To think that "Rehabilitation" is a joke, because you can't change who someone is sexually attracted to!

[BeachBlondey]

Inspired by the Gary Glitter latest story.

Why as a society, can't we accept, that you cannot fundamentally change who someone is sexually attracted to?

For example - no amount of "rehabilitation" will stop paedophiles being attracted to children.

We know that conversion therapy does not work (barbaric!)

Furthermore, you can't read people mind's, and of course they will say that they feel rehabilitated, because they know that this is their key to being released.

Further still, what happens when you ban someone from indulging in their sexual fantasies for years on end? Surely, the amount of sexual frustration and desire will build and build and build.

If a rapist has not had sex with a woman for 10 years, when he is released from prison, isn't he far more likely to be sexually frustrated and thus more likely to attack quite quickly?

If a paedophile hasn't been around children for 10 years, surely the first time he is around children, his sexual urges will go in to overdrive, probably to far more dangerous levels than ever before, because he will have an appetite that has not been sated for decades.

I am a female heterosexual woman, and no amount of "rehabilitation" forced upon me, would make me stop wanting sex with men. Nor would it magically make me fancy women. But, if I was in prison for having sex with a man, of course, I would tell the parole board that I was cured. And I'm sure that having been celibate for 10 years, the first thing I would want to do upon release would be to have sex with a man.

I'm so sick of sex offenders being released, who very quickly go on to reoffend, resulting in some poor innocent person being attacked or killed. We are constantly risking the safety of the public, under the guise of people having been rehabilitated, despite us seeing evidence to the contrary all the time.

When released prisoners reoffend, I would like to see the members of that Parole board penalised, either with being fired from their jobs, or being given monetary fines.

I realise that a big issue is space in prison. We either build more prisons, or consider medical castration maybe? We cannot keep placing the public at risk.

Jail. Therapy. Probation with strict conditions. Lifelong risk management.

I'd like to see the type of management paedophiles currently recieve extended to other "power and control" offenders. But that's a long way off seeing as we currently only manage to convict a miniscule number of rapists.

Yes I agree with you. There's lots of stuff we might feel like doing if we don't know it is wrong or haven't learned that we must control that urge.

I fundamentally disagree that just because someone is attracted to a certain group (men/women/boys/girls/animals) they are automatically unable to control their urges. Think about it, if this were the case, every straight man would be raping women, every gay man raping men. That's not what happens in the real world - most people can control their urges because they understand that it would be outrageous to do otherwise.

The potential argument that most men don't rape women because there are other legal ways to get sex (online dating, relationships, paying for an escort) doesn't wash. It's perfectly possible for a person not getting any sex of their preferred kind at all to go through life without resorting to criminal behaviour. Before homosexuality was legalised and accepted it wasn't uncommon for a gay man to suppress their urges and live out their life married to a woman and having children with her.

The same logic must apply to those attracted to children and animals too. The crime isn't being attracted to them, the crime is grooming/molesting/raping them or breaching the terms of release for a previous conviction. Therefore it doesn't automatically follow that a convicted paedophile can't be rehabilitated in the sense that they can't be brought to understand that they cannot act on their urges.

They can't be "converted" just as a homosexual cannot be converted to being straight. But they decide not to give in to their urges if they choose to do so.

Personally I'd just bring back public hanging for all criminals where a crime is deliberate and causes obvious permanent harm to the victim, but apparently that's not the woke thing to do these days.

I’d agree that paedophiles can’t be rehabilitated. They’ve acted on their deviance, and that for me has crossed a boundary that can’t then ever be relied upon again. Even if they don’t directly abuse again themselves, they’ll just watch somebody else doing it on the Internet.

YABU for thinking about it like a sexual orientation though. Being a paedophile is not a sexual orientation, it’s a paraphilia. I am sexually attracted to women, members of the female sex, but never child members of the female sex. Paedophiles have a sexual orientation, they will either be hetro, bi or homo sexual, but their paraphilia is for child members of the sex they are attracted to. Do not confuse the two things. The gay community have had enough of paedophiles trying to align themselves with us, and the general public treating us as deviant. They are not the same, and it does harm to us when people speak as if they are.

Personally I think Glitter being recalled to prison shows the system works. I don't think we actually know what he did to be recalled. It could be a breach of very stringent licence conditions and nothing to do with children. (ie being out past a 6pm curfew, entirely fictional example)

Surely people control their sexual urges all the time. Lots of people might lust after someone but they don't all go out raping them.

I think I pretty much agree with this.

I’ve seen research, a long time ago now, with young sexual offenders ( teenage boys) which concluded it was about sex for them.

Also saying, ‘it’s about power not sex’ assumes these two things are separate whereas for some people sex and power/ control are linked. See pretty much all mainstream porn. You can have power and control over someone without having sex with them, after all. If you are exercising control through sex it’s because the two are linked to the offender ( or S&M fan, or porn fan) in a way they find sexually arousing.

We could try to combat this of course by seeking to create an actively anti-porn culture. In the same way people talk about being actively anti-racist.

I also think it’s likely to be true that some paedophiles have a genuine sexual attraction to children ( which is not to say it’s an orientation like being heterosexual/ homosexual as these adults form life long emotional relationships based on the personality of their partner as well as their sex, whereas paedophiles attraction is time limited to the age of the child). I also think some develop attractions due to abuse or porn.

I also think chemical castration is a legitimate means to an end.

You could do that, but I guess it might cause other problems that would need solving (which I guess you might consider well worth the trouble, if it would keep the worst offenders locked away). As another poster pointed out, that doesn't leave those who have committed barbaric crimes much disincentive for committing even more barbaric crimes, especially when they think it might help them get away with it. And I don't know how much prison behaviour is affected by the prospect of potentially getting parole. I don't have enough knowledge of the area to argue either way about prison terms — I just wanted to comment on the reasons that I think it wouldn't help matters, and might cause difficulties, if we were to punish parole board members who made decisions that turned out to be bad.

They should have to:

1. wear an electronic tag for life with GPS
2. be unable to change their name
3. have to report to a sex offenders board weekly try ensure their location is regularly monitored
4. be subject to random and ad hoc inspections of their hard drives and mobile at home or mandatorily have to grant access at any time to IT team of a newly developed IT police body
5. there should be a publicly searchable register identifying all sex offenders so they don't inadvertently get close up their neighbour's children without them realising
6. Automatic life sentence for any related re-offending (including things like flashing etc)
7. Have to get consent to travel & Gps Location could track to ensure the sick perverts weren't heading to places like Thailand to abuse children
8. Their relatives should be put on notice of their crimes
9. Longer sentences in the first place. Any form

of sexual abuse against children should get a minimum sentence of 30 years. My preference would be life without parole though.

He tried to access the dark web.

I'm genuinely interested in why you think this.

The drugs used for chemical castration are the same ones given to men with prostate cancer, women with endometriosis, women donating eggs and to suppress puberty in children.

There are unpleasant side effects but not incarcerating sex offenders or suppressing their sex drive arguable has far worse effects on the rest of society.

Gary Glitter is 78.

Often older men are released assuming they are so old, they no longer pose a real risk to society. Clearly not true!

It shows nothing of the sort. People know who Gary Glitter is, and people were furious that he’d been let out of prison. It was inevitable he’d be watched like a hawk and be sent back to prison in very short order.

I think all this shows, actually, is that paedophiles are overwhelmingly recidivist, in fact, I’d suggest that all will reoffend at some point in some way. If Gary Glitter couldn’t put a lid on it for as long as it took for the publicity to die down then all that tells me is there is pretty much nothing to be done with these people. They won’t stop. Imagine how quickly someone who didn’t have people watching would be back at it.

Chemical castration.

I personally think physical castration, with a rusty bread knife and no anaesthetic, plus eyes put out and hands chopped off. If they don’t want that they can be put down..

which increases violence and risk...

It isn't true that all paedophiles will reoffend

It isn't even true that all paedophiles will offend in the first place

Given that they don't come with an identifying tattoo on their forehead, as to which category they will end up in, why should the public be put at risk?

We don't have the faintest notion how many are out there with pedophilic attraction they've never acted on.

I worked with hardcore paedophiles for 7 years in the prison service. I personally do not believe that they can be rehabilitated.

@Bunce1

''Medical castration is barbaric IMO.''

Because you think someone having a functioning dick/libido is more important than the welfare of kids and their right not be abused by perverts?

There is no rehabilitation possible for paedophiles. They will always be a threat to children.

I think you need to have a serious look at your values...

For the same reason we don't lock everyone up who has anger issues, or paranoid schizophrenia, or one of many mental illnesses, on the basis that they might assault or kill someone in future.

The law deals with what you've done. Not thought crimes or potential future crimes.

Paedophilia often starts manifesting at puberty (it's hard to know what the root cause is or whether this is true for everyone, since it's complex and not well studied). Do you really think parents will be offering up their 10, 11, 12 year old boys to be imprisoned because they might be a risk one day?

YABVU for saying that being a paedophile/rapist is comparable to being born gay.

YANBU for thinking that rehabilitation might not be possible for sex offenders, and worrying about them being released back into society again.

Yep- ok because if I say medical castration is barbaric then it follows that I support CSA.

Ridiculous and flawed thinking. But critical thinking skills seem to be lacking, so a nuanced discussion seems wasted.

In the USA there is a program where women were offered sterilisation instead of a jail sentence for drug offences and where their children were taken into care. So jail or loose your ability to have a baby. It is a blunt and brutal instrument to “solve” a complex problem. Crime reduction was negligible. Women’s rehabilitation- nope juts trauma from having been sterilised and having done so under the guise of a choice at a time of extreme vulnerability.

The ones who don’t offend, or more likely just don’t get caught, will never come to the authorities notice. The ones who do get caught have done it once, ant least, and are overwhelmingly likely to do it again, and the safety of children comes before being nice to paedophiles.

there’s a really easy way to avoid the consequences of being caught messing with kids or watching others mess with kids, and that’s not to fucking do it. Those who get caught doing it should get no better than they deserve.