Right to protect your child less that the pedo rights?

[Kasierith]

The penalties for Sex Offenders(Rapists, Pedophiles) are WAY too lenient. It's disgraceful.

http://badejodavid.blogspot.com/2012...fesses-10.html
sometimes I wonder...

[anveena]

In case you intervene to save a child being molested, you will be tried for whatever harm you cause to the offender. Even though protecting the young is one of the most basic instinct not just in humans but across nature. You could even end up in jail for trying to save a child from getting molested. How is that fair?

It's not fair, and I don't agree with people getting charged with such crimes. People reacting in such fashion seems like a fairly normal reaction to me. I really don't know how you would go about fixing it.

I haven't heard of many cases where people intervening while child was being molested getting charged with a crime. I think these cases are few and far between.

[Letmesleep]

Everyone should have the right to protect their child from a person seeking to do them harm. We shouldn't fear taking action.

This much I agree with. If you find someone assaulting a child you do whatever it takes to end the threat. If people end up dying than that is unfortunate, but I'm not going to advocate some kind of sentence for someone who ends up going too far in a moment of passion trying to protect a child. Now if you find out your child's been molested and you drive over to their house and murder them because you're pissed, than that's another situation entirely. In any case, people have a right to know where sexual predators are. Registries are not only just, but necessary to reduce the amount of danger children are put in. I support such laws.

[semaphore]

I think the laws are illogical and heavily skewed in arbitrary directions.

Like a lot of other laws in America (e.g. Marissa Alexander).

I think sex offender registries are an okay compromise.

It would be if people weren't put on it for absolutely retarded things. Like a teenager having her life ruined (you can't live anywhere when on the register) because of the henious crime of... taking a photo of herself.

[Spectral]

We're going to need to stop jailing people for things that have no business being criminal before I start even considering the idea of cracking down more on sex crimes.

[Pud'n]

Because the courts always get the right guy.

Nobody has ever been killed by the death penalty and then found out to be innocent a few years later.

I guess that means we should get rid of our entire legal system then, eh?

[This name sucks]

I guess that means we should get rid of our entire legal system then, eh?

Probably, yeah

[Porcell]

I have a few problems with the OP. You claim leniancy toward pedophiles, but then don't really how any evidence to support your claim. Your first link is to a Texas case where someone used deadly force to stop a sexual assault (which you'll find is pretty much legal everywhere in the US). Your second link is to a god-knows-what website where there is some made-up story attached to a graphic image. If you Google Image Search that image you will find a wide variety of websites with a wide variety of "stories" attached to it, so I highly doubt that it has anything to do with a pedophile case.

By the way, the whole Pedophile Hysteria I see from the Brits (and apparently Australians) is very very interesting to me. I read shit like the Virgin Airlines where they will not allow ANY male customer to sit next to unattended minors. What is THAT all about? I guess every country has their hangups.

[Nathiest]

Not in America. There is no anonymity for sex offenders.

[DEATHETERNAL]

The perfect solution is to find some uninhabited island a thousand miles away from other land and just dump the pedophiles there after putting a mark on their foreheads (to insure if they somehow get off they can easily be recognized). If they want to survive or kill each other or whatever after we put them there, I don't care.

[PBitt]

Totally different here in America, it's quite public knowledge, which is a good thing. Once a pedo, always a pedo, it's pretty much the most abnormal fucked up behavior there is, and IMO no amount of punishment is going to do anything to prevent them from their fucked up interests, because it's 'hardwired' per se into their fucked up brains. I really don't understand it, even if I don't agree, just about every other crime from stealing to murder at least makes sense in certain conditions.

[apepi]

Do people that kill people have to file for a "I kill people" registry?

[Dezerte]

I believe in restorative justice, not retributive justice. So I voted no.

[Calzaeth]

Let's just clear one thing up asap:

Pedophile is not the same as a child rapist. Pedophilia just means that the person have the urges, not that he/she is doomed to act upon them. Just like I am a heterosexual male, but still a virgin :P

What I don't get is, you refer to 'protecting' your child. Isn't that what the legal system is supposed to do FOR you? Of course, stop anything bad from happening if you can, but if the act is already done, it is up to the courts to decide/punish, not a random vigilante with a baseball bat and two drinks too many who just heppened to see a name nearby on the internet.

You've probably already guessed this, but my stance is that the child rapist should remain anonymous but under the strictest control possible. He/she should deal with the consequences of their action, but should also be given a fair chance to show betterment (i.e. NOT rape a child again). Also, what Dezerte said: I believe in restorative/rehabilitative justice, not retributive justice.

[Wilian]

Rapists and pedos deserve three things.

Castration, public show-down and then 20 years in prison to think of how much they fucked up.

[Auloria]

A big problem is that there is really no way to get help if you recognize that you are a pedophile but don't want to hurt children, not in the States at least. If you announce what you are, society will shun you, no one will want to hire you, you might even find yourself in legal trouble without having broken a law. I don't think you can even tell a therapist without them having to alert authorities. If we could do something for pedophiles before they become child molesters, maybe they wouldn't have to be in hiding and in the desperate situation that innocent children are paying for.


It just seems pointless to wait until they commit crimes to act.

[Wilian]

A big problem is that there is really no way to get help if you recognize that you are a pedophile but don't want to hurt children, not in the States at least. If you announce what you are, society will shun you, no one will want to hire you, you might even find yourself in legal trouble without having broken a law. I don't think you can even tell a therapist without them having to alert authorities. If we could do something for pedophiles before they become child molesters, maybe they wouldn't have to be in hiding and in the desperate situation that innocent children are paying for.


It just seems pointless to wait until they commit crimes to act.

I think the biggest issue with the subject is that pedophilia is quite similiar to what gay or hetero is, just that it's directed to children, which is no no due to obvious reasons.

One can't simply deny his/her preferences regardless of what they are.

[Underverse]

Interesting topic...

Pedophilia exists in society despite massive consequences and blatant deviance. Deviance and social consequences are very powerful motivators, yet this phenomenon still exists. And in no small (random mutation level) quantity. Why is that? Perhaps humans evolved with certain baselines for attraction that lead those who are already labeled as outcasts to give in to a fleeting urge.

I'll give an example. Why do many men, perhaps even a majority, prefer their companions to be shaved? When does hairlessness occur in nature? Before puberty, perhaps. And many concede that hairlessness is simple attraction. A simple leap in logic infers the most drastic of aversions.

Why do many men, perhaps slightly fewer than those in the previous example, prefer thin companions? Social reasons, maybe; but social norms extend from real emotions, and emotions are hard to change. It might be known to some that women, after bearing their first child, gain weight. And that women have higher adipose/muscle ratios, and that women generally are larger when they are older, unless measures are taken to combat this slow gain. So when are humans thin, by nature?

The same can be done with other traits. Why do some men prefer larger breasts? Why do some men prefer larger hips? These questions lead to answers we are more familiar with, but use exactly the same logic. Simply apply the logic to other aspects of attraction, and your brain might quash a chilling thought.

People are attracted to more than one quality. And today, it is possible to have all those qualities in one person. But this is artificial and warped by social stresses and modern conscience. In nature, one might have to have more than one relationship in order to garner all of the traits he/she finds attractive. And we are all at the mercy of our nature, to varying degrees.

Sex has been for several thousand years the epitome of unspeakables. That's starting to change, but people are still afraid, including me. And reasonably so; the world is a much bigger place now than it was a few million years ago. Lots more danger. Eventually, though, we might come to realize that life suppressing aspects of our nature we are told to hate is a diluted life.

Anyways. Sorry for the long post.

[Deleted]

The recidivism rate of pedophiles is extremely high. For the most part I think that once a person has served their time they should be left alone, until they show that they're falling back into their predatory nature. Serial child molesters should be put under the prison. General therapy isn't what's going to help them not prey on children, it takes a genuine change of character, which is very hard and most don't succeed.

If I were to see someone hurting, or trying to hurt, a child I'd step in and do something.

Actually, that doesn't seem to be the case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender#Recidivism

"A 2002 study by the United States Department of Justice indicated that recidivism rates among sex offenders was 5.3 percent; that is, about 1 in 19 of released sex offenders were later arrested for another sex crime. The same study mentioned that 68 percent of released non-sex offenders were rearrested for any crime (both sex and non-sex offenses), while 43 percent of the released sex offenders were rearrested for any crime (and 24 percent re-convicted)."

"Approximately 4,300 child molesters were released from prisons in 15 US states in 1994. An estimated 3.3 percent of these 4,300 were rearrested for another sex crime against a child within 3 years of release from prison."

This low recidivism is owed to the fact that many paedophiles delude themselves into thinking that what they do is ok, and they are really not hurting anyone. The process of going to trial, public shame and facing the harm they cause helps destroy that web of self-deception, and even though they are still sexually attracted to children, they are very unlikely to act on that attraction.

[semaphore]

A lot of the responses about what to do with pedophiles is a bit scary, verging on mob mentality.

There's punishing henious criminals appropriately, and then there's going overboard completely.