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Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
"I don't recall reading anything about "her screaming." Maybe you are assuming? Hearing them in your head to trigger your violent reaction, a way of giving your violence permission, free reign, violence that you know would not be questioned if a young women were screaming?

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Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
I don't know what others see...

but I just see X-rays of the pelvic region.

lol

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The worst nightmare of most liberals (sorry) is a white boy taught in the streets and the ghettos of our country.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Gasp! DT hasn't read The Watchmen?

I apologize, but now there must be a prerequisite period of scorning. *scorn* *scorning* *still scorning*

Okay, good.

How to explain it... Basically, it's a graphic novel about "capes." Rorschach is the only one who isn't a complete tool, though he has ISSUES.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Wulf had a question which nobody has addressed How can we keep it from happening again?. In a burst of irony, I think Wulf's solution to violence is to arm all the students and kill all the gang-bangers. Of course, I have a different set of solutions. But right now I'm too busy to finish that thought...

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Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
No, Kwick.

This is about a group of (and forgive me for not being able to call them human) PREDATORS/ANIMALS/NONHUMANS, raping a girl for HOURS. While some of the same evil animals stood by and watched.

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Criminals are abused children, lost as adults

The perpetrators of crime are victims too, says author John Marsden.

These days we have all the sympathy in the world for abused children. We weep for their loss of innocence. We understand how it is that many (in some cases all) of the pillars of their lives have been knocked out from under them. We support them with counselling and care. That's how it's supposed to work anyway. In many cases it does work like this.

Almost in the same breath we denounce child abusers. We call them scum, filth, animals, monsters. We talk about how they should be castrated, locked up for life, executed. "If I could get my hands on those mongrels. . ."

At the extreme are those terrible scenes ofhysterical adults surrounding a police wagon containing a child molester and rocking it backwards and forwards, or the mob attacking the house of a child molester who has been released from prison.

One of the ways we justify this rage is by telling ourselves and each other that we are showing our solidarity with the abused children. But one of the truths about this complex issue is that the abused child for whom we show such support, and the child abuser for whom we show such hatred and contempt, are the same person.

We claim to feel love for the abused child but when, inevitably, some abused children grow up and start acting out the consequences of their abuse, we react to them with rage and hatred.

That abused child who has had the pillars of his life knocked out from under him will, without support and understanding, grow up continuing to feel frightened and lost. To allay these feelings, he may try to recreate any situation in which he felt "held", and these may include encounters where he was literally held, as he was beaten, or seduced into a sexual encounter.
It is impossible for a loved, secure person to commit a serious crime.

At those times, the adult created a little world that just the two of them inhabited, where all other concerns ceased to exist, and where the child, no matter how bizarrely, felt something like security. If, as an adult, that same child finds himself in a world that is frightening and insecure, a world in which he has no real connections with anyone, he may try to recreate those moments of illusionary security.

It's a difficult process to understand. And it's not an inevitable process. Many, perhaps most, people who are abused as children go on to lead secure and well-balanced lives, often because the abuse took place out of context.

In her book Banished Knowledge, Alice Miller referred to a survey of American prisoners that showed that about 90 per cent had been abused as children. She commented that the other 10 per cent would have been abused too - it was just that they had not yet been able to admit it.

The prisons of Australia are also full of abused children. Those same children whom we profess to care about when they are 10 or 12, but whom we stop caring about when they are 16 or 18.

All crime is illness. All those who commit serious crimes are ill. The more horrifying the crime, the greater the illness of the perpetrator. It is impossible for a loved, secure, happy person to commit a serious crime.

Shame on politicians who use "getting tough on law and order" as an election slogan. They are exploiting these abused children to gain power.

It would dramatically alter our society if we treated criminals as people with serious illnesses. We could do better by them, and we could do better for ourselves and our community, if we stopped calling them scum and looked after them as the confused and lost children that they are.

The cheap, shallow and easy response to all this would be to sneer, "Oh yes that's right, we'll let them all off just because they had unhappy childhoods". Why do people need to think and speak like this? Why are they so hostile to such an obvious truth: that criminals are themselves victims of other people's serious crimes, crimes which often went unreported.

I recognise that some criminals may be so badly hurt that they are unable to control themselves and, therefore, cannot be allowed back into the community. But they are not monsters.

We say we care about abused children and we obviously do. But that means we have to care for them, and it's not so obvious that we do that. It also means that we have to care for them when they become adults, even if they are confused and mentally ill adults. It's horribly obvious that we're not doing that.

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sig, if you don't want stuff like this to happen, don't support the institution.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
sig,

if you don't want stuff like this to happen, don't support the institution.


Magonsdaughter,

I've heard this argument all my life, and I don't buy it. Here's why: I've watched it happen, a lot, and it doesn't look anything like this. The serial rapists, serial killers, and criminals I have known that do the most damage are golden boys who could do no wrong, not abused children. The abused children who commit crimes are often people who see power, they're a minority of people, but they're just like other people, they identify the source of power as abuse, and violence. These people bully and even kill, but they don't form packs and attack. Still, regardless of what someone has been through, I have no sympathy for these people at all. A monster is a monster regardless of how they were made. They value only one thing: Themselves.

More complicated characters are more complex. Tormented souls. They can be insane, violent or criminal, but they're not of the same stripe. I knew a kid who was abused, and very violent. He stabbed a girl, abused a young boy, was generally a destructive force, but he was a mess inside, not a gang organizer. He was constantly looking for outside approval, and then lashing back against those who didn't give it. The boy he abused grew up to be a much more serious abuser, but completely unsympathetic. He would rape and steal and rat on everyone. He was a master manipulator who cared about himself, and no one else. If you gave him your approval or a sign that you cared, then you were a sucker that could be easily manipulated, and he's gladly take you for all he could get.

Yeah, I get the point, monsters are made, not born, but still, there's a difference. Some people decide that the world consists of them, and long before anything happens to them, they're going to be liabilities. One part here I think Freud was right on: This is an early stage, and some people never get out of it. If later, that person discovers violence as the answer to problems, they will be a violent destroyer, if they see money as the power, they'll be an economic destroyer. Any way you slice it, this person made a choice not to evolve, and they make that choice every day: Other people don't matter. Well, hell, if other people don't matter to them, I'm sorry, they don't matter to me.

And people know that I have tolerance for a lot of things and have dealt with a lot of people with vary serious mental problems. This is about assholes. Their mental illness is selfishness, and they didn't learn that anywhere: we were all born with it, and the rest of us just got over it.

*some people encourage it, and create new useless people.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I'm not saying that this works for everybody. SOME sociopaths are born and not made. But for the most part, behavior is a combination of inborn personality and environment. We can see this by the extreme differences in crime rates from one nation to the next. Shouldn't we try to change our environment so as not to create so many violent people?

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I think many that we might call sociopaths are latent normals though. What they have going on the some other over-riding concern - survival or affiliation for example - that blocks out the normal response to another person's pain.

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That's not to say people shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, that being abused as a child should be used as a defense - that's not what the author is saying either.

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That doesn't absolve them of the damage they cause to other people. Rape is horrible, and if any of these gang members are psychopaths or sociopaths, they should not just be forgiven for what they've done.

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The statistics re those who are in jail are pretty indicative that abuse does tend to lead to abusers.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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That's not to say people shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, that being abused as a child should be used as a defense - that's not what the author is saying either.

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That doesn't absolve them of the damage they cause to other people. Rape is horrible, and if any of these gang members are psychopaths or sociopaths, they should not just be forgiven for what they've done.

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Funny thing is, I even find the language all wrong. Holding? Defending? Absolving? Forgiving?

That's not the point.

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1) yes, you're correct, we should design such a society... but
2) History has proven 100,000 times that peace society is fine until it meets violent society which kills it.
Any society with a better design plan will need to be able to defend itself. I just disagree that this defense will be guns in school. I don't actually see guns in my vision of the future, but I definitely do see their point.

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