I'm Not Surprised

When the first details of this grisly crime came out, and that the victim's daughter was being held, it wasn't too difficult to figure out the significance of what she did to him:

Police were investigating whether a mentally disturbed woman lured her Liberian stepfather to her home and then gagged, handcuffed and castrated him to avenge a history of sexual abuse.

Investigators believe the suspect, Brigitte Harris, "did it," a law enforcement official said on Monday. "We are trying to determine why."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Harris had not been arrested or charged, said police were checking reports that Eric Goodridge, 55, may have abused Harris as a child. Detectives were hoping to question the 26-year-old suspect at a hospital mental ward where she was admitted after the slaying, the law enforcement official said.

Fox News interviewed Brigitte's sister this morning, who confirmed that both of them were sexually abused by the stepfather from the age of 3 onward--and that repeated attempts to get help were ignored.

Brigitte is under psychiatric evaluation at the moment. If what happened to her didn't make someone unbalanced, it would be surprising.

There's an effort underway right now to get Idaho law changed to provide a mandatory minimum sentence for first offense child molestation. I find myself wondering if it might also be worthwhile for the state government to run ads aimed at raising awareness of the problem. My impression, from all my reading, is that for every fixated pedophile who devotes much of his life to the pursuit of children to victimize, that there are several pedophiles who are conflicted about their desires, feel some guilt about it, and might be sidetracked by an advertising campaign.

Some pedophiles rationalize their actions with, "Well, I would have enjoyed this when I was their age." Pedophiles are generally former victims themselves. Only some victims grow up to become pedophiles; from what I have read, no one entirely understands why. From the outside, we can look at their rationalizations and see someone who is re-creating their own victimization--but this time, with the former victim now in charge. Because some--perhaps many--pedophiles have some doubts about their actions, an advertising campaign that seeks to get them to seek treatment before they victimize a child would seem like a darn good idea.

There are enormous human costs of pedophilia. This case appears to be one such example. Aileen Wuornos is another. She says her grandfather sexually abused her. (Her father was a child molester as well--one guess why--and hung himself in prison.) Aileen, unsurprisingly, grew up homosexual (as victims of child sexual abuse disproportionately do), and worked as a prostitute. Then she murdered seven men, and was eventually executed for those murders.

I'm sure that I will be accused of incipient liberalism, but I believe that a campaign aimed at both trying to get men (and a very few women) who are tempted to sexually abuse a child to seek treatment, and to get children who are being victimized to report that abuse, would probably save a few children from destruction. If Idaho spent a million dollars a year on a campaign like this, and it saved even five children from being abused, I would consider that money well spent.

A child molested becomes a burden on the taxpayers because of the need for social services immediately, and later in life, when many victims turn their anger outward (more common with boys) or inward (more common with girls). A child molester who gets convicted is a big cost to the taxpayers, first for trial, then to hold him in prison for many years. If there are ways to save money--and save children from this abuse--spend the money.