Well, sure, if someone can’t control themselves we have to lock them up for the safety of others.
Wouldn’t it be better, though, if we could prevent such crimes from occurring in the first place?
You seem to be posting from a soapbox much more than reading anything actually being discussed in this thread.
If the goal is to stop pedophiles from acting out their urges with children, then “getting them to stop being pedophiles” would seem to be the goal - which is done with other “diseases”* or syndromes or behaviors all the time. The problem seems to be that even admitting such feelings to a therapist can be a life-destroying step - even for a pedophile who has never touched a child.
Certainly “abstaining” from any inappropriate sexual behavior is a necessity, but it’s hardly even a step one for treating and ending the problem. Painting P on their forehead and tracking them for the rest of their lives - such lives as the rest of society will let them have, so marked out - is not what I’d call a solution.
So open the door to a realistic treatment regimen, without undue risk of arrest, stigmatizing or life disruption such as we so carefully try to do with, say, alcoholics and most white-collar drug offenders - or just shoot the poor, broken, dangerous, untreatable bastards.
- I was using the term as it’s used for alcoholism, which I don’t regard as a “disease,” either - so whatever term makes you happy, here.
And just how? Today. There is no way to prevent it at this time.
There are a bunch of them im therapy in prisons around the world. Has the therapy been effective? And the difference between sexual behavior and drugs and alcohol is that there are real human victims. Victims have to come first in this equation IMO.
I certainly agree that treatment would be the best solution. But they would also need to be monitored for the good of the community. Do you know of a realistic effective treatment regimin? Not trying to trap you but I don’t have any expertise in this field.
No, I don’t know what treatments might be available. I simply object to the pious nonsense of expecting “self control” to be effective, and more so to branding and stigmatizing those who might express the desires but have not acted on them.
Once someone crosses the line and acts out sexually with a child, it’s a different situation and registration, monitoring etc. in addition to some kind of therapy and “cure” is entirely appropriate.
But if some 20yo goes to a therapist and confesses sexual urges towards children, there should be an intermediate stage where the patient is not permanently branded, stigmatized, outed or otherwise prosecuted for what are essentially thought crimes. The risk is there, certainly… but having a choice between ‘silent self control’ and possibly being all but prosecuted for admitting the feelings is a really lousy option - like trying to get help for drug addiction when simply asking is likely to get you prosecuted for possession.
Perhaps everybody who visits a casino should be monitored, as well. After all, some percentage of people who visit casinos will end up with a gambling addiction. And some percentage of that group will commit fraud or embezzlement.
I have a lot of respect for Douglas but I’m troubled by his opinion that taking photos in public of children for masturbation fodder should be quite acceptable. It seems to me that there would be an enormous risk that any subject of such a photo could become a fixation for the pedophile who might easily be tempted to take things a step further.
I can’t say I disagree - and I too respect Douglas - but this is a bit of a slippery slope from sexual interest/fetish/private acts, through thought crimes to an assumption that they will lead to physical, illegal acts.
I’d suggest that there are few of us who don’t have thoughts and fantasies that represent illegal, even highly illegal RW acts.
Some people suffer from a medical condition that delays puberty. Suppose there’s an 18-year-old whose body resembles that of a typical 11-year-old. Would sex with this person satisfy a pedophile? That is, is some of the attraction to a pre-pubescent body the fact that it’s forbidden?
The empirical fact is that people who sexually abuse children choose to violate one of society’s strongest taboos, at great harm to their targets and great risk to themselves, rather than seek out relationships with little people or people with thin, undeveloped bodies. I think it’s safe to conclude that there is no evidence supporting the idea that these might be acceptable substitutes. My own guess is that the distorted power relationship and the idea of seduction of an innocent are inextricable elements of the mind-set.
Is there any evidence of this actually happening? Of someone being publicly stigmatized or punished simply for approaching a therapist over unconsummated urges?
I watched last year a documentary on this topic. It was in France, so I don’t know how it applies to the USA :
-There was no existing setting for therapy except for sentenced pedophiles for whom such a therapy had been mandated (I read some moths ago that it existed in Germany for non offenders, but that the idea of importing the concept to France had been definitely rejected by French authorities. I can suppose that spending money on pedophiles isn’t something that is going to get you votes unless it’s used to fund lethal injections).
-Most psychiatrists/therapists refused to follow such patients (and I guess that even mentioning this issue to a therapist is a very difficult step to make. Many people don’t even want to talk to a therapist for reasons such as depression or panick attacks, let alone addiction, so pedophilia…)
-Some reported the non offender patients to the police (even though they shouldn’t).
Basically it showed that there was absolutely nothing in place to adress the issue of a non offender pedophile seeking help (the worst case shown was some guy who had gone to both the police and a psychiatric hospital because he was feeling the urge to rape a specific child. Both dismissed him since he had commited no crime yet).
The documentary was in fact following a woman who had funded an NGO whose aim was supporting victims of child abuse, and who, upon discovering this issue had created her own therapy group and hotline for pedophiles.
Besides the fact that it’s unobvious to me that an adult whose body is undeveloped would satisfy a pedophile, and besides the probable rarity of adults with such a condition, it would require that such a person would be interested in having a relationship with a pedophile. Which seems to me an extremely remote possibility. Presumably, s/he will searching for a regular partner., not someone who will want to pretend s/he’s actually 11.
Actually… we don’t know that.
There might actually BE an effective treatment for some percentage of these people that is attainable right now but we don’t know about it because even inquiring about such a thing, or doing research on the subject, is seen as a highly questionable activity.
We do know that there are a non-zero number of people who have such urges but do not act on them. It may be that for those people those urges aren’t particularly strong, or perhaps those people can release sexual frustration by directing it at a legal subject, such as an adult or some different fetish, or maybe they are unusually strong-willed, or… something. Until we actually do some research, though, it’s all guesses. We don’t even know how many of the has-urges-but-doesn’t-act-on-them people there are out there. Maybe 9 out of 10 people with those urges will commit a crime. Maybe it’s 1 out of 10. Maybe one out of 100. We don’t know.
We do know that while the relapse rate is high it is not 100% - huh, maybe we should look into that. What prevents some of these offenders from repeating their crimes? Monitoring? Threat of prison? Other people keep their children away from the pervert once that perversion is known? What?
Keep in mind that the ones in prison are the ones who lacked the self-control to avoid committing a crime. It tells us very little to nothing about people who have the urge but CAN control it and do NOT commit a crime.
And you think drug addiction has no human victims? Apparently you’ve missed the carnage caused by the “war on drugs” and the drug cartels that produce illegal goods and ship them around the world? The maiming and death caused by drunk drivers?
Yes, victims should come first but if someone has not committed a crime then there is no victim. THAT is the problem with automatically jailing/monitoring/restricting someone who admits to pedophile thoughts or urges but has NOT ACTED ON THEM - at that point there is no victim.
Here’s the thing - we allow adults who can use alcohol responsibly, without harming others, to drink. Increasingly, we’re allowing the same for pot. If someone has “bad thoughts” but never acts on them and thus “thinks responsibly” why should that person be punished?
Likewise, if someone goes to a doctor or treatment center and says “I have a drinking problem” we don’t automatically charge them with drunk driving. Likewise, someone who goes to a counselor and says “I have these bad thoughts and urges” they shouldn’t automatically be charged with a crime, or branded, or labeled/treated as criminal. If someone goes to a counselor and says “I have fantasies about killing myself/others” we don’t automatically lock that person up, either - usually there’s some questioning to make sure that person is not an immediate risk to himself or others because we’d rather such a person seek help than tough it out himself. Resisting temptation and maintaining self control is helped by others assisting in every other aspect of human conduct, why should pedophilia be different in that regard?
Confession (or reconciliation) is a sacrament and therefore open only to Catholics. Priests might well listen to and counsel a pedophile but the seal of confession wouldn’t apply.
Given the epidemic of sexual abuse of children by pedophile priests, I’m thinking it’s not a great idea in any case.
I didnt know they were molesting children at casinos…taking food out their mouths maybe…
Errr…never thought I would be a voice of PC but little people that I have heard about consider the word midgit to be degrating and insulting. I dont know why.
Thank you for that. Ignorance fought.
Actually, the relapse rate is one of the lowest among all criminals. There’s a couple factors that make it much higher - such if the victim were male, a stranger, etc. But, as loathed as pedophiles are, they are actually one of the safest kinds of criminals to release from prison if you look at relapse rates…
I can’t pull a source, but it’s something like 5%, versus over 50% for things like auto thieves. Should you lock up 19 pedophiles to protect a child from the 20th? That’s not my call, but the real numbers are absolutely nothing like public perception.