Should pedophilic sex offenders ever be released?

Great Debates
101

Second verse, same as the first. There is no such thing as consensual sex if the child has not reached the age of consent! If I pay a 10 year old $10 for his mint condition Mickey Mantle card, I have committed a crime of fraud despite the fact that he gave consent. If a 13 year old asks for a beer and you give it to him, you have broken the law despite the fact that he asked. If a 14 year old asks to see porn and you provide it, you have just broken the law despite the fact that he asked. If a 10 year old agrees to have sex, it is still considered statutory rape because the child is not legally capable of giving consent. It is up to the adult to make the distinction between what is proper and improper, legal and illegal, not the child.
If you go before the judge and say, Gee, your Honor. I know she was 12 but she really wanted to do it. I thought it was OK since she said yes,” I don’t think the judge is going to turn around and say, “Of course, Mr2001! She agreed so it’s not rape.” They’ll throw the book at you. And that’s the way it should be. You are taking advantage of someone who may appear to be mature enough to make rational decisions but in fact is not.
There are always exceptions to maturity levels in children. You can have a Doogie Howser prodigy that is intellectually mature enough to make complicated business decisions. You have child stars that have become emancipated at young ages and are no longer required to have parental supervision. We’ve even had kids that have divorced their parents. But the majority of kids are not capable of making monumental decisions, especially when it comes to sex. That is why the law sets an age of consent for sexual matters and an age of majority for other legal matters.
Look back at your adolescence. I’m sure you made stupid mistakes. That is part of growing up: gaining experience and knowledge so you can handle difficult moral situations.
Recent research has found that the prefrontal cortex of the brain begins growing again just before puberty .

It appears that kids might be physically incapable of making the rational decisions about their behavior. Some neurologists have said that, if the research pans out, that laws on juvenile offenders might have to be modified to take that into account. If that happens, then “Tommy” could be charged with a lesser crime or given lighter sentencing. Until that time it is up to the adults with the experience and maturity of age and development to make decisions in the best interest of the child. And that means not having sex with a kid who says yes.

No, death penalty for adult rape is unconstitutional. The SCOTUS refused to hear the appeals on death penalty for child rape. That was ruled constitutional by the Louisiana Supreme court.

I don’t know. Maybe an eye for an eye? Someone hurts a kid, they should be punished. Don’t send them to Club Fed. Send them to a real prison.

102

Except in this case, he’s a kid too. And I’d be willing to bet that his behavior stems from being molested himself. Don’t get me wrong-I’m not excusing what he did, not by a long shot. But maybe you need to take a look at the environment in which he was raised.

103

Okay, I went back and re-read my post, and I sure don’t see where I suggested in the faintest possible way that we do the research INSTEAD OF imprisoning. I just wanted to see if anybody was open to actually getting to the root cause. Plus, of course, imprisoning, killing and castrating. God forbid I should be mistakenly percieved as having any sympathy for a fellow human being that’s not a victim.

Jeez, some of you people are just so touchy!

Oh, crap, why do I do that when I KNOW it’s gonna’ cause problems?

104

At this rate, this thread is going down the drain.

That’s more like the subject at hand: when is someone mature enough? As a related question, is it really right to treat someone who has sex with a person who is ‘almost’ mature enough in the same manner as someone who molests a five-year-old?

You should look at some of the caveats in your own article. When one of these states actually tries to execute someone for this crime, I am sure the appeals will wind up at the Supreme Court, which will probably reject the death penalty for child rape. It will be constitutional if they allow it, which would create new precedent. At the moment, the death penalty is only allowable for murder.

This is weak.

105

Here’s his environment:
His father is a chronic alcoholic living in the basement of the alcoholic grandmother. Father is on disability and just recently got his license back after multiple DUIs. They have been divorced since “Tommy” was 1.
“Tommy” lives with his mother but visits one weekend a month with dad.
The mother is a housewife, married to a nice man who is an over the road truck driver and is gone all week. Together they have two more sons. The 8 year old is an attention seeker (tells outrageous lies, like he was getting a rattlesnake for Christmas, and constantly getting hurt from doing stunts on his bike) but not in an unusually abnormal manner. The 3 year old has a speech impediment but is smart as a whip.
Neither mom or the step dad has more than a high school education but they are not stupid people.
They are not well off financially but they do OK. The mom and step dad don’t drink or do drugs. He treats “Tommy” as his own son and has even brought the kids along on some of his runs during the summer. He was assistant coach for “Tommy’s” little league team.
Did the birth father abuse him? Nobody thinks so.
“Tommy” had touched a 10 year old girl last year but no one pursued it because the parents weren’t sure if it was mutual exploration or something else. We didn’t find out about this until after the incident with our daughter.
“Tommy” has brought his step dad’s Playboys to show to my son. He was also suspended for telling dirty jokes in school. When I was 14 I was thrilled to find my dad’s Playboy and I had a whole repertoire of off-color jokes.
Is “Tommy” doing things because he was abused or is there something wrong with his wiring? Nature or nurture? Genes or environment? Who knows.
What I do know is that the mother is not keeping a tight enough leash on him. If she doesn’t limit his activities and make sure he gets some serious help, he will most likely get worse.

106

One last time, dude: I know what the law says. We all do. No one here is claiming it’s legal.

I’m not disputing that. But if you can’t see a difference between that and violent rape, you have no sense of perspective whatsoever.

Looking back, I can say that none of the decisions I made about sex were mistakes.

But let me tell you this: if I had lived in, say, California (where the age of consent is 18) instead of Washington (where it’s 16), my high school girlfriend and I would both be criminals. Sex offenders. According to some people in this thread, we should have to go door to door for the rest of our lives telling people that we each had sex with a minor. We should be prohibited from living near a school, playground, Chuck E. Cheese, baseball card shop, ice cream parlor, etc. for the rest of our lives. Or maybe we should just be locked up and never released.

Of course, I don’t have to worry about that, because I was lucky enough to live 600 miles to the north. But why should some poor kid in California suffer that fate? I mean, if you had your way and every “sex offender” were given exactly the same sentence, that’s what would happen, right?

Now let me return to my earlier point about consent. What my girlfriend and I did was entirely consensual, in Washington, but suppose we lived in California instead. It wouldn’t have been legally consensual, but it still would have been factually consensual, because we both would’ve had exactly the same maturity level, the same experience, the same understanding of what we were doing, no matter what state we were in. We wouldn’t suddenly lose the ability to consent just because we walked 600 miles to the south - the only difference would be whether the state recognized our consent or not.

107

For the children-are-unable-to-consent crowd:

So, what would happen if science were to turn around and prove that certain types of sexual relationships had measurable, long-term social and health benefits for young teens, then what?

I mean, since they are under age of consent, the teenagers aren’t able to properly judge what is right and proper, correct? It’s court-mandated hot teen sex for all, correct? Whether they want it or not is completely irrelavent, given that we adults know better, yes?

Of course, some teenagers may disagree with this study’s findings, but hey, what do they know? Once we’ve proven that a statistically-significant percentage of teens will benefit from the sex, what right do they have to disagree? They can’t say ‘Yes’ to sex legally. Why should they be able to say ‘No’?

The idea of consent is, to me, a terribly important concept, because once you start saying that what a person’s actually saying is less important than external factors, then you open up the above scenario. To protect the children, of course.

108

Certainly. It is extremely immoral to act otherwise. The very concept of such permanent incarceration for any and every act with someone younger than 18 that could be considered sexual, no matter how mild, demonstrates nothing but contempt for the incredibly hard-won maturity and understanding of justice we’ve earned over the centuries. Justice does not exist if it is not moral, rational, balanced, and commensurate. To contend otherwise, or to hold that permanent or lenghty incarceration IS commensurate, as too many people in this thread have done, is evil. There is no other word.

Please don’t misread what I’ve said. I certainly believe that genuinely injurious (physically or psychologically) sexual acts, especially with pre-pubescent children, MUST be considered criminal acts and the perpetrators punished appropriately. But it must be appropriate and commensurate and in the best interests of everyone involved, including the perpetrator if they’re a minor. Permanent or lengthy incarceration in every single case is supremely evil and must never be allowed. It would be profoundly barbaric. It pains me to see that so many people are barbarians at heart.

Far too many people, especially Americans, lose their sense of proportion, their rationality, and even ther sanity when it comes to these issues. It comes, I believe, from our perverse puritanistic national background and fundamentalist jeremiads and our purely emotional and irrational discomfort and neuroses regarding sex of any kind, particularly sex outside of our narrow and overly priggish conventions. Too many of us are unwilling or incapable of reasoning fairly and justly when it comes to sexual behavior, as too many comments here clearly attest, particularly some of erie774’s. Of course we should make allowances for a grieving parent within a reasonable time from the assault on their child, but many of his comments are far, far beyond the pale and are deserving of our and society’s strong condemnation. These include:

I was amazed and disheartened that only a tiny few voiced their objections to such contemptible thinking and remarks. Yes, erie774 intelligently moderated his remarks in later posts, which I was glad to see, but he didn’t retract them. In my opinion, he should. If nothing else, it would aid his credibility. I believe it might also help him adjust to what’s happened. As it is, not only will he have to face the fact that he lusted for a child’s murder, he’ll always see his daughter as a victim, a girl who was foully dirtied, and it will most definitely rub off on her and pollute her own view of herself.

That last point is especially, vastly important. It is far, far more important than the revenge of punishing the offender. The psychological evidence has persuaded me that parents often inflict worse and more permanent psychological damage to their child victim by over-reacting compared to what the offender did in many, but certainly not all, cases. Calling in the police and otherwise over-reacting can often be the worst possible decision in that it tremendously magnifies and exacerbates the psychological impact of what’s already happened. Although the parents usually imagine they’re acting in the best interests of their child, it too often results in unintended mental cruelty and damage more permanent than what the offender inflicted. Recall what the raod to hell is paved with.

Kids will often get over what happened better if not too much is made of the event, if it is not stressed out of proportion, which police involvment and parental over-reaction tends to do. It’s too often just a second victimization. If any of my children were merely touched in the way erie774’s was, my love for my child and my overwhelming need to protect his/her best interests would most definitely prevent me from contacting the police and thereby adding greatly to to her psychological burden and vastly increasing whatever damage was already inflicted. Of course I would not remain silent. While shielding my child to the best of my ability, I would confront the offender’s parents and inform them of what happened. I would then permanently forbid the offender from entering my property and instruct my child to never interact with him again and to immediately report any approaches or anything else untoward. I would also inform the neighbors about the offender, ideally without referencing my child at all. I’d say something along the lines of “That person is known to molest children. Keep him out of your home and away from your children!” If you approach the matter intelligently, I have no doubt they would believe you and act appropriately.

Let’s also address the ridiculous myth that all underage sexuality is psychologically injurious. For millions of years we all engaged in what today in America would be considered illegal, underage sex, for both procreation and recreation. It did no harm. Sure, I personally feel fear and disgust towards that, definitely at least for adult-child sexuality, but I recognize that this is almost entirely a result of modern social emotional conditioning rather than objective reality. We adults have far more of a problem with it than our young do. And who among us as children did not play doctor? The little neighbor girls in such games revealed themselves without asking and without inhibition. I don’t recall if any touching took place, but it wouldn’t surprise me. This, it seems to me, is not excessively far removed from what “Tommy” did. Yet most of you, judging from your comments and if you were logically consistent, would eagerly put us all in prison, some of you for the rest of our lives. It’s insanity.

(Continued in my next post)

109

Also note that not all youngsters who have been “victims” of underage sexuality, even those between children and adults, hate or regret or were damaged by what happened. Many, though mostly boys, reported that they very much enjoyed such encounters and have no regrests at all and did not suffer any psychological harm. There is at least one scientific study (and perhaps others) that backs that up, as I learned from my subscription to The Skeptical Inquirer. In volume 25.4 of The Skeptical Inquirer, published in 2001, there appeared an article by scientists Bruce Rind, Robert Bauserman, and Philip Tromovitch entitled “The Condemned Meta-Analysis on Child Sexual Abuse: Good Science and Long-Overdue Skepticism.” It is in reference to their 1998 study published in a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal, Psychological Bulletin: Rind, B., P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman. 1998. A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Psychological Bulletin 124, 22-53.

Congress universally condemned the study, in my opinion because Congress has a history of enmity towards science and most people, including legislators, hate facts that contadict their all too often ignorant opinions. Here are some excerpts

Please note that the authors have never claimed that no one who has undergone child sexual abuse suffers long-term psychological trauma! But they have proved beyond all reasonable doubt that it is far from universal and that a large subset of youngsters who have undergone such events have either neutral or positive memories, feelings, and reactions. Sometimes their reactions are not merely positive, but extremely positive. And they’ve also demonstrated that the severity of the response varies considerably with gender, forcefulness, relatedness to the offender, and consent (practical consent, not legal consent, which we all understand perfectly well.)

Again, don’t misread me. Neither I nor the authors advocate such behaviors or think they should never be prosecuted! But parents and police and judges must take ALL of this into account if they genuinely have the child’s best interests at heart. Too many posters in this thread clearly feel that their desire for revenge and hatred is more important than their loving responsibility to their child’s best interests.

110

By the way, Bruce Rind is in the Department of Psychology at Temple University. Robert Bauserman is with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, State of Maryland. Philip Tromovitch is in the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania.

111

Let me clarify my earlier statements. I am an angry father who is outraged that my daughter’s innocence was taken away. I’m furious that “Tommy” had done something similar before and nothing was done about it and that we were never told by his parents and that his mother was OK with him being alone with my daughter. I’m beside myself that “Tommy” asked our babysitter why she was so angry at him and when she told him that she knew what he did, he had the gall to say, “Well, you don’t know the whole story.” What!! She said, “Did you touch a 5 year old girl?” He said yes and she said that was all she needed to know. Was he going to claim that my daughter seduced him?
I don’t really advocate torture or murder. I wanted to strike back. I wanted revenge. I think that this is a normal response. I would never, ever act on those feelings because:

  1. they are wrong,
  2. they are disproportionate to the harm inflicted
  3. my family needs me at home, not in jail.
    Look at my posts 53, 55, 66 and 73.
    As for calling the police and DCFS, look at my post #8.

That’s right. My wife and I did not call the cops or DCFS first, it was “Tommy’s” mother who called the county mental health department to see about getting help for him. They told her that they were obligated by law to contact DCFS and the police. We spoke with DCFS who told us that we had to call the police ourselves or we could be considered failing to protect our child. The police said that we had to take our daughter to the hospital so she could be examined. This resulted in another call to DCFS.
You can’t keep it quiet, you can’t minimize it. The police and social services will find out. And if you don’t make the necessary steps to protect yourself, you will be in deep trouble and you could have your kids taken away. That is not an exaggeration.
After the initial situation and the subsequent police and hospital interviews, we have not talked about “Tommy”. All conversations about him happen after she is in bed or is out so there is no chance she will overhear our discussions about the fact that his parents aren’t keeping a tight rein on him or what we think will happen at court (next Friday in fact).If she mentions him or talks about it, we will talk calmly about it. When she says she doesn’t want to talk about it any more, we tell OK we can stop talking and don’t push it.
On the anniversary of 9/11, my son and I watched Bush’s speech. Afterwards, my daughter asked what Bush was talking about. I told her that 5 years ago some very bad men had attacked our country and had hurt and killed a lot of people. I said that the president was talking about how there are still bad men out there who want to hurt us and we are catching and stopping them (please don’t rip into me for this. I was not going to get into War on Terror, failed Iraq policies and Patriot Acts with a Kindergartner).
She asked me, “Are these bad men like ‘Tommy’?”
I almost threw up. I told her that these men were much worse than “Tommy” because they killed a lot of people.
The worst crime she could think of was what “Tommy” had done. Yet I had to tell her there are worse people and crimes.
A child psychiatrist we spoke with said that at this point it is not necessary for her to have counseling right now. She said it is almost certain that when she becomes a teen and she begins getting sexual feelings she would probably need to talk with someone about the conflicting feelings she will have.
We don’t treat her as a victim. We don’t have her locked in her room, wrapped in bubble wrap to protect her like some china doll.
I understand normal child exploration. Almost everyone played “doctor” or “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. But the kids are usually the same age, not a 14 year old with a 5 year old. 14 year olds are more interested in exploring other 14 year olds.
If two teens are fooling around consensually, that’s OK (as long as they are careful about STDs and contraception). That’s normal. If a 14 year old girl is dating a 16 year old boy (say a Freshman and a Junior), that’s OK. If they are still dating two years later when he graduates and she is now 16 and he’s 18, that is OK also.
When I was 16, I used to babysit for the woman down the block. She was 32 and divorced. She seduced me. It was consensual, I enjoyed it and thought it was great. After the first time, I never babysat for her again. She’d call my house to ask if I could sit, I would go down to her house and the kids would be gone. We’d just hop in the sack. She had “dirty” magazines (Playboys, Playgirls and Penthouse) and we would look at them together. This went on for almost 4 months until I got a girlfriend.
Years later I looked back and realized just what had happened. She took advantage of an inexperienced teenager who would jump at the chance to get a little. She was lonely and horny and I was there. She used me. And she paid me to cover up the deceipt for my parents.! I was a gigalo!
Did it hurt me physically? No. Did it hurt me emotionally? Maybe. After that I never dated girls or women my age or younger. They were always older. My wife is 1 ½ years older than me.
I also never babysat again either. I loved kids and had a great time sitting for families in the area. But I just couldn’t do it again. I kept looking at the mothers to make sure they weren’t checking me out.
For quite a while I had a porn fixation. I collected every magazine I could get my hands on. When I got stationed in Germany, it got worse because harder stuff was available.
Maybe I’m not the norm. Maybe I overanalyzed what happened to me and took it too much to heart. Maybe most teens who have consensual sex with older people handle it better than me.
What does it say about an adult who intentionally targets a teenager? What does it say about someone who is attracted to someone who is young enough to be their own child? Everyone raved about the movie “American Beauty” but I could only see a pervert who was attracted to his teenage daughter’s friend. “Summer of’42” was the same way.
I respect the opinions of everyone on this thread but, unless you have been in a similar situation, it is very hard to think about how you will react. I had very different opinions before all of this. I keep getting reminded of the movie “Ordinary People”. Mary Tyler Moore’s character is told that people just want her to be happy. She tells them:

Again, my bitterness comes out when I am offered advice and opinions by people that have never been there. When my friend, who was in Nam, started telling me about a combat situation he had been in, I told him, “God, that must have been awful.” He just looked at me and very quietly said, “You have no idea and I pray to God you never do.” He’s right. And I can’t pretend to judge him or offer advice. I can listen to him talk about his experiences, hold him when he still cries about lost friends, raise a drink to their memories, hear the fear in his voice at the demons he still faces and not turn away from him. In short I can be a friend.
I don’t know what the answers are. But my opinion is that it should not be accepted. It should not be excused. And, especially, we should eliminate the double standards for punishing men more than women.

I’ll let you all know what happens next week with “Tommy”.

112

I commend you on such a heartfelt yet calm and rational post. Although, as I had already pointed out, you had begun to moderate your words and opinions earlier, forgive me my mild egotism if I believe that my response above may have helped to further that trend along. Frankly, I was afraid you or others might think I was a spokeman for NAMBLA or something!

But your last post contained a hint that you thought I was referring first and foremost to you and your daughter. I can see how you might easily come to that conclusion, since I did indeed refer to you both on several occaisions, but in reality your situation served primarily as a point of reflection for what I was really trying to say. My posts were actually primarily addressed to all those wretched, unjust, and, I have to say evil, posters in this thread who advocated extreme punishment for even minor offenses and considered ALL sexual circumstances with ANYONE under 18 to deserve lengthy or even permanent incarceration and permanent public listings on sex offender registries, or that Jesus himself would smite them! These people are shameful excuses for human beings.

Now I’ll try to respond directly to some of the things you say in your latest post which I don’t quite agree with (note that I DO agree with the great bulk of that post).

I certainly understand your anger and your fury, and I would most definitely feel the same way for a time. But I don’t believe that your daughter’s innocence was truly taken away by Tommy’s actions. I’d say that he only dented it. It was not by any means a trivial event, but neither was it a severe or traumatic event. At least it would not have been without over-reaction and police involvement, which I believe almost always results in a second victimization that’s even worse than the original one. I completely take you at your word that there was no way to avoid the involvement of the authorities in your specific case, so I honestly don’t blame you, but I still believe if over-reaction and police involvement could have somehow been avoided, your daughter would have been better off. But as I said, I believe it’s not your fault.

But consider this (and this isn’t directed at you, but to everybody). About a decade ago, a very close friend of mine came to me and hesitantly told me the following story. He said he’d just found out that his 11 year old son had been having secret sex with a 14 year old neighbor boy for about a year in various places including both boy’s homes and other secret locations. I was aghast, of course. But I knew his son well and I knew the other boy a bit (he was our paper boy), and they both seemed perfectly well adjusted and as normal as normal could be. They had strong, attentive, loving middle-class families. They played sports. They both did well in school, even during and after all this took place. They both laughed and played and acted completely and utterly normally.

We discussed all that throroughly. He hadn’t approached his son or the other boy yet, and didn’t want to until he had talked things out with me. At the time and in retrospect, his inner strength, rationality, and above all, his presence of mind when faced with all this impressed me no end. We talked about bringing in the authorities and tried to forsee what would happen in that event. We soon realized BOTH lives would be permanently damaged if that happened! Everyone would find out, neighbor kids, school teachers and kids, everyone. The BEST that could be expected was that everyone would forever look with pity and revulsion at BOTH of them. They BOTH would be forever branded as “faggots” and mocked and probably even beaten by bullies. This would ALWAYS be in BOTH child’s permanent records and medical files. So he decided he would handle things personally and leave the authorities out of it at least until he understood the situation as well as he could.

He talked kindly and with compassion to his son many times and learned that it had been more or less a mutual decision and that although this was all hideously embarrassing for the child, he didn’t think he’d done anything very wrong. He didn’t think the other boy had done anything wrong, either. He thought it was “fun”. In the end, after long discussions with everyone involved and after consulting many library books, my friend decided that his son hadn’t been seriously damaged after all. There was no indication whatsoever that his son had lost his innocence. He still believes very strongly that not bringing in the authorities was the single best decision he’d ever made. He loved his son far too much to abuse the boy himself by making an excessively great deal of this and making it public knowledge. (Naturally, he explained to his son why what he and the other boy did was wrong and kept the other boy away from his son and so forth.)

Today his adult son is still completely well-adjusted and healthy. He’s on the dean’s list at Notre Dame and is engaged to be married after he graduates. His father told me that not only does his son have no regrets whatsoever about what happened, he says he looks back at it with fondness, if also a bit of embarassment. But imagine how permanently damaged and ruined his life would be today if the authorities had gotten involved!

In my view, his father demonstrated the highest love for his child by not subjecting him to further abuse by the police and therapists and teachers and peers. Bravo for both father and son!

It’s great that you understand that. But do you see how many other posters in this thread vehemently disagree with you?

Frankly, I’m just not sure. Are you? I don’t know about you, but I’ve often lusted after teenagers I’ve seen on TV in my heart. I’ve never acted on these impulses, naturally, but that’s primarily because it’s illegal. I believe males are evolutionarily hard-wired to be sexually attracted to teenage beauty (but also adult beauty), since that’s the age at which evolution constructed us to be most sexually active. Let me emphasize, however, that I do not believe that what’s natural is necessarily what’s good! Our prefrontal lobes allow us to exert informed control over our behavior, and that’s what being human is all about. Nevertheless, I seriously doubt whether most males can prevent themselves from being sexually attracted to teens. All we can do is prevent ourselves from acting upon those desires in inappropriate ways.

I can certainly understand your feelings, but I don’t agree with that view. I absolutely and categorically deny that one has to have had direct personal experience with something to undertand it. If that were true, our entire race is forever doomed! In fact, we would not now exist in anything like the way we do. Humans are a highly empathic species and secondary knowledge is perfectly well close enough.