German TW police officer accused of rape of teenage girl and possession of CSA

There are several meta analyses available and they’re so easy to find

I have no idea what to say about the motorcycle.

Let's try "the continued manipulation of a child."

Makes one wonder about the parent who was friendly with Scmid. What part are they playing in all this?

You cannot rehabilitate a paedophile.

I am actually starting to believe we don't owe sex offenders rehabilitation. Place them out in a desert with a tent and a bucket and spade and let them fend for themselves for all I care. Put up a laser fence and ban the bastards from society. At 53 years old I have read and heard more than enough examples of abusive men harming others, and I simply don't care about their welfare anymore. I don't believe they can change. Send them away. Zero tolerance. The good ones can stay.

It's not a question of owing anyone rehabilitation. The problem is that most people who commit offences are damaged in some way, usually traumatised when they were children. Sex offenders were often sexually abused themselves as children. So incarcerating them doesn't help with any of this, it just traumatises them more. If you release them without trying to help them come to terms with their own trauma you are just creating more victims when they reoffend.

This is the reality of the situation. Although it sounds like a plan to leave them in the desert somewhere I don't think you really think that is practicable do you?

Prison should be a mixture of 1. consequences so that victims feel that their suffering has been recognised, but also 2. attempts to rehabilitate offenders simply because not to offer this, tempting though it is, does not address the underlying causes.

For Governments to free up money for this isn't an easy sell. It's an easy target for the tabloids. So we keep going around the offending/incarceration/reoffending loop.

There are no easy answers that I can see.

Their victims dgaf about their traumatic backgrounds I imagine.

Multiple psychologists assert that paedophiles simply cannot be rehabilitated. It’s not something they can or wish to be ‘trained’ out of. At best they can be contained or closely monitored on release. Ankle tags and no access to the internet?

Why would/should victims care about perpetrators' backgrounds? But society as a whole has to find solutions doesn't it? Although throwing away the key is an easy sound bite it doesn't improve outcomes for anyone.

Have you got a link to any this research you refer to?

They need to be locked up, for the safety of other children. We can argue about how best to address their offending and their own traumas while they are there, locked up in prison, WHERE THEY CANNOT RAPE ANOTHER CHILD.

How long do you lock them up for?

We've danced this dance upthread.

Pornography just means images intended for sexual use. It can be, and often is, abusive.

There is not need to create strained language to show that, everyone knows child pornography is abusive and illegal. Including the people who create and consume it.

This seems awful, but the prison system has to work, practically.

No matter how we slice it that has to be part of a larger discussion about sentencing. And it has to look at the other kinds of crime too.

It's a worthwhile discussion but not one with easy answers.

That being said, I am not really surprised Germany is light on these laws. If say they have firm on this kind of thing.

I wonder if the motorcycle thing is something around attempts at direct restitution like we use in civil law cases? Maybe that's less seperate in Germany?

This does not seem to be widely known.

But I remember coming across this and being very shocked

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/past-pedophile-links-haunt-german-green-party-a-899544.html

A very long time. The Soham murderer, Ian Huntley was a known pedophile and had several sexual relationships with girls under the age of 15, made one 15 year old girl pregnant, then was accused of raping an 18 year old woman. He wasn't charged for any of those offences. In 1998 Huntley was investigated for sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl, threatening to kill her if she said anything about it. He then went on to kill the two young Soham girls.
These are not ordinary people, they do not behave in an ordinary way, I do not believe that they can be rehabilitated.

I forgot to put this link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soham_murders

It's not in the least 'strained' to call it images of child sex abuse. It's very factual.

I don't think Ian Huntley is ever going to see the light of day again is he? There are a few psychopaths about, but you can't legislate on the basis of one case can you? Isn't the saying "Hard cases make bad law"?

You quote earlier offences he had committed which weren't prosecuted, mainly through one victim withdrawing her complaint, or insufficient evidence rather than too lenient sentencing. The main problem with the case was that information wasn't shared between organisations, something which the Bichard Enquiry has sought to address. Again, this isn't a problem with sentencing is it? If he had been convicted of the rape of the 11 year old he would have been sentenced to two years which was the maximum at the time. Whether that would have led to his rehabilitation before the Soham murders we will never know. Currently the sentence would be more likely to be six years or so.

So how do you identify an Ian Huntley from the general male population? Everything is 20/20 in Hindsight isn't it?

So everyone agrees that child murderers should never see the light of day again. I'm pretty on board with that. Same with serial killers like Sutcliffe. But they are extreme cases. What would you do with less extreme cases?

All rape is extreme.

I don't think Ian Huntley is ever going to see the light of day again is he?

No, because he's dead.

My goodness, TRSOH is clown-dancing on this thread about a child rapist and thinks they're fighting the Good Fight? #OperationLetThemSpeak

Does that affect anything I've said?

TRSOH?

Right, so in sentencing terms you wouldn't differentiate between, say, sex which began consensually but the women asked the perpetrator to stop and he didn't, let's add that the accused profoundly regretted his actions and said he was drunk at the time, and took full responsibility, and a case in which three men kidnapped a women and raped her several times over a weekend before she escaped before they murdered her?

I am just saying knee jerk responses like 'throw away the key' aren't really very helpful. The reality is far more nuanced than that.