What do you want from us?  He molested a 8 year old girl.  Perhaps this is a case of “if you don’t have anything good to say don’t say anything at all.”
 

There’s a fundamental conflict of interest with the nature of this article, the author, and Mr. Masengale’s true personality. “I had known Jesse briefly” is the key line in this article. Everyone, aside from his inner circle of friends and family, throws this line out there right before they say something nice about him. Talk to the people who went to high school with him, the kind and soft-spoken teenager he beat to a pulp in a church parking lot, his girlfriend’s daughter, and you’ll get a completely different side of him that he was an expert at hiding from those who were just passing through his life.
Now, I personally never had any real issues with him. I didn’t like him much, no one did, but after a brief spat involving projectile furniture, we had a mutual… I wouldn’t say respect, but we just left each other alone. I’m not writing this as some sort of karmic vengeance, I’m just dropping truth bombs.
Not to say that what happened isn’t a tragedy, but I don’t know too many people who knew him in his formidable years that are truly distraught over his passing. It’s a harsh thing to say, but I’ve talked with dozens of people that knew him for who he really was, and true remorse is hard to come by. Sure, he was a great guy to the fleeting many, but not much more than a punk to the few who had to deal with him day-to-day.
That said, he did have a loving family and a few very close friends. My very deepest sympathy to them for their loss, but the rest of the people he affected in the wrong way for so many years aren’t exactly weeping at night.

Please. He plead guilty to predatory criminal sexual assualt. Look that up to find out what it means in Illinois. And these attacks were ongoing - he violated a child whose trust he supposedly had for nearly a year. According to victim impact statements, he hid the abuse by imparting a great bit of fear in his victim.
What exactly are we, as a community, supposed to do in this instance? What is it that you want from us? To mourn a guy who could do this to a child just because he also did a few nice things on the side? I understand that this is complicated for his friends and family, but words cannot describe how ridiculous it is to put any kind of responsibility on the community to write on this guy’s online condolence site.

“as long as we continue to express simple hatred for people with these criminal compulsions, they are that much more likely to happen again and again, because when children don’t feel safe to even mention what they think or feel like doing, they won’t get help.”
Let me get your logic clear:
Society’s Hatred for Child Rapists Causes Child Rapes
So, if we as a society showed more compassion, adults would cease to molest children?  You can’t be that naive.  We are talking about ADULTS, not children.  This guy knew what he was doing was wrong.  Yes, he may of had an illness, but last time I checked counciling was readily available to people.  If you are attracted to little children, the onus is on the individual to make sure they do not act or put themselves in a position to act on those impulses, not society.
 

regardless of what this guy did that was “good”, he violated a child and then cowardly ended his own life. i feel sorry for his victim and his family.
i’m still trying to figure out why time was wasted putting this article together? 

also, i don’t know what keywords apply more to this article:
worthless or senseless

You ever have a friend whose been abused or molested in the past? I ‘ve had a few, and even if the event is years and years in the past, its always a relief that the perpetrator is dead.
I wonder how an 8-9 year old processes the odd “peace” she may feel when hearing this? I wonder if the parents are telling her at all? I hope she has a good family. Hope she can get along with other kids and play without worry.
We have the #1 prison  pop. in the world - what did this family expect when they turned him in?
 

To wish the death of someone else, much less to be delighted or relieved by it, is one of the lowest forms of moral debasement there is. I don’t doubt it is rampant in our culture and a great deal of hte self-righteousness in this thread must be viewed in light of (a) molested people who, preferring to remain victims after all these years, would sooner vent their rage on someone they don’t know, and (b) current or past molestors who have not been caught, or people who wanted to be molestors and have resisted the temptation so far.  Saying this might sound awful, but the number of victims in the United States guarantees that they are represented here.
I was molested. And for me to spend my life, thinking I had the license, liberty, or the right to wish death on other people because of that is obviously giving in to allowing the victimization to occur throughout my life. I don’t hear anyone here (so far) fessing up to being molested or speaking on behalf of such people. Only platitudes about the horrors of molestation and such cant. There can be no rational discussion if the whole thing is going to be pitched in this kind of hyperbole and hysteria, and maybe that’s the point, because people just want to whine and cry and be awful to other people as a form of revenge.
You’re really letting your ugly side out C-U. And it’s just as horrible as anything Jesse ever did, as a punk or later.

I’m sorry, but explain to me how your point about hate makes any sense.
Furthermore, his mother thinks society should do more for children with abnormal sexual drives - they should feel comfortable confiding in adults about their feelings. That’s great, but that is something that must be fostered at home. 
And once people become adults it is their own responsibility to seek help if they are a threat to others. This guy had the presence of mind to threaten a little girl into silence while she endured what must have been a horrific few months. That seems pretty calculating to me. And it is up to his defense attorney to investigate whether mental illness is an appropriate defense in his case. 
So, again, what is your point about hate? Should we have given him outpatient treatment and hoped for the best? Should we start screening all individuals (and children) for signs of pedophilia?
You’re point seems to be that Jesse did good work for Safe Haven, did a neighborly favor, and his mom is upset. Therefore, we need to overlook what he did. Where exactly am I wrong here?
 
 

     Before you brought this up Mr. Springer, there was no one on mesage boards (that I am aware of) expressing glee in Jesse’s death. We did not call for his execution. He took his own life. Perhaps that’s influenced by the hatred people felt toward his own actions. Well, tough, that’s what happens when you repeatedly rape a child.
    Jesse’s own illness, hatred, or need to dominate caused a lot of pain to others, including his own mother. His actions led to a jail sentence. His took his own life. Our hate had nothing to do with any of this.
    Moving forward, what do we do about pedophiles? Those who have these feelings but don’t act on them deserve our love and support. But those who act on those feelings and harm children (or anyone) irreparably, need to have consequences. Jesse plead guilty to 2 class X felonies. He raped a girl repeated, threatening her the whole 10 months. Sending him to prison is not a disproportionate punishment.
     So Jesse’s hate has caused all of this. The community did not have an outpouring of anger because the only one to be angry with is Jesse himself. He’s an adult who knew his actions were wrong. He knew his urges were wrong. He is not a confused 14 year old who cannot appreciate the ramifications of his actions.
     He did not cooperate with police until after the brave little girl told on him. He did not take responsiblity until forced to do so.
     Prisons certainly need more treatment capabilities, but to suggest that we’re all hate-filled beings because we think raping a child deserves prison is seriously misguided.

The IMC had rallied around Jessie as their shining star when it suited their social/political ambitions, and dropped him like a rock when he got into ugly trouble. Where were those “friends?” There was never a mention of him after his arrest; just quickly deleted posts pointing it out.  So let’s see how the follow-up is if someone else falls from grace, like maybe a cop who gets in trouble with alcohol and becomes a bit of a sad figure as she sinks further into addiction, ultimately losing two jobs and going to jail. One Greg Springer was delighted at the article reveling in that downfall.
http://www.ucimc.org/content/police-reports-obtained-lisa-staples-dui-incident

How about we recognize that humans tend to do human things. Some of them are bad, others are very bad. People are complicated and messy, and moralists of all persuasions seem to like to castigate others based on the type box they can comfortably put them in.

I wonder how these accusations (from all sides) would change if we found out Jesse had been molested as a child?

Sexual abuse is obviously a sensitive subject—even more so when we’re talking about children. We’re outraged at the abuse of an innocent, and we want punishment, we want answers, we want it to go away.

I am honestly surprised at some of the criticism Greg is getting here, but I understand why we’re all so upset. Trying to understand someone who did something very VERY bad as a real live person, just like you and me, is extremely difficult. WE aren’t bad, WE aren’t out hurting kids, so how can WE be held accountable for what happened?

A quote from the Child Molestation Research Institute:

“<span class=“text_14”>Shouldn’t stopping sexual abuse be left to professionals - physicians and therapists? Better yet,  shouldn’t the police and the courts take care of it?</span>
<span class=“text_14”>Professionals - physicians and therapists - can never put an end to sexual abuse; neither can the police or the courts. Why?  Because they come on the scene too late. By the time they get there, the children have already been molested. Only you can get there in time.”

We, as parents, siblings, society think we’re doing the right things to prevent child abuse. We punish abusers, we spit on their graves when they kill themselves. We even go as far as to tell our kids it’s not okay when someone touches them, and they can come to us if someone does.</span>
 
<span class=“text_14”>...but by then they’re already a victim.</span>
 
<span class=“text_14”>Jesse’s mom has a point. This point does not excuse her son’s horrific actions. How do we treat children or adults who have urges to harm others, who feel safe enough to tell someone? Do we shame them, tell them they’re bad, that they’re disgusting, that if they ever act on it we’ll make sure they get thrown behind bars forever, without a chance to actually get better? Do we get them help? What kind of help should we give? </span>
 
<span class=“text_14”>Are we ready to be the person a could-be abuser confides in? Do we have what it takes to prevent the Jesses of the world from harming others? Is it our responsibility?</span>
 
<span class=“text_14”>For the sake of the child that Jesse hurt, I say Yes, it is my responsibility. It’s my responsibility not only to teach my children about their own bodies, and boundaries they should respect for others, but to be open and caring enough to let them know they can come to me with anything—even if that means my child fantasizes about abusing someone. It’s my responsibility because my child could hurt your child. It’s your responsibility to listen to your children, no matter what, because your child could hurt my child.

Since I don’t have actually have kids, my responsibility as a tiny part of an overall society is to educate myself on these facts, and do what I can, when and where I can, to help.

Hate doesn’t help. It might be cathartic, but it doesn’t solve anything. Rejoicing in the death of a criminal doesn’t prevent other criminals from committing crimes—it doesn’t protect future victims from getting hurt.

The<a title=“http://www.childmolestationprevention.org/pages/tell_others_the_facts.html” target=“_blank”> Child Molestation and Research Institute</a> is a great resource for learning more about child abuse, how frequent it actually occurs, and how we can help. Our children are not only abused by punk psychos with abnormal sexual preferences.
</span>
 
<span class=“text_14”>What would you do if your son molested someone? Your daughter? Your spouse?
</span>
<span class=“text_14”>
Greg, despite all the flack he’s getting in these comments, is right: We don’t want to think about it. We’d prefer to just stay angry.
</span>
 

So what was the role of our hate in all of this? I just really don’t understand what you’re trying to say at all.
We can all agree more treatment is necessary in general. We all agree that we should help those with urges to molest children, but who resist those urges, with compassion. Parents need to encourage their children to come to them with concerns about any sexual desires, absolutely. But that’s not something society can do - that’s up to parents to create a bond that can support honesty.
We can all agree that Jesse should have gone to prison. If you look at sentencing guidelines, the sentence was nowhere near the maximum. Jesse chose to take his own life. He put himself, his victim, and his family in a terrible situation. We didn’t. 
So what does our hatred have to do with anything at all in regards to this case? I’d really like to know. (Non sequitaus about hate from semi-famous people aren’t clarifying your point, by the way.)

“Such attitudes of love and forgiveness probably do a lot more to heal and perhaps even prevent future tragedy than viral hatred ever can hope to achieve.”
Yes, compassion and love for the perpetrator worked so well in the Catholic Church. (That was to a “t” their approach with problem priests, by the way.) Love and forgiveness does not cure pedophilia. Never, ever, ever. Does that mean we give up on the people who commit crimes? No. Our current system is by no means perfect. But Jesse gave up on himself. We did not execute him.
I’m sure his mother feels terrible, and probably perceives hatred. I don’t know her, and I don’t know what her experiences have been like. But hatred has never been expressed here until you brought the issue up.

After reading the mother’s comments again, I’m even more annoyed.
First off, the attorney asked for the absolute minimum sentence possible. The maximum sentence was 120 years. Masengale ended up getting 30. http://law.onecle.com/illinois/720ilcs5/12-14.1.html
 
The entire first part of her writing deals with why she thinks her son should get the minimum. He’s a good guy, he cooperated (AFTER the little girl told), etc. Then she says that our hatred has led to his incarceration. That is ridiculous. His raping a child repeatedly led to his incarceration. Had he sought treatment rather than rape a child, he would not be sentenced to prison.
 
Then she makes the point that we need our kids to feel free to talk to parents. This is an excellent point. One that I’m sure she wishes she realized long ago. But this has nothing to do with societal hatred. This has to do with parents and children and their relationship. Our disdain for child rape has NOTHING to do with this.
 
To recap, this is the writing of a sad and hurt mother who blames her son’s suicide on a prison sentence. I can empathize with her. But to blame society for this, when her son alone decided to rape a child, does not make any sense.

Ya see folks, we gotta draw the line somewhere. Its impossible, and the opposite if being a human to be completely disconnected from personal responsibility, no matter how many commuity organizers you have. I feel ridiculous writing this. When it comes to rape, or child abuse, or molestation…it is wrong to do those things. The pinnacle of wrong, the essence of wrong, the most basic form of “wrong.” Our society didn’t give him the death penalty, either - he fucking did.

#31:
That you can console yourself that it was “her son alone” who decided to rape a child is not cogent. Do we decide alone to speak the langauge of the culture we are born in. Do we decide alone the circumstances that affect us this way and that way, especially as a child. All of hte developmental psychology emphasizes the social aspect of socialization that we all experience from the earliest days of our lives. Presumably you were not included in that world, but it is not just the people in the vicinity of Jesse’s life, starting from the same degree of innocence and naievete that we all do, and gradually being turned, in the face of our culture (call it of hate or whatnot), into what he became.  I’m not erasing whatever part of his own decision-making was involved in that, but I am saying it is profoundly naive to pretend that social factors (our culture, and the kind of venom your post and others here represent) played no role.
So in that way, it does make you partially responsible, as we all are. This thread is living proof. Part of the anger here is an inability of people to imagine how someone could even come to want to sexually touch an eight year old, but if she was eleven, fourteen, or a few minutes under the age of consent, there’d be more and more support and less and less outrage.
I don’t doubt for a moment that most people would refuse to say they participated in Jesse’s actions. My vision of a society is one in which the circumstances that led to the crime never had to happen. What would that look like? Someone reaching out to Jesse in a committed, determined, “I won’t give up until I succeed” kind of way? Is there no one in the world, or in Champaign-Urbana, who can’t be bothered to spend time on Jesse when he was a child? You can look up the research on what can happen to children who are born with “difficult temperaments”. The very difficulty starts them on a long slide toward social isolation, self-hatred, and anti-social acts, frequently landing them in jail or causing them to act out. It is absolutely absurd to expect that Jesse’s needs as an 8 year old boy himself were his responsibility, that he should be held responsible for making whatever choices he did in the face of a world that was not meeting his needs, if not abusing him outright.
You want to say, “Yeah, well that still doesn’t give him a pass on raping an 8 year old girl.” And neither does it give you, or any of us, a pass on making Jesse the kind of person who did.

I feel truly sad for his mother.  I agree with Greg that her comments were profound.
 
The commenters here can textually yell at each other in righteous anger, but the fact is that a young girl’s life is forever marred, a sick young man is dead, and his mother is, I can only imagine, howling in pain for loses at every level.  We should all recognize this as failure.  Failure to provide mental health services before Jesse offended. Failure to protect this little girl.  Failure to responsibly deal with the consequences.  
Being smug about a molester’s suicide just reflects a moral laziness.  Either put in the death penalty for these cases, or prevent these suicides.  To be so nonchalant about the man’s death seems cowardly.  To let him face 30 years and then make suicide an easily available option is neither justice nor does it represent the rule of law.  Louisianna tried to at least play it straight with an actual death sentence a few years ago, but the SCOTUS knocked it down (5-4) as both unusual and unfair (14th AtC, Equal protection…).  To allow this to happen is just a subversion of US law and the local authorities should be help accountable.

Oh please.  What a self-righteous ass you are!  You ever get molested, P. old buddy?  Why do I suspect you haven’t?  And you have the audacity to sit here and preach to us about what a wonderful guy you are for refusing to hate people.  Which, from what I can tell, is pretty easy to say from where you sit.
Hating people like Jesse is what keeps them living in fear.  I wonder how many people like Jesse have decided not to molest little kids, because they know what’ll happen to them if they try it and get caught.
Plus, reading stuff like “Despite having strong family support, being a high school graduate, remaining employed and all the other good things the judge said about Jesse, he still handed down 30 years.” makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.  Oh, so he graduated high school and had a job!  Well, I guess it’s not so bad then!
At least he made the right decision and offed himself.  Too bad he didn’t do that years ago, before he started molesting that girl, but better late than never.

#37:
Two things.
First, if Singer had been molested, would you prefer that he spent his entire life steeped in hatred, constantly dwelling on “what happened to him” lifetimes ago, or would you rather see him process the experience, maybe learn from it (as a positive lesson or an avoidance), and get on with his life to whatever extent he found that possible. Are you so blinded with self-righteousness that you have completely lost sight of the fact that it would be better for a person to move on with his life than to stay rooted in some kind of backwards fear or anger all his life. And if you want to say that Singer’s example doesn’t count, then take mine. I was molested and I’d much rather be at peace with myself (and my life) than be full of vitriol. I’m not saying I came to that peace immediately, of course. But that’s not the point. As Anthony deMello said, in one of those moments that really made a difference for me, “Someone else is bad, and so you punish yourself with anger towards them. Does that make sense?” The answer is no.
Second, hating people is not what keeps would-be child molesters in check. Frequently, they agonize over their own desires. They know what they want to do is wrong, but drugs, alcohol, or some other form of diminished inhibition (feel free to look this stuff up) gets past those barriers. What’s more, pornography has been shown to be a diminishing outlet for desire as well; so, yes, showing a preferential pedophile child pornography might exactly be the therapy he (or she) needs to not go out and seek out the real thing; that, rather than hatred. But where your non-logic really goes south is this: if a child rapist (or a rapist in general) knows what’s at stake if he gets caught, so it only makes sense: leave no witnesses.
So while you have the audacity to sit there and preach to people a gospel that puts more children at risk, I’d suggest you get better informed before you license yourself to have such rants. Let me repeat that: what you are advocating increases the danger to children. And the risk is not only physical. Most molesters won’t resort to the extreme case of murdering their victim because of the social hatred that makes them have to hide their activity in the first place. Instead, they’ll use emotional blackmail, especially when they are fathers, which is the most frequent, or extended family members, which is the second most frequent, to do the next best thing you can do short of killing—silencing the child.
As a former victim, I know that if I was dead I couldn’t have experienced all that I have, but at the time after my abuse, the fact that I had been enjoined to silence was by far the most damaging and most long-lasting effect of my abuse. It wasn’t until I was well through college that I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and told someone.
So because my uncle was afraid of being caught because people like you crow about hating child molesters (and while we’re being confessional here, what’s your story?), I enjoyed sixteen years of self-torture under my enforced silence. I don’t know what would have happened if my uncle had been more open, had been caught, and all that. All I know is that him saying I should never tell anyone felt like death. So remember when you’re callously throwing around words like you’re saying, you’re not just catching the perpetrator in your shrapnel.

@Rob:
Your statements are dangerous.
Suicide is never the answer. Tomorrow is another day.
As for the article, I take away the thoughts of a mother’s unconditional love for her son. I respect that.
As for Jesse, his self-imposed death sentence negated his chance to atone and serve his sentence as ordered.
Perhaps, he could have been transferred to the state sex offender prison in time.
As for speculation that he would have been attacked in prison, those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.
Hands off the kids.

Anon @38
If P got molested, I wouldn’t particularly care what he did.  If he spent the rest of his life miserable and bitter, well, I suppose that wouldn’t be very good for him.  But I wouldn’t judge him for it either, since it happened to him and not me.  Who am I to tell him how he should feel about his experiences?  But then, who is he to tell anyone else?
I admit that I flew off the handle when I first read this article.  I should have held off commenting, probably forever.  So I am sorry if I seemed angry at first.
I’m glad you got over what happened to you.  Not everybody does, you know.  And if you had decided that you wanted to stay angry, or just weren’t ready to do anything else, that’s your right.  I wouldn’t dream of criticizing you for that either.  I wouldn’t treat you like some kind of unenlightened chump because you didn’t handle it in the way I wanted you to.
This girl might hate Jesse for the rest of her life.  She might not ever be able to have a normal relationship as an adult because of this.  It happens.  And if it happens to her, well, how should I think about Jesse?  Should I just shrug my shoulders and say “Eh.”?  Or should I hate the person who did this to that young girl?  Well, whether you or P like it or not, I’m going with the latter.  And I don’t feel bad about it at all.
If you’re asking me if I’ve ever been molested myself, then no.  I haven’t.  That’s one of the reasons I feel like I have no business telling people who have how they ought to feel about it.
I suppose you think that Holocaust survivors shouldn’t hate the Nazis.  Well, maybe they shouldn’t.  But would you ever even think of going to a group of Holocaust survivors and telling them that?  I suspect that you wouldn’t.  You know why?  Because you are a decent human being, and realize that, perhaps, having grown up peacefully in the United States, it just might not be your place to tell them how they should react.  It might come off as just a wee bit arrogant.  In fact, you probably realize that if you did do that, it would just piss them off even more, so that even if it is a worthwhile thing to tell them, it’s certainly not a very effective one.
Honestly, though, how do you know what keeps child molesters in check?  Have they ever done surveys on potential child molesters to see what kept them from molesting kids?  How could they?  What would the survey question be?  “Have you ever considered molesting a child, but didn’t?”  What kind of person would ever answer “Yes” to that question, even if it was true?  The only people we know about are people who have been found molesting kids, but obviously, there is some difference between the ones who have and the ones who haven’t.  But the ones who haven’t are basically invisible to us, since we’ll never know who they are.
Your “leave no witnesses” thing really doesn’t make much sense.  Did Jesse kill that girl?  Nope.  Well, why not?  Certainly, he knew that the punishment for child molestation is quite harsh, yet he left a witness alive.  So do most child molesters, if I’m not mistaken.  So I don’t think my comments were that audacious.  What I am advocating doesn’t increase the risk to children at all, since it’s the way things already are.
Of course, you probably are aware that, in places where there is very little law enforcement (such as the Congo), young girls get raped all the time, and often murdered.  If they get killed more often there when there is less fear of punishment, what is your explanation for that?  Perhaps it happens more there because they know there’s a greater chance of them getting away with it.
Anyway, there is nothing wrong with hating people who ruin lives and harm children.  I agree that we shouldn’t go around hating everybody who makes us angry.  P tries to compare it to goofball things like Albert Brooks’s hatred of his treadmill, as though he wants us to believe that he doesn’t realize the vast gulf between hating an inanimate object that Brooks chose to use, and hating a person who irrevocably damaged the life of a completely innocent young girl (as well as the fact that Albert Brooks is a comedian, and just making a silly joke).  It’s just childish.
Hating people is often what motivates prosecutors and investigators to spend days and weeks investigating cases, which are often quite difficult due to the lack of physical evidence, for just one example.
Anyway, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.  I’m fine with that.

anger for what he did to the little girl, indifference for what he did to himself… hate though, is detrimental to a person’s own well-being. i can’t blame people for harboring hate, but when they do, it anchors their soul/heart/life/self in a grim state. this notion came about with self-realization, just ask jesus… wait, no, ask aristotle instead.

Well, that’s your opinion. I suppose I’m just an inferior being for still hating people, but honestly, I’m fine with that.  Despite what you and other Jesus freaks think, I am not miserable or sick or even particularly unhappy.  I’m rarely even in a bad mood.  Enjoy your feelings of superiority, though.  They seem really important to you.

Anon #37:

Thank you for what amounts to the first at least non-hysterical post in this thread (save some of Greg’s helpless replies).

I disagree with you strongly that it is a person’s “right” to hate. On the one hand, do you really want people hating other people they deem inferior and working politically to pass laws to legally embody such hatred? Do you want someone like Fred Phelps at www.godhatesfags.com to get his hate-filled gospel made a constitutional amendment so certain people could be rounded up in death camps and killed? But on a less extreme note, do you want to allow, say, a fanatical jihadist to post up in some public place and scream at your children as you walk with them that they should be tortured and slaughtered for the heinous crimes of the United States and that it’s all their fault? Do you want the domain of the public to be a place where hatred can freely poison the public? Do you really want to call that a right, especially where topics like racisms, homophobia, or sexism are concerned (i.e., issues where already established human rights are being preached against hatefully). In my world, even if hatred were a “right” then I would oppose it in the public sphere at every turn. Perhaps I’d accept that hatred, like oral intercourse, is something left to be practiced in private.

If you feel you have no basis for telling people who’ve been abused how they feel, then why do you allow yourself to make judgments about whatever damage you imagine occurred without first asking what that damage was? You are being outraged on behalf of the girl’s future, which hasn’t come to pass yet. You seem to be implicitly condemning her to misery. What if she’s happy as a clam? Or more simply, what if she’s not what you imagine she is. What if she grows up to be a great artist and she acknowledges that her molestation played a central role in that? What does your judgment of her molester do then? I repeat to you, the most harmful part of my experience was feeling I could tell no one, but now that I have, I am pleased with who I am, I am at peace, I enjoy my own company, I delight in my freakishness (which might well originate with my uncle). It’s not a question of you telling me how I should feel. I’m saying that if you felt rage toward my uncle for molesting me, I would say you were being overly simplistic. It’s far more complicated than that. You don’t have to forgive and applaud my uncle or Jesse for what he did, but to condemn absolutely what my uncle did relative to my life and how I have turned out is ridiculous. Honestly, my parents were much worse for me than my uncle; it took much longer to get over their damage to me, but where is your rage toward them? My mother neglected me and my father was physically (but, much more importantly) emotionally abusive, in a way that many fathers are, but will you cry for blood for them. If they hung themselves, would you be glad? Would you condemn them for destroying my future? Once again, I would say you would be being overly simplistic.

I think, of course, people don’t go there because then they would have to confront the barbarity of their own upbringing, etc.

As for how one would study what keeps child molesters in check (please remember, that is a legal term, not a psychiatric term), one can look at which convicted sex offenders reoffend and which don’t. It is true one can’t generally spot sex offenders in advance, but there are plenty that have gone through the system, and those have been studied extensively. That’s why rates of recidivism are regularly misquoted in the media, because the media does not bother to specify “which” sex offenders in question are reoffending. Clearly, someone caught with child porn, someone who was arrested for indecent exposure (because he was caught peeing in a public place), and someone who is clinically (psychiatrically) a preferential pedophile are not at equal risk for reoffense. Most, that is, by far, the overwhelming number of people who molest children are family members; these are rarely predatory pedophiles and so are at low risk for reoffense, just like the man charged with indecent exposure is at low risk. A flasher or a rapist, on the other hand, is at greater risk, because those crimes are explicitly, sexually motivated. The brother who molests his sister may do so because he isn’t successful with his peers socially, or maybe he’s socially isolated and doesn’t have access to other females—he’s going to be low odds for reoffense in the future (unless he’s fixated on a desire for young girls along the way). And so forth. Psychiatric professionals are aware of these distinctions. They will tell you that, just as a few instances of homosexual sex don’t necessarily make you a homosexual, a few occasions of molesting a child, even very young ones, doesn’t necessarily make you a pedophile. And if you’re not a pedophile, then you’re at low odds for reoffense, because the reason for your offense had something to do with other than the age of the victim (i.e., that the victim seemed to be the only one available, or some other situational factor). All of this is readily available in the literature on the topic, if you decide to research it like I did.

Why do you assume that some Holocaust survivors amongst themselves don’t tell anyone it’s pointless to hate. It’s no complex equation to run from such hatred to the treatment of Palestine by Israel, so the historical case is unambiguous. Hatred always makes you a slave of the one you hate. So it’s not arrogant to say it; it’s something said out of concern not only for the person who hates but also for the world I have to live in with the person who hates. Again, I don’t think it’s a “right” and shouldn’t be practiced in public. Keep it at home.

I can’t speak to why Jesse left a witness, but that’s not the point. Turning yourself in and then thinking the police and judge will treat you leniently belies a naive point of view, so I’m not sure if Jesse really grasped what was at stake. Again, however, I can’t speak to that, not knowing him. But if you had molested someone, and you knew very clearly that if you were caught there would be a very harsh sentence passed down on you and that you would at the very least find prison to be far more uncomfortable than as for most inmates, if not that you would actually be shanked in the neck by another inmate, or tortured until you died, what would you do? At that point, you either (1) leave a witness, (2) leave no witness, or (3) flee to somewhere without extradition (like Roman Polanski did). If you don’t have the resources to flee, #2 starts to look more and more rational. That’s all I’m saying. The much less extreme form of “leave no witnesses” is to exact silence out of the child, usually through emotional blackmail. That’s the most common route.

You wrote, “Anyway, there is nothing wrong with hating people who ruin lives and harm children.” I believe you are conflating hatred and anger. The man who hates faggots and niggers passes that on to his children; is that what you want? Another man might be angry at a gay person or someone non-white, but that anger will more likely be due to something that person has done, presumably something socially objectionable which would be just as angering if done by a straight or white person. Anger has a place in the public sphere, but not hatred.

And now I have to assume something about you, so I apologize if it misses the mark, but do you actually spend your time hating those people who ruin lives and harm children? Do you really hate parents who, whether from misguided love and concern or not, physically or emotionally harm their children, or is that behavior simply excused under the difficulty of parenting? Considering that god does not exist, to teach children that there is some imaginary being who created them is spiritually damaging. Do you hate people for that, or do you call it the free practice of religion? The number of people who ruin lives and harm children, under the guise of love or concern, is a vast bunch of people; nearly every parent in the United States, if one is honest about it. Such parents had just as many whiny excuses for harming their children did as Jesse did, but will you really hate them? The parents who abused their children and drove them to drug use. Or the homophobes who throw their gay sons and daughters out of the house to become homeless (there are twice as many gay and lesbian youths in the homeless population as among the general population); these disowned children often become prostitutes to support themselves and wind up addicted to drugs. Do you really hate those parents who ruined the lives of their children, or are they simply good Christians who know sin when they see it?

Thank you again for not being completely unreasonable in your last post :)

YNOD:
In the first place, people hate child molestation because they learn that they should. They see or hear the hysterical screaming of someone or read in a post on an article about social compassion that “they should” hate child molesters, and then perhaps do. It’s something you learn, like racism and homophobia, and it’s particularly socially dangerous because people also seem to allow themselves the right to condemn others to death—a habit that elsewhere, historically, has become the basis for genocide. Bear in mind, in societies where sex with children of various ages is not condemned, and such societies have and do exist both currently and historically, there is no such hatred. The age of consent varies enough even in the United States that the sex you have with a teenager in one state might make you a child molester in another. It’s very likely that your own sexual urges could get you jailed somewhere in the world. Does that mean you’re a sex offender?

To put the matter bluntly, studies have shown that this hatred you advocate INCREASES the dangers to children. Children are more likely to be murdered after an offender assaults them because of the hatred; is that what you want?
Also, either you have no compulsive behaviors or else you generously allow yourself whatever excuses you make for them while condemning the same in others (that’s called projection and hypocrisy). Very few people who assault children simply wake up one day and say, “You know, I think I’ll rape a child.” For most people, it is an agonized, unpleasant, perhaps even desperate series of attempts to NOT give in to the compulsion. It’s called self-grooming (just as they often have to groom the child to accept their advances). All the while, it’s perfectly clear to them that they’ll be hated for what they feel compelled to do; that’s why it is kept a secret. And BECAUSE it is kept a secret, because they feel, “I can’t talk to anyone about this,” the pressure continues to build, rather than dissipate through a conversation, and this increases the risks of offending as well. It’s the same kind of pattern as the smoker who tries to quit for one, two, three days, and on the fourth day can’t keep the compulsion under control and they smoke three packs of cigarettes. Or the drinker who swears off alcohol for a few days, only to relapse with a binge run. Or the eater who starves herself two days, then devours everything in the house. The attempt to control the compulsion leads to a much stronger response down the road. So this means, if someone were struggling with desires to sexually touch a child and they tried to bring the issue up with you, the hatred you advocate (and allow yourself?) would quickly cause them to not talk to you, and whatever opportunity there might have been to defuse the desire before the person acted on it would be lost. Thus, whatever child they are fixated on is now not in less danger.

So when you write “And if you believe people can’t make the choice to avoid criminal compulsions, why would you believe “rehabilitation” could ever work?” perhaps it is clear now how this is confused. In the first place, many offenders do make the choice to avoid criminal compulsions over and over and over but ultimately succumb to them. So this has nothing to do with rehabilitation. Even people who have been identified as preferential pedophiles (that is, their sexuality is fixated on children as their desired sexual partner) can be trained not to act on their desires, though the desires will likely never go away. This is the most extreme case and the most difficult as far as getting rehabilitation to work; predatory pedophiles (far and away NOT the largest category of sex offenders) have the highest recidivism rate among sex offenders (actually, rapists, whether of men, women, or children, are probably the most likely to reoffend).
Is it even possible to have a public conversation about the different types of sex offender and the different risks associated with each? It would be in the public’s best interest, because currently there’s massive expenditures to treat people who are low risk for reoffense as high-risk. That’s good for prosecutors and the prison-industrial complex, but bad for us, because we are paying for all of that.

Predatory rapists (of men, women, or children) remain the most dangerous. Rehabilitating them might be unfeasibly difficult. Mere pedophiles (preferential or not) can manage their desires. In some cases, giving them child pornography allows them a sexual outlet and prevents them from acting out toward real children; Canada figured this out. Opportunistic rapists (and this is the largest category where child molestation is occurred; it’s the father or brother raping his daughter or sister type of scenario) need to develop the habit of not placing themselves in opportunities, which is difficult, because it leaves unaddressed generally whatever compulsion that led them to it in the first place. And the judicial system tends to go more leniently on these kinds of in-family rapists precisely for the sake of the “family” (even though it’s been the “family” that’s led to the reason for the rapes). In other words, the judiciary currently punishes “stranger danger” more harshly than the far more widespread variety of molestation going on. And that’s ultimately because lawmakers, police officers, judges, and prosecutors will tend to be family men (or women) who (given that perhaps as many as 1 in 3 children are molested) are not eager to process a crime that they might be guilty of. Bad news for all the children in families in this country. And so those comparatively lighter sentences send a message that it’s okay (sort of) to rape children, and that further endangers them. But at least for opportunistic rapists, if they can get some therapy to identify the roots of why they were doing what they were doing, the chance of reoffense is low, especially if they develop a discipline of not putting themselves in opportunity’s way.

So one can be hopeful about rehabilitation for certain kinds of offenders and less confident for others. It depends on the offender and the specifics of the situation. And if we had, socially, that kind of articulate response to different situations rather than a blanket policy of hatred (the father who feels tempted to rape his daughter is the most likely beneficiary of a society that doesn’t jump down his throat with hatred when he admits to someone that he has those urges, and since that is the largest category of offender, it would make the largest difference), we’d be better off and our public monies could be better spent.

”...studies have shown that this hatred you advocate INCREASES the dangers to children. Children are more likely to be murdered after an offender assaults them because of the hatred”
Can you offer a citation for this?

We’re so busy congratulating ourselves for not judging other people (except people who judge other people) that we no longer can admit child molestation is the fault of the child molester.
I knew a guy who didn’t believe in blame for anything.  He’d run over another guy and gotten away with it.  He couldn’t talk about anything without turning it into why he was innocent.
Yay, let’s not judge one another, but if we can’t even judge a child rapist, we sure don’t stand for a whole lot.  Sorry, child.

I imagine nearly everyone can empathize with the mother. I’m sure what I imagine her pain to be is only a fraction of what she feels.
 
I can empathize with someone who does not harm others despite having a drive to do so (i.e., those who do not act on their pedophilic urges). I 100% believe we need to offer support to keep these individuals from acting on their compulsions, just as we offer assistance to alcoholics and drug addicts.
 
But why must I empathize with someone who actually raped a child? And how does this lack of empathy lead to more child rapes? (Please look up the crime he plead guilty to. There was penetration folks. This was a case of multiple rapes.)
 
It would be nice if love conquered all and if we click our shoes together, say kumaya, and smoke a joint together, that our collective problems would disappear. If you want a serious discussion of how to handle pedophiles and rapists, then have it. But this peace-love-happiness schtick is very unconvincing.

“You wrote, ‘Anyway, there is nothing wrong with hating people who ruin lives and harm children.’ I believe you are conflating hatred and anger. The man who hates faggots and niggers passes that on to his children; is that what you want? Another man might be angry at a gay person or someone non-white, but that anger will more likely be due to something that person has done, presumably something socially objectionable which would be just as angering if done by a straight or white person”
 
See?  This is why this cannot be an intelligent discussion.  You are conflating things that you KNOW are not the same.  Hating someone because he is black is in no way the same as hating someone who has molested a child.  For starters, there’s nothing wrong with being black.  For another, black people can’t help being black.  You know this.  You know there is a difference.  You are simply being disingenuous by pretending that you don’t.
 
Has it ever occurred to you that, perhaps, hating people is sort of like everything else?  You have to do it in moderation.  Sure, going around hating everyone all the time is bad.  I won’t argue with that.  But what about hating just a few people, for a fairly good reason?  Can you actually SHOW me that there’s anything wrong with that, without resorting to Stephen Keaton inanities about how groovy the sixties were?

“Maybe I’ll listen to some Devendra Barnhart.”

Devendra Banhart’s early records were released on Young God Records, the label started by Michael Gira, the former lead singer of Swans.  Gira discovered him, really.  Michal Gira may well be one of the most hate-filled men alive.  His album titles include such gems as “The Body Haters” and “Public Castration Is A Good Idea”.  He recently put out a new album under the Swans moniker, my favorite song on which is entitled “You Fucking People Make Me Sick”.  Just so you know.

As far as the grammar goes, he “hanged” himself.

The late-Reverend James Bevel, architect of the Civil Rights Movement, visited Champaign, IL in February of 2005 and told the audience the following story from the “turbulent” 60’s:

After the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama that left four innocent children dead, a meeting was convened of the movement’s leadership to decide how to respond to this outrage. The bombing was so vicious that Reverend Bevel had already made up his mind that it was now time for the gloves to come off, and that those responsible for the bombing should be hunted down and murdered. Bevel had military experience having served in the Korean conflict, and Bevel believed killing those responsible could be easily accomplished.
Bevel was not alone in his desire for revenge, for other civil rights leaders voiced the same sentiment at the meeting, declaring that for the safety of those who will continue in the movement, the opposition needs to be assured that killing will surely cost them their lives as well. Everyone at the meeting agreed retaliation was deserved and necessary.
Except Dr. King.
Dr. King listened quietly to the logical arguments as to why the movement needed to stray from its committment to non-violence and do something violent to prevent more violence. When it came time for his turn to speak, Bevel recounts Dr. King said,
“If what these men did, the killing of four children, is wrong; then killing itself must be wrong. You men can do whatever it is you want; but as for me and my household, I will one day stand before my Creator to await judgment, and when I do, there will be no blood on my hands.”
Dr. King then got up and left the room.

Out of respect for his friend, and in his belief there existed a holy and just God, Bevel decided to commit himself to a day and night of fasting and prayer before taking any action. Surely God Almighty, Bevel reasoned, the God who has prepared a lake of fire for those who would bomb His church and kill His children, would know better than Dr. King how to respond to this heinous act.
Bevel faithfully stayed at the altar until he received an anwser. By morning, an answer came and Bevel claims this is what he was told by the Spirit of God Himself:
“James, I love Bull Connor more, than you love your mother.”

Moved by the depth of God’s love, mercy, and compassion for even a despicable creature as Bull Connor, Bevel repented of his plot to kill Dynamite Bob and the boys (as did the other civil rights leaders), and the rest, as they say, is history.