thinking the judge might know more about it than I do = thinking it's not serious, in em's eyes)

[boxtops]

I can't agree AT ALL with you, jno, that paedophaelia's not a crime - it's perversion and degradation of a child, and acting on it is definitely not only against the law but against everything decent in this land.

[venator]

I've worked in a firm of criminal solicitors who had people charged with this sort of thing. Although I had no professional contact with them, I sometimes had to walk out of the office.

They were for the most part intelligent men, who justified their actions - he/she was a little ***** and was asking for it etc.

In these and other abuse cases, I would sometimes transcribe police interview tapes myself, so that our typists wouldn't have to deal with the really nasty stuff.

An awful lot of the worst of it is never made public, quite rightly in my opinion.

[cathfromsaron]

it definitely used to be much more secret and mainly within families!

plus the internet and mass media has enabled organisation and co-ordination of both reporting/detection and the paedos themselves!

cath x

[Kromovaracun]

I think jno was saying it's only a crime to enact paedophilia - it isn't a crime to have paedophile thoughts.

--

On the rehabilitation thing, it's probably useful to bear in mind that there is no known way in which psychopaths can be 'cured' or rehabilitated. Pretty much every approach we know of is either ineffective or makes the situation worse by enabling them to convince their testers that they've changed. There's been plenty of research on it - so far as we know, psychopathy is impossible to rehabilitate.

Paedophilia is a phenomenon we understand a little less well - so I don't know if it's possible to rehabilitate them or not. But it's worth bearing in mind that there are some extremely dangerous mental disorders which simply *are* totally impossible to rehabilitate. We need to be open to the possiblity that paedophilia is one of them.

[boxtops]

I see that viewpoint - it is a mental disorder and needs to be seen as such.

[jno]

that's correct, Kromovaracun: I think paedophilia is just an abstract noun meaning a state of mind (to phrase it loosely) like homophobia, say; it's child molestation that's the crime.

I have no problem with it being a crime, either. And while I feel sorry for people whose brains have somehow got stuck in this groove, I have no problem with locking them up forever to keep society safe if there's no way they can be cured.

[venator]

I don't think most paedophiles can be rehabilitated. Furthermore, they are often very intelligent, and capable of giving the right answers to a case worker in order to gain release into the community.

It never goes away, and we have seen plenty of cases of reoffending in these circumstances.

There are times when I'd happily apply Sharia law - the offender is handed over to the victim's family, who are free to use their rusty penknife....

[Duncer]

Having worked with these creatures I can assure you that you are right. They are generally very intelligent, "respectable" and highly manipulative, with little or no remorse. Often the child led them on or was asking for it.

I can see only two answers, life imprisonment meaning life, or death.

[venator]

What about the rusty penknife treatment, Duncer?

[Brenden]

Or lobotomise them - we have to have some deterrent to protect our children from these monsters

[youngmafbog]

Being an ex warder should ensure he gets a rough ride. Can't see either the other inmates or his ex-collegues beeing too pleased, so even if classifed as a NONCE hopefully someone at some point in the next nine years will string him up by his b***s with cheeswire.

[chaptazbru]

A four month old baby girl, her insides will probably be ruined. I could kill this piece of filth, I really could. I hope they get him in prison.

[emmie]

jno can you explain this

[i] (apparently thinking the judge might know more about it than I do = thinking it's not serious, in em's eyes) [i]

because something is getting lost in translation.

[emmie]

that was supposed it be in italics.

[lcg]

someone like that should be castrated - end of. he will have a fun time in prison as a sex offender and screw - i hope that karma happens to him every day. it's the least he deserves....

[emmie]

jno, i still can't see where i was supposed to have said that, can you get back and let me know.

[jno]

at least one person doesn't see it being as serious as all that

Who did you mean, em?