To believe in forced castration?

[SchoolShenanigans]

Sorry if this has been done before, but AIBU to think forced castration should be in place for paedophiles and people of child bearing age who have been convicted of any form of child abuse?

I get people have bodily autonomy; but the protection of children surely comes first?!

Just read the thread where a couple have already lost one child to care, are neglectful to another (disturbed) child, with social services intervention, and now pregnant with another.

I also have a family member who has 6 children with different inappropriate fathers, in and out of prison, social services involvement and criminal convictions. Providing a shit childhood for multiple innocent children who will be affected for life.

Why are we so again castration as a mechanism to stop further reproduction in damaging environments?

In many cases, people with prior child abuse convictions just have subsequent babies immediately removed. What's the point? Just stop them being able to have kids and the problems sorted?

My priority still lies with the children though.

Not believing in forced castration and believing that such policies would be ineffective anyway does not make me a "paedo apologist".

Having enough intelligence to understand that it simply wouldn't work doesn't make anyone a paedophile apologist.

Can you not comprehend what allowing the government to have that much autonomy over our bodies could lead to?

I agree in principle but in practice it just can't work. You do get people who are wrongly convicted. A girl I was friends with as a teen accused her father of molesting her when she was 13. He staunchly denied it. I'm not sure what happened as I was young but he moved out of the county.

She later in her 30s admitted to me she'd made it all up. He was making her keep quiet after she caught him cheating on her mother. Imagine if he was convicted?

It's like the death penalty, some crimes deserve it but its a slippery slope and if someone is unjustly convicted, you can't unkill them.

Civilised? Allowing innocent children to be born to known inadequate and dangerous parents isn't my idea of civilised. And do you think the current state of the care system is "civilised"? Tell that to the kids who have to live in it.

This is disgusting and an abhorrent violation of human rights. The type of policy pursued by the Nazis. Please stop.

Thats a bit hit and miss and assumes all pedos are men, which they arent.
PTS is the only 100% effective solution

It’s about what giving the state that kind of power would do because it wouldn’t stop there.

Next it would be parents in poverty or parents with mental health issues.

Or forced abortions.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that none of the people in favour of these 'policies' have ever lived in a country where the state has the power to torture its citizens.

This is a real thing that happens. Its not a fantasy for you to indulge your moral indignation.

Castration wouldn't stop abuse. And the minute you "permit" government to have control over people's bodies it opens up a can of worms

There is a tricky line of what feels right and what actually reduces risk, and often they aren't the same thing

Some countries with Low reoffending rates of things like sex offences for example invest a lot in community rehabilitation which involves therapy which actually reduces reoffending rates thus actually keeping more people safe.

However that often doesn't fulfill what peoples sense of fair. People often want punishment, an eye for an eye or blood even when it's not shown to be effective and to put more people at risk.

If you want to stop for example women having children taken off them, better resources in drug and alcohol services, more social support eg better housing, and increased child care are more likely to help. However often these things are withdrawn because it doesn't seem "fair" to others who can't access that support.

Many initiatives that have lowered children being taken into care are seen as indulgent, too costly and taken away even though its cheaper than taking a child into care, and managing the psychological impact on that

Plus the people who are pro castration can move to countries that have such policies in place if they feel so strongly that it protects children from being abused.

I think it is amazing that things have change so much in a couple of decades that people feel they can breezily post about imposing forced medical procedures on others because they judge them to be less worthy or defective in some way. When I was a young women I really don't think this would have been part of socially acceptable discourse.

It shows you how easy it is for people to accept and even endorse inhumane atrocities both now and in the past.

Stop what, discussing something? Or do you actually think me bringing up a topic on Mumsnet is going to affect policy?

And please don't compare castrating abusers with Nazis and the Holocaust. It's ridiculous and totally inappropriate. Not the same thing in the slightest and insulting to the millions of GOOD, innocent people who were murdered.

The Holocaust wasn’t the only bad thing the Nazis did OP.

They also practiced eugenics, which is one of the things you are advocating for.

Nope. If you put stuff like this in pmace then all you need is a government party with a prejudice against a certain group to get into power and we have a big problem in our hands.

Op if you remove his balls he will just use a bottle or some other weapon to abuse his victim.

God, how ignorant are you?

You are literally espousing following a policy that is almost exactly the same as that practiced in Nazi Germany where they forcibly sterilised people they considered "degenerates" and you have the audacity to play the "stop comparing it to the Holocaust" card.

Slippery slope that is butchering people's bodies. Just lock them away for a longer proper sentence away from harming anyone I say.

I can see the attraction to the idea theoretically and emotionally.

However, it wouldn't actually work in practice and even if it did, it's too much of a slippery slope. You rely on the justice system of never ,ever getting it wrong, you rely on juries to actually be comfortable with giving a guilty verdict knowing what the punishment will be , you're relying on the government in charge to never change the goal posts to what it suits them, you're relying on the people in charge to have adequate checks and regulations in place,no possibility of corruption or mistakes.

Unless you're happy to be sterilised tomorrow on someone else's decision, then you should not advocate for this to become law.

You sound very young, op!

These sort of emotive views show a lot of naïveté regarding a really complex topic. A number of countries have implemented voluntary castration for offenders and there are certainly some promising results for those who consider it.

However, forcibly castrating people is a horrendous idea imo. Moldova tried to introduce this in 2012 but the president refused to sign it into law.

Your enthusiasm shows an awful lot of misplaced trust in government to be fair and just. That enthusiasm does not mean you care about ‘the children’ more than those of us who have reservations. I, too, ‘prioritise the children’ in that I wouldn’t want children to grow up in a society where the government have the ability to wield such power over our bodies.

As thought experiment, I have sometimes imagined a society where all males get vasectomy at age 12 & all females are put on birth control. As adults they would have to apply to have the V reversed/come off the birth control.

Would this be a better system than what happens now?

I agree with you OP. People can have baby after baby after baby, and have them all taken into care due to neglect and abuse . After the state spends tens of thousands trying to help them, teach them not to be shit parents, support them etc, the child is taken away due to abuse/neglect. Then they have another and it happens again. Eventually after sometimes multiple kids, the decision is made to take the next child away at birth. Except the baby is never adopted straight away. They go into foster care for several months first, enduring all the stress of being moved again. The couple still keep having kids, no one can stop them. The kids are taken away. By this time there are multiple kids who are traumatised by their experiences, and will often go on to have troubled lives as a result, maybe even abusing their own children.

Would it not be better to say to the parents that after the first few failed attempts at safe parenting, despite help, that being parents just isn’t something they can do? Why do people want to support bringing children into dangerous situations?

Tbf that wasn't my experience at all. After he had his knackers off he list interest altogether.

I don't support the OPs suggestion but I think it would work in a large number of cases.