*“ there are cases where monsters have grown up in genuinely loving, stable homes. Just born evil.”
Are there? Who?*
Off the top of my head and thinking of famous cases you could argue that people like Bundy and Darhmer fit.
Darhmer, people are so keen to find fault with the family (to fit the view that kids are not born evil), that it has been claimed his mother was at fault for not breastfeeding and therefore depriving him of vital attention.
Bundy, it could be argued did have an unusual background in that he was bought up by grandparents believing they were parents, however it’s recorded that he started displaying psychopathic tendencies from toddlerhood and well before he could learn/understand his unusual family dynamic. Maybe he wasn’t breastfed either?
There has been a lot of work done in regards to brain structure with criminal psychopaths and it seems to lead to there being deviations that ultimately pertain to DNA as opposed to any insult that could be caused in development. A clinic in my state has also done work with kids that distraught families bring in, loving families very distressed at what they are seeing in their very young children who obviously have a problem in this regard and they are seeking help. These are not families kicking back on the crack pipe or hiding bad behaviour in a closet keeping their kids away from professional help for fear of something untoward coming out. MRIs of these kids brains generally match the typical profile of criminal psychopaths. I’m overdue for bed now but will drag up names and studies tomorrow and post. There’s a lot of interesting work done in this area that explains why certain aspects of criminality/behaviour runs in families (genetic as opposed to environment exposure) and for people where there is no obvious cause for criminally psychopathic behaviour.
As for treatment for these kids, I think the jury may still be out but again I will drag around for this tomorrow. From memory one group found the love bomb approach (from families who recognise there is something desperately wrong and are trying everything possible to turn it around) to be positive in regards to later behaviour for some of the kids but I don’t think this was representative enough to be seen as a ‘cure’. Many years ago I was talking about this to a psychiatrist (our discussion was about adults though) and his view was to simply lock them away and throw away the key, that there was absolutely nothing else that could be done to truly keep people safe. I think there are a lot of different opinions out there from people who have experience with these people.