Unlike many others who are wringing their hands and crying their crocodile tears that the sky is indeed falling, I was relieved when the SCOTUS declared capital punishment for child molestation unconstitutional. I was relieved for several reasons, the first being I am pro-life. I do not believe we have a right to take another life except in time of war or self-defense. As a survivor of child molestation, I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the law was declared unconstitutional. I did not need that burden to be added to the others.
Have you noticed the only people we usually hear from when discussing this extreme punishment for child molestation are adults who were not molested as children? I think there is a very good reason for this. Adult survivors have enough to deal with. Don’t force this on us and think you are doing us a favor. You aren’t. Instead, you are doing just the opposite, making our lives a true living hell. I think the knowledge that the elementary school principal who molested me had been executed because of me, would be enough to cause me to consider suicide.
There is one horrible little fact people never mention when punishing child molesters. These people deserve punishment for what they have done to the most innocent of the world. There is no ‘cure’ for this psychological disorder and addiction. The only way to insure the safety of society is to remove them from the society of children – forever. They cannot be cured. They cannot be rehabilitated. It’s too bad we don’t have a punishment available to the world of Babylon 5 – death of personality. That would solve the whole problem.
Did you know there has never been a child molester who was not molested as a child themselves? Not every person who was molested as a child becomes a molester themselves, but every child molester was a molested child. This one fact alone should preclude any thought of the final retribution of society. A child molester is a very damaged individual. For that one fact they deserve a millimeter of sympathy – and no more.
Article comments
1 - Dan Miller
Among the problems with this article is that it confuses "child molestation," which can take many forms, with the brutal, physically horrendous, and emotionally horrific rape of an eight year old child by her stepfather. The medical facts of the rape are graphically described in the Court's Opinion and in my article discussing it. The Court was not dealing with mere "child molestation;" it was dealing with something far worse.
You may oppose the death penalty in all cases. Many people do, and clearly that is your right. However, by failing even to mention in passing the extreme nature of the crime for which the Court rejected imposition of the death penalty, you do your cause no good. Indeed, you may well have done it harm. My suspicion is that the Court's decision here has generated very substantial support for the imposition of the death penalty, rather than the reverse. The same is true of articles such as yours.
As to the impact on the victim of participating as a witness in a criminal proceeding, I see no justification for your unarticulated basic assumption that testifying in a proceeding where the death penalty is sought is significantly different from testifying in a proceeding where the death penalty is not sought. If there is any sound basis for this assumption, it would be enlightening to have it presented. Otherwise, the logical extension of your argument is that there should be no criminal prosecution of any person who molests a small child, regardless of the circumstances, unless the child does not have to testify. Such a rule would most likely result in there being no such criminal prosecution at all, because the defendant is entitled to have the witnesses against him testify unless the witnesses are dead or otherwise completely unavailable to testify.
Dan
2 - Joanne Huspek
First of all, let me say I'm sorry that you or any other child has to suffer abuse.
Your article makes some very valid points. Child abusers aren't born, they are made. I would be more interested in discovering what leads a person to do this and what we can do to stop it.
The "death" penalty in this country is a misnomer. Now convicted criminals are given years of appeal opportunities, and they may be very old before the sentence is carried out. Or you could be sentenced to death in a state like California, and never be executed.
3 - Baronius
SJ, I consider myself pro-life as well. You noted that it's ok to take a life in self-defense. You also mentioned war, which is a type of national or world self-defense, if the war is morally justifiable. I consider capital punishment to be a type of societal self-defense.
I don't believe that every criminal should be executed; not even every murderer. But there are people who would be unsafe to even keep confined, out of risk for the guards and fellow prisoners. It's not about retribution or deterring others. It's about preventing certain individuals from causing further harm. Some sexual predators could fall into that category.
As for your personal story, I have no idea what to say. "You have my sympathy" seems shallow, but you do have my sympathy.
4 - why_knot
What a difficult subject to try to find consensus on! I don't think that consensus is a possiblity.
Form my own posistion, I have to question the statment that ALL abusers have been abused. I don't believe that statement is correct.
Regardless, we have now learned that child sexual abusers do not 'grow out of it' when they get old. This has been shown in the evidence of priests that abuse.
I do not believe that killing abusers is a solution.
However, I do believe that child sexual abusers should be kept seperate from society, held in secure facilities, and never allowed to be released into society again.
Much as I would like vengence, I know that it will not solve anything. That is an issue that I have to deal with and I don't think that it is the role of our legal system to enforce vengence.
I think that it is the role of our legal system to protect society from predatory indivduals who harm our most innocent.
To do that, keep the predators locked up in humane conditions and never let them out. Don't give them the opportunity to rip another life apart.
5 - Dr Dreadful
I have to question the statment that ALL abusers have been abused. I don't believe that statement is correct.
I've heard that a lot as well, WK, and I agree with you that it can't be literally correct. There must have been a beginning to any particular cycle of abuse, and therefore an original abuser who was not himself abused.
However, I think what is meant is that the figures are something in the very high 90 per cent range. The numbers of first generation abusers are negligible, so to all intents and purposes it is true to say that (approximately) all abusers were abused.
6 - bliffle
Another erroneous statement: "I consider capital punishment to be a type of societal self-defense."
Nonsense. Defense occurs when an offense is being committed.
Capital punishment is retribution. Vengeance. Nothing better.
7 - Baronius
Bliffle, call it "societal prevention of the need for self-defense" then. I still think self-defense is the right term if we're stopping some criminal who's on a life-long killing spree. We have every reason to believe that the most dangerous repeat offenders will keep committing crimes.
If I were interested in vengeance, I'd say kill all the murderers. I'm interested in preventing the most dangerous people from ever hurting anyone again. Maybe super-max facilities can protect the guards and fellow prisoners sufficiently that we don't need the death penalty any more. Until we're sure, the death penalty should be on the table.
8 - Cary Ace Bowers Jr
kill them,if you think they should live,castration would be good,lose a limb for murderers if they should live,and this is babylonian justice,no exceptions!!