So is ours - which is one of the reasons to do it.

Rape is NEVER about the sex. It's forced sex as a means of control.
This has been known for years, now. There are sex crimes which are about the sex, but they're generally of a lesser class.

In rape cases, it's the mental wounding that is never completely healed, or almost never, and when it IS healed, there are deep scars left on the psyche.

I don't know about castration, as a means of stopping this. There are some for it, but medical studies have shown that it doesn't drop the testosterone levels significantly enough for quite some time. So maybe, say, castrate, then 5 years in prison, while the levels drop?

Sure. Why not?

I don't know that it takes 5 years for the testosterone to really leave the body, but what the heck.


The thing is... Sexual Crimes are extremely serious for more many reasons.

First and foremost, they affect the victim differently then, say, basic assault or robbery. There is a reason that, throughout history, invading armies have not only murdered the men but raped the women!

Second, victims of child sexual abuse often become perpetrators themselves. Somehow the cycle needs to be broken!

Third, the rate of recidivism is almost (if not) 100%. It's almost a guarantee that a rapist WILL rape again, a child molester WILL molest again.


Testicles are NOT necessary to live. Remove them from a sex offender, and the likelihood of his being a repeat offender is diminished greatly - if not altogether. This is both a deterent to people who think sexual crimes are "no big deal" and a preventative measure against the person who has been a sexual predator.

To me it's a no-brainer.

I was interested in your sharing info Jefferson. You said that there is a cycle of sexual abuse, that victims grow up to be perpetrators.

Aren't most children that are victims of sexual abuse female though? And so are you saying that then these little girls grow up to be sexual perpetrators?

Know I abhor sexual abuse. I am not countering you. I only wonder abuot the stats you must know about to say that, cos I think most sexual abuse is done by males. Not all but overwhelmingly most.

OD

But can you really administer public beating by members of the public? How do you judge that a beating has gone "far enough"? It's too vague.
Well violence is in itself a primitive reaction. Searching for and trying to deal with the ROOT CAUSE of crime is civilized. Beating the crap out of something you don't like is ineffective and frankly a selfish thing to do. Resorting to violence is ALWAYS EASIER than dealing with the root cause. And it serves no purpose other than easing the conscience of society for a limited period of time.
You are right about the twisted rationalization in most pedophiles heads. But if they are this messed up and willing to go to extreme lengths to feed their needs, do you really think increasing the degree of punishment will change anything?

And secondly, what is the point of retribution when the crime has already been committed. Your solution does not do much to prevent the things that CAUSE people to develop twisted notions of love. All it does is soothe the anger and frustration felt by being violent to a human being. A human being , i might add, that is entirely the product of his society and of circumstance.
Yeah but the funny thing was that i actually asked my father to stop. I knew he loved me and that i did nothing wrong. It really had nothing to do with the dude.. I mean the reason i asked my father to stop was not because i had a "stockholm syndrome" type of reaction. I just did not want violence perpetrated because of me. A kid just wants the threat GONE and his parents to care and comfort him. Children have no place for venegance, and i don't think society should absolve themselves from the guilt of being unable to protect a child by resorting to violence.
Way to make a guy feel creepy dude. Thanks. Of course i understand your concerns, but you should know a few things:

1) The BIGGEST battle a rape or molestation victim faces is whether to reveal the crime or not. Many DON'T.. For precisely the above mentioned reason. Reactions like that make the victim feel like a criminal. Children are told to shut up and stop "lying", and women are told to shut up to maintain honor/social status or whatever.

Because i came to terms with what happened to me and managed to move past it, i have never had any real problem revealing to people that i was molested. But i have consistently ALL MY LIFE been warned against telling people. Quite simply because in a case like this, the victim is AS LIKELY to be condemned as the perpetrator. Now that CERTAINLY doesn't help ANYBODY.

2) Just because one human wishes to understand and reveal the ROOT CAUSE for despicable behaviour of another human is NOT AN ENDORSEMENT. In fact it is PRECISELY the fact that i have experienced this form of assault that i understand what matters to a victim. In fact it is also why i am more suited to guard a child from such an experience AND comfort and protect a child if such an awful thing happened to them.

3) Again this ties into the punitive suggestions you have made. It is not possible to formulate a punishment without involving the victim. Very often the first step to getting over a trauma is forgiveness. Now don't get me wrong. I don't feel sorry for child molesters. However i don't think your suggestions at consider the needs of the victims. LOike i said, venegance is more the requirement of the family and friends of a a victim, because they are angry at their own inability to prevent an awful crime.

I would like to add that while i can speak of this experience without anger, i am IN NO WAY apologising or justifying this type of behaviour. I am probably more than you interested in ensuring that this shit never happens again. I have NO IDEA if i could be forgiving if such a thing happened to my own children. But it really truly sucks that a person in unable to reveal such a thing about themselves without being labeled immediately.

If you only knew the frequency of child sexual abuse you would get down on your knees and cry for all the children who have been robbed of their childhood. That's what this experience does you know. Not in the sense that kids stop playing and laughing. But their eyes are opened to the world way before their time. And once opened they never close. This is incidentally why victims of child abuse tend to have higher EQs. They simply become "aware" of the world outside themselves earlier than other children.

Anyhow i can GUARANTEE that there are victims among your friends, family, co-workers that you are unaware of. That's an awful thought.

You know what else? It is when a victim fears condemnation from society that they tend to rationalize the abuse and from there it is only a small step to become a molester yourself. Think about that.

I am not just spouting this stuff off, believe me. I have been involved in this mess for the last 17 years. I know the ins and the outs of the whole situation, intimately. I have sat there with victims, crying their hearts out, with families telling them to just shut up and it'll all go away. I've tried to convince recalcitrant victims to testify to no avail. I've had to turn around and seek prosecution of people who've made up stories of abuse against innocent people. I've waited in the Emergency room to find out if I'm going to get a statement from a mangled vivtim, or if it'll be the Medical Examiner instead.

I've seen victims overcome the "taint," and I've seen them commit suicide. I've recommended counselling, and I've paid for abused women to hide, then move on, just to see them seek out, and get into another abusive relationship.

It doesn't stop. In regards to abusive relationships, did you know that only 25% of men are abusive, but 75% of women have been abused? However, with the current generation, I think the percentages are going up, not down.

To OhDear. No, sweetie, most of the child abuse cases are male-male, most of the ones in the news are male-female. Just a happy aside, there. Boys, having the male, macho thing going on, rarely admit to having been abused, so our mutual friend is sort of a hero in that regard, He did something about it. Not the typical thing. Also, most child molesting is committed within the family, or at least family friends.

What the whole point of this thread was meant to be, was a discussion about options, because what we have now sure ain't working. Violence, or no violence, the fact is, crimes against women, and especially children are on the increase.I don't presume to know the answers, I do, however know that the system, the way it is now, is not working. I also know that before civil rights issues for inmates, and the "Touchy-Feely" way of doing things nowadays in a big flop. We need to be tougher on crime, and criminals. They certainly don't need or deserve a "free ride."

The whole idea that violence is not "Civilized," misses the point that crime is not civilized, and that criminals don't function on the same level as civilized humans. They understand power. The use of power, and the abuse of it. They live their lives abusing the system, and thereby gaining power over the populace. I don't recommend of condone abuse of power, but folks, we better start using our power judiciously, or our Society is going down the drain in the next couple of generations. Sometimes it takes uncivilized behavior, applied judiciously to obtain civilized results.

We should not execute physical punishment upon criminals, especially criminals who have not caused physical damage to their victims.

The goal of punishing criminals is to discourage people from committing a crime and to prevent criminals from being a threat to society. The goal is not to ruin the criminal's life in order to appease people who are appalled at his actions.

Because of this, the best solution is to imprison criminals until we believe that they are no longer a threat to society, and until others fear the punishment enough to avoid committing that crime themselves.

And what is the reason invading armies have raped the women? To mentally subdue them so that their will to fight back is lost?

The same can be said about most or all crimes against children, and the actual effects are quite controversial. Let me illustrate my point by presenting some studies.

This study states that child victims of sexual abuse are more likely than the average child to commit a crime in the future, however they are no more likely than victims of other sorts of mistreatment, such as child abuse or child neglect:
http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/abuse.txt

This study states that child victims of sexual abuse are only slightly worse off than children who were not sexually abused, and the problems which do occur are caused by a poor parenting environment. That is, parents who sexually abuse their children are more likely to be poor parents:
An Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Based on Nonclinical Samples
MetaAna (This is the same study)

This second study became very controversial and was protested against so heavily that many organizations denounced it. No evidence or counter-studies were presented; it's just that people hate child sexual abuse so much that they will shout down any evidence that child sexual abuse isn't the most horrible evil in the world.

Child sexual abuse is definitely a bad thing, but I'm not sure its effects are as horrible as people portray them.

But let's do some more research and see what we come up with: do you have any numbers showing the percentage of sexually abused children who end up committing sexual abuse themselves?

This is innaccurate. Please read this link:
MercuryNews.com | 12/15/2003 | Are sex offenders a danger forever?

As seen in that link, studies show that 6 - 13% of convicted sex offenders are arrested for a second sex offense. Further, 43% of convicted sex offenders are rearrested for a second crime of any kind, compared to 68% of other inmates.

This suggests that not only are rapists are unlikely to rape again: it's more likely that they'll commit a different crime. So castrating them does not seem like a reasonable approach.

A hand is not necessary to live. Perhaps we should cut the hand off of theives: that would greatly reduce their chance of repeating the crime, and it would act as a deterent to people who think theivery is no big deal. We could do the same to people guilty of forgery and other crimes which involve the hand. To the person who commits slander, perhaps his tongue could be removed. To the person who flees from the police, his legs could be removed.

Actually, if we really want to deter people from crime and prevent them from committing crime again, we should just torture then execute every criminal. That's the only way to be sure they'll never commit a crime again, and that's the best deterent you could ask for. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn't it?

Each of these solutions forgets the welfare of the criminal, and that is something we need to consider.

Closing argument from Jaxian:

Quote:

Each of these solutions forgets the welfare of the criminal, and that is something we need to consider.

Ummm, not that it means you should not continue to post to this thread, but your last post had the tone of a closing argument...

All the same, forgiveness can consider the need of the criminal, but justice must be the primary responsibility of the courts and that first, most and always on behalf of the victim.

OD

This quote of Jaxian's - by itself - says it all:
You consider the rights of the criminal to be more important than the rights of innocent civilians.

Thank you for that confession.

As usual, Jefferson is wrong.

"Chemical castration is an ideal punishment for sex offenders. When Depo-Provera is administerd, recidivism rates fall to 5%."
Sex Crimes, Punishment, and Therapy


(Note: I've got to phrase it this way, otherwise I'd be agreeing with Jefferson, and you just know that can't happen... )