Do you ever have sympathy for abusive men?

This subject interests me. I look at my abusive ex. Quite often when he was abusive, I would so clearly see the 3 year old boy in him who had been left by his dad and who had experienced violence as a little boy. His anger was really fear and grief and anger from that time mixed in with an unconscious expectation I was going to hurt him because that's how people treat you when they love you.

Except, he was 42. And whatever awful hurts people are carrying, as an adult, it's on you to catch yourself lashing out and then get help so you don't do more damage. There are options. The 42 year old part of my ex frightened me and hurt me. He had a lot of strength. He had a nasty streak. And he had been abusive to his previous partner and hurt her and so had a chance to realise how he was and stop the cycle before meeting me. Lots of people who have been abused just don't go on to hurt others.

As a woman, you have been socialised to be kind, which is why you feel sorry for MJ. And as someone else wisely pointed out, you feel for the little boy he was. The adult he was did horrendous damage. That's all on him. He is extremely likely to have been a paedophile, whatever his background. He was extremely manipulative about finding himself victims and he has left them fairly broken adults by the looks of things.

No. I would feel sympathy for MJ if he didn't start molesting and emotionally abusing boys himself.

I often have huge amounts of sympathy for the child that the abuser (male or female) used fo be.

However, there does need to be a point where personal responsibility kicks in.

The vast majority of abused children do not grow up to become criminals, thankfully.

Child abuse is one of those things where the victim is more likely to become an adult abuser than a person who was never abused as a child. It’s possible to have sympathy for a person as a child victim of abuse that happened to them, while also finding the later abuse they did and the adult person they are now to be abhorrent. You don’t really have sympathy for adult Michael Jackson as the pop star, but more for the 10yr old boy Michael Jackson who was forced to practice ten hours a day and was regularly beaten and starved.

I agree, people aren't black and white. You can sympathise with someone while recognising that they are themselves a monster. As other OPs have mentioned, the monster didn't grow from no where. You can still feel bad for them despite the current abhorrent character.
I think there's an interesting reverse parallel (I can't articulate today sorry!) When there are discussions around domestic violence. If the victim has done anything wrong, stupid, or to provoke the violence, this is never discussed. It's as if it erases the crime? The violence does not vanish if the victim isn't a perfect person- is still just as bad.

You can feel sympathy for their childhood experiences but remember there are plenty of people who have such experiences and don't become abusers.

There is free will involved. They don't have to be abusive and they don't act the same with everyone.

I do have a lot of sympathy for my ex because of his childhood but I will do absolutely everything to stop DS having the same childhood.

Many people have similar childhoods and do everything to protect their children. Some abusers were not abused themselves. It is not an excuse. You can sympathise with someone without excusing someone.

I see what you mean OP. For me, the context in which someone was brought up (and the extent to which I am aware of it) are relevant. If I know someone was themselves abused, received no therapeutic input or child protection at the time then I have greater empathy and can see how the cycle got repeated.

In my experience, abusive men are very good at manipulating people to get away with what they're doing. When they're eventually caught, they use those manipulation skills to minimise their crimes and try to get sympathy.

Don't forget some men will spend a lifetime building a trustworthy, pillar of the community, persona to hide behind (think of the priests, doctors, Oxfam volunteers). They are very accomplished at hiding who they are.

I've heard prison officers say that if you go back into the history of so many of the most dangerous offenders they work with that you find a childhood that shouldn't have happened to a dog. The awful thing about trauma is that it is the gift that keeps on giving. I often think when I hear Tatchell talking that he thinks he's explaining how this treatment of children is a positive thing - and what I hear is a grown up who experienced abuse they should have been protected from, and is demonstrating both the difficulty with boundaries that comes from being abused, and a desperation to protect themselves mentally that nothing bad ever happened.

There is tragedy there. There is certainly things to understand, and it's very difficult to cope with that mix of emotions that you find something someone has done and perspectives they hold to be reprehensible, but you have pity too for how they came this point in their minds where they decided to do it. It's never comfortable to feel those combined, conflicting emotions.

I don't have sympathy for abusive men or abusive women, because to abuse someone else is a choice, it is something done because of a feeling of entitlement that they can, it's a selfish decision to meet personal needs at the cost of someone they have power over. I can understand that there may be harm and abuse in their past that contributed to this, I can be sorry those things happened to them, but that is no excuse or mitigation for making that decision. Instead it's a heavy reason that as a society we should be learning to pick up on and sort out abuse and trauma and its effects in children a lot better than we do.