Can Pedophiles Be Rehabilitated/What Should their Sentence Be

[Diva]

Christopher Reardon [28yrs old] pleaded guilty to 75 counts[out of the 130-count indictment] of rape, indecent assault and battery on a child and distributing pornography to 29 boys [the total victims are estimated at over 200], and could face life in prison. The defense attorneys argue that because he is also interested in women... He can be rehabilitated.

1. Do you believe child molesters can be rehabilitated?

And/Or

2.How should they be sentenced [minimum, maximum, capital punishment, etc...]?

[Jennafer]

Cut his dick off, and keep him in prison for life.

[turipache]

You should send him to a Mexican jail, here the inmates would make him pay for every one of his crimes !!!

[Diva]

I am for capital punishment. Although TURIPACHE's suggestion is quite tempting. Our prisons separate these bastards from the rest of the inmates. I do not think that they should get special treatment. Every other inmate has to live in that environment and fend for themselves. If the crime is that henious then all the more reason for them to fend for themselves. The children didnt have armed guards around them... neither should these murderers. You know the saying, "If you don't want the time, don't do the crime"?

As for the ones who make it out, or serial offenders, capital punishment. [Sorry, Aussie]. I refuse to pay for pure evil to exist while the children have to know that they are alive and paying for their crime in a private area with VIP treatment.

[Mick]

I don't think Aussiebreeder has bred. Anyone with kids will take a different stand on kids being kids, as opposed to adults manipulating and abusing them. There are plenty of places in the desert for a pedophiles remains to disappear.

[Diva]

Hey Mick. I still say your post is right on target. Misunderstanding aside... Even though I don't have kids, I agree with your sentiment 100%

[Squelch]

The original topic was WHAT should their sentence be?
I say CRAM the dirty bastards into a jam-jar and put said jam-jar under the wheel of the nearest ice cream van.
BOSH,,,,,,game over.

[Diva]

Thanks, Mick. I've worked a Hospital for the last 14 years. I've seen the physical damage done by pedophiles. I won't go into details. I know that one little girl's memory will haunt me for the rest of my life. I see her face everyday. She was an angel. So..../ They couldn't save her. The internal damage was far too extensive.

Facts:
General Emotional Behavior Change:
Physical complaints; Fear/dislike of certain people or places; Sleep disturbances; Bed wetting; Headaches; School problems; Withdrawal from family, friends, or usual activities; Excessive bathing or poor hygiene; Return to younger, more babyish behavior; Depression; Anxiety; Discipline problems; Running away; Eating disorders; Passive or overly pleasing behavior; Delinquent acts; Low self-esteem; Self-destructive behavior; Hostility or aggression; Drug or alcohol problems; Sexual activity or pregnancy at an early age; Suicide attempts; sexually abusing other children

Physical Abuse Symptoms:
Unexplained pain, swelling, bleeding or irritation of the mouth, genital or anal area; urinary infections; sexually transmitted diseases; internal injuries.

If you would like to see more statistics to the effects:
prevent-abuse-now.com (http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/stats.htm#Impact)

move their asses to a work farm in the desert where they work for food, for recreation, for piss-breaks, and for quiet time. remove all luxury and communication with the free world and see how they are after 5 years.

addendum...
have a workshop where they have electrodes tied to their cocks and show them pictures of children. if they get erect they get shocked. if they don't rehabilitate they lose priviledges. if they do, they can go. and if their dick quits workin', we connect sensors to their chests to see if their heartrates are affected by the pics.

that's all, there's the answer. be ye satisfied for i am great.

[Diva]

Unsatisfied. Sadly. Let them go? Am I to 'assume' that means you believe they can be rehabilitated?

honey, baby, sweetychums, i don't know and i don't give a shit. what i do know is that anyone can be rehabilitated with pain. and if not, fuck 'em. let their asses rot out there in the desert.

[Mick]

You cannot rehab seratonin, dopamin. Drug abusers have their position. I think it is unfortunate, yet real, that some brain stems crave certain chemicals. Protecting the young from the prey is a natural response. Pedophiles do what they do because of, upbringing, chemical imbalance, or whatever. Killing them outright is instant gratification. You cannot rehab what nature has wrought as the life work, (sorry, redundant) of a person that knows no better.
Societal mores dictate our belief structure and that is the the doctrine that stops me from slicing and dicing pedo sack o crap jerks. Now, does that sociology 101 belief structure put me in a postion of understanding and believeing in a higher power? Beats me! But, I will declare on this board that I am a Christian! Ohhh, the point. Let God, Lord Jesus decide his fate, I just might make it happen sooner than planned.

[Diva]

Oh no, Mick... Don't go bible-thumper on me now!!!!!!

mick. man. i don't give a fuck what chemicals a person may have imbalanced in their brains, pain is a dreadfully effective motivator.

check this shit out. in junior high we had this game where we would slap each other on the back real hard. i would be the most effective slapper and folks often went home with big-ass red hands on their back. then some girl, possessed of the demon she was, got me so good i fell to my knees in pain. i had 4" and 40 lbs. on her, but she put my ass in retirement.

[Mick]

No thumping, just me! If my beliefs allowed, I would, and could quiet the loud nieghbors. Should the dogs die, or the owner?

[Diva]

Huh?

No offense intended. You've been this great voice of reason. I enjoy reading your rational replies. But when you bring the religious factor into it, the original point is lost by the spiritial beliefs.

[Mick]

I will back off.

[Diva]

No. Please don't. I respect your thoughts and ideas. You too damn fast for me to edit my post!

Anything that you have posted has been both a valuable insite and i have taken something from them. I appologize.

[minerjoe1963]

nope, they don`t deserve to be rehabilatated. i don`t think my hard earned money should be wasted on scum.
just give them to the parents of the abused kids. i`m sure they will give them proper justice. i know i would.

[LucifersChild]

rehabilitation? whoever thought up that one should also be hung along with the pedophile. its just like saying. "well, even though he's a serial killer and has murdered 40 women, hes never killed a man, therefore he can be rehabilitated" to me thats just, for lack of a better word. RETARDED

[Amaurote]

It's a miserable dilemma. The concept of rehabilitation presupposes a former state of innocence or grace from which a sexual offender has fallen; they haven't, ergo they can't be rehabilitated. Going beyond that, you'd have to know far more about the nature of sexual determinism than we do: I'd absolutely agree that this pederasty is a form of arrested sexual development, but how do you start countering the behaviour of a lifetime? Bibliotherapy? Electro-shock therapy? Gene-splicing? Do you think you're going to cure them by removing their sexual desires/stimulation? I once read a case study which referred to a paedophile who, in the absence of any other visual stimulation, meditated on a pin - a pin, for Christ's sake - to bring himself to ejaculation. You don't rehabilitate this sort of behaviour overnight.

I've seen the inside of prisons on a visiting/work placement basis, and I can understand the active, existential sense of loathing the average inmate has for a paedophile: there are a few Rehabilitational facilities around the world, but even they aren't perfect, because rehabilitation and prison never co-exist effectively. Prisons are punitive and incarcerative by nature: they're human warehouses at best, and rehabilitational aims are subverted by the environment. I have absolute sympathy for the inmate who was abused as a child, but as an adult - an adult who has begun to abuse and sodomize infants - you have no practical alternative. You confine them. You isolate them. You watch and pray.

One caveat: hideous as the behaviour of paedophiles is, it is surely equalled by the crime of elder abuse, or "granny-bashing". Every inmate I've ever met has equated the one with the other: both crimes cry out from the ground; in both there's a sense that innocence is being trampled down and brutalized in the service of mutilated sexuality.

http://www.preventelderabuse.org/nexus/nexus.html

[Diva]

Amaurote, bravo on hitting every point to be had. I have seen every side of this loathsome, festering disease that destroys everything it touches. I once dated a guy who went into the Sheriff's Department. They automatically do a one to two year stint in the jails. I went to visit him one night and saw some of the most hollowed out human beings without a toe tag. And those were the ones leaving. I was too scared to venture in. When he heard that I was outside, gave me the tongue lashing of a life-time and had a cruiser escort me home.

I'm sure that you know of 'prison justice'. Even the prisoners view pedophiles as a virus to be extinguished. I work at UCLA Medical Center. I worked in the Operating Room for 10.5 years scheduling the hospital surgeries. I had to schedule a Pedophile for what was his 6th surgery repairing his throat after being 'shanked' in prison. Not one doctor wanted to do that case. He looked like anybody. [Reminded me of Dennis Weaver in fact]. That was when I realized how dangerous they were.

Finally, without the details, there was Angel. That's what we called her. She was beautiful. A rosy cheeked three year old molested to the extreme by the mother's boyfriend. When she died on the operating room table a part of me died with her. Everyone cried. The mother stood by her boyfriend, even when imprisoned herself.

This is where I add: Any parental figure found to have knowledge of the abuse and not stop it should serve full term and register as sex offender. The pedophile should receive capital punishment. Even if the child does not die physically, they are destroyed mentally and emotionally.

[Amaurote]

I sympathize completely, Diva. I'm not a supporter of capital punishment, but I can't see any practical alternative to long-term incarceration. I'm essentially interested in this from a prison library viewpoint - I've visited about 8 prisons in England in the past, and I worked in a library at HMP Leeds (a rung down from your Maximum Prison facilities in the USA) for about a month - and the way this relates to the supply of pornography, which is still very much a disputed right in most countries.

As I write this, Ian Brady - the convicted paedophile and Moors Murderer who notoriously strangled small children and laid them to rest in a druidic garden in appeasement of some primitive Deity - is seeking legal redress against his Governor's refusal to continue supplying him with pornography. He regards this as his statutory right.

I find that astonishing. He has a statutory right to education; he has a statutory right to worship as he pleases; he has a statutory right to current information. He should not have the statutory right to feed his deviant sexual appetite.


http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial4/moors/bradyarrest.jpg

I don't deny paedophiles the possibility of redemption, but I do seriously doubt their potential for rehabilitation. This is essentially psychopathic behaviour; and psychopaths, as we know, learn only by rote, and are fundamentally untreatable.

Like yourself and everyone else here, I regard paedophila as horrendous, noxious and socially catastrophic; but I would still place it on a par with both premeditated murder and elder abuse as similarly terrible crimes. We've seen integrationist policies followed with reasonable success at some rehabilitational prisons in the last few years (Grendon, for instance), and I hope to God that their behaviour can be altered.

I hope; but I also doubt.

[Amaurote]

Agreed; I've just returned from yet another tour of a local prison/YOI, where the loathing of paedophiles seemed as prevalent as ever.

Notwithstanding this, I'd still contend that there is a certain existential similarity between the sexual crimes which plague the two uttermost ages of Man, Infanthood and Senescence: both offences ruthlessly impose Vice on Innocence; both are examples of the abuse of power, and the exploitation of the weak; both reek with the mephitic odour of social betrayal, and resound with the clangour of a social compact breaking in two; both are despicable; both are abominable, and both cry out from the ground for vengeance. There may be no identity here, but there is a sure nefandous resemblance.

[Diva]

Am, are the pedophiles given the pseudo VIP treatment where you live, too? Over here they are kept in the sick ward, totally separate. Our prisons coddle the inmates to say the very least. They are allowed the same perks [if not more] than any man on the street. They sue for everything from ethnic food to homosexual pornography. Serial killer Dennis Nilsen is even suing for the right to receive gay porn magazines [which oddly enough are banned while heterosexual ones are not]. I believe he's in your neck of the woods, is he not?

[Amaurote]

Originally posted by Diva
Am, are the pedophiles given the pseudo VIP treatment where you live, too? Over here they are kept in the sick ward, totally separate. Our prisons coddle the inmates to say the very least. They are allowed the same perks [if not more] than any man on the street. They sue for everything from ethnic food to homosexual pornography. Serial killer Dennis Nilsen is even suing for the right to receive gay porn magazines [which oddly enough are banned while heterosexual ones are not]. I believe he's in your neck of the woods, is he not?

Diva - yes, indeed; thanks for reminding me about this - I suspect that I've misremembered the criminal in question, because Brady recently gained further notoriety for seeking the legal right to starve himself to death, so my apologies for that. It's worse, in some ways, because pornography was by all accounts a necessary part of Nilsen's murder ritual - an active stimulus and a prelude. He also recently sought the right to have his poetry published, in which endeavour he was entirely successful. This is the same man, incidentally, who attempted to drill a hole through someone's frontal lobe hoping to create a zombie, and who recently opined that Harrison Ford would be the most suitable actor to play him in a projected biopic...

Now there's contrition for you...

I'm not aware of the outcome of his legal action, but it's probably based on the newly incorporated Human Rights Act, which also legalizes conjugal rights and, in some European member states, the right of prisoners to vote in general elections. I'm not sure where he is at present, since the Home Office tends to "ghost" (transfer) serial killers at short notice, usually in the dead of night. He's probably confined within HMP Durham, HMP Frankland, or possibly HMP Wakefield, which has a large proportion of sex offenders in its population.

As far as special treatment is concerned, they tend to enjoy superior facilities by default - despite efforts at integration (like HMP Grendon, where there's been a sustained drive against segregation) they often inhabit separate wings and Special Supervision Sections (Protective Wings) with their own sanitation. And, of course, the longer a prisoner's sentence, the more likely he or she is to gain respectable employment within the prison, and to acquire more earning power. I doubt that life is easy for them; they fear for their lives most of the time - that mesh wire you see on the television might as well have been designed for paedophiles, because it's generally the paedophile or nonce that "decides" to take "flying lessons"...

[Amaurote]

It was actually Dahmer who tried to create "living sex zombies" by drilling holes (and then pouring acid) in the frontal lobes of his victims; Nilsen contented himself with watching television/taking baths with their cadavers...but still, you get my point...

[Diva]

http://www.nochicktrix.com/images/vbpix/nilsen.jpg

Vote!?!?! They get solitude. They get their own space. They go outside, shower alone, soft porn... They get to live a more complete life than most. Meanwhile, the victims will live the rest of their lives in fear. The punishment should at least be equal. How often are pedophiles snatched from their safety?

In America there is a law against a criminal gaining profit from their books. It goes to the victims. What is the law in yours?

[Villager]

SHOCK!

HORROR!

AMAUROTE, HOW COULD YOU?

So as not to mis-understand your meaning here, do you mean that paedophilia should be considered on an immoral par with -any- premeditated murder? If so, I could not disagree more.
Paedophilia, by its very nature I believe, requires of the attacker a mental aspect which fundamentally distinguishes them from others. Either they are, or they have come to be, of capable mental perversion to commit an act of such despicability which makes them far more dangerous to individuals and society than those who may fall under the bracket “murderer”.
I agree that “granny bashers” are committing an act perhaps of equal evil. But murderers? My moral foundation must be very different here to deny a valid comparison. I would like to see your logic, on this Amaurote.

[Amaurote]

Originally posted by Villager
SHOCK!

HORROR!

AMAUROTE, HOW COULD YOU?

So as not to mis-understand your meaning here, do you mean that paedophilia should be considered on an immoral par with -any- premeditated murder? If so, I could not disagree more.
Paedophilia, by its very nature I believe, requires of the attacker a mental aspect which fundamentally distinguishes them from others. Either they are, or they have come to be, of capable mental perversion to commit an act of such despicability which makes them far more dangerous to individuals and society than those who may fall under the bracket “murderer”.
I agree that “granny bashers” are committing an act perhaps of equal evil. But murderers? My moral foundation must be very different here to deny a valid comparison. I would like to see your logic, on this Amaurote.

Not at all, Vill, though I suspect we're in danger of cavilling over mere taxonomy here. Let me explain:

I've said that I'd equate paedophilia with elder abuse; I take Aussie's point about the possible rationale for this within prisons, where the average population is younger than that of wider society, but I think that the existential loss of innocence, and the sense of social betrayal, is very similar. I would not equate paedophilia with homicide, either pre-meditated or second degree, for the very simple reason that they are highly different crimes, with highly dissimilar motives and chains of causation.

I would, however, liken the psychopathia sexualis of the typical paedophile to the psychopathy of the typical serial killer: serial killers learn from rote, and possess little capacity for empathy; sex offenders have no empathy for those they rape, sodomize or indecently assault. The rehabilitational prospects for sex offenders in general are bleak at the moment, because rehabilitation of sexuality is a non-sequitur: I'm no scientist, but I suspect that even the CIA haven't quite mastered the art of re-programming sexual orientation. Similarly, the rehabilitational prospects of the typical serial killer are about 0%, give or take a few more zeroes.

I'd completely agree with you that paedophiles represent the greater social evil in general, but we're in danger of quibbling over terms. We could both readily agree that, if push came to hypothetical shove, we'd rather live next door to an ex-shoplifter or burglar than a paedophile: it stands to reason, after all. When you extend that hypothesis to a choice between living next door to a paedophile, a serial killer or a granny-basher, I'd quietly contend that it becomes entirely academic. You tick (D)"None of the Above", tip off the local press and procure an illegal firearm.

http://www.netspace.net.au/~harrison/m79.jpg

[Amaurote]

Originally posted by Diva
[IMG]In America there is a law against a criminal gaining profit from their books. It goes to the victims. What is the law in yours?

A very cogent point, Diva, well made: I'm not an expert on correctional law, but as far as I know copyright remains with the inmate (who should therefore, in theory, be able to sell the copyright on and obtain a profit), while ownership of the manuscript (since it would be written on prison notepaper) would remain with HM Prison Service. At the moment there is a plethora of ex-gangsters from the swinging sixties making a fortune from memoirs of their nefarious careers (the Richardsons, "Mad" Frankie Frazer, ad nauseam). An inmate currently confined in HM Prison Service would be unable to use the money, since you're forbidden from running a business once you're imprisoned.

[usantic]

There is no hole deep enough or dark enough to plant these worms into. I can't tell you the rage it stirs in me to think that some walk our streets. If ever there were a stronger arguement for the death penalty, I have not heard it. Convict them, then take them out of the picture.

[Jake]

There is no rehabilitation for these monsters. If there's a Hell, they're going to it. Why not help them along the way? And Amaurote... As for Grannie bashers: Aussie may tease me [in fun] about still calling her Nana, but she will always be that kind woman who never had too much love. Anyone ever laid a hand on her they'd find slivers of skin for miles. Eventually they'd find the teeth I kicked in. No court would do justice for that. No court. Lock me up, throw away the key. But you wouldn't find a peice of that guy bigger than a sliver.