LogFAQs > #973790419

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's not up to either of you to unilaterally make that decision for every other abuse survivor in the history of the human race though.

Keep in mind that I said that there's an argument to be made to see things that way. I never said that everyone does, or everyone should. But there are absolutely people who do. And both sides of the discussion have their own merits.

Just how far do you take the "murder is a mercy" argument, though? The judicial system can't afford to equivocate over how we treat murder as the ultimate crime, otherwise we fall through the cracks into an surreal, inverted moral universe in which a lawyer would be able to plead that their client deserves a lighter sentence for killing their victim rather than leaving them alive.

But why do we treat child sexual abuse as a crime sui generis, when lives are permanently ruined just as brutally by other violent crimes that condemn their victims to a lifelong prison of constant pain and trauma? That leave their bodies permanently broken, their minds or brains damaged? What about the girl whose ex-boyfriend drenches her with gasoline and sets fire to her, leaving her with 40% third-degree burns all over her body? The teenager who is so badly beaten by thugs that he's left in a permanent vegetative state? The survivor of torture who will always be too terrified to turn on a light switch or take a bath because it triggers nightmarish memories? Are we really going to take the position that child sexual abuse is a unique kind of atrocity that will always surpass such horrors, that it's the only crime that can conceivably be treated as equal to murder or even worse? It's not a position I would take.

I appreciate that's a bit of a digression, but because this is such a emotive subject to talk about we can't afford to be scared to try to keep things in perspective. When I heard what had happened to my then-girlfriend when she was 10, I wanted to pull my teeth out or rip my skin off because there was nothing I could do about it and for the next few days I was eaten up by rage, angry at almost everyone and everything around me.