“Why don't these people seek help before they get themselves in deep trouble?”
Because nice people with a moral compass seek help, not abusers who are all sociopaths (as opposed to the falsehood that all sociopaths are harmful abusers).
Abusers groom and deceive to get what they want. Remorse is often missing or faked. Huw Edwards would have been enjoying himself far too much to care about the pain his actions have caused.
And that asshole made an effort for the cameras, didn’t he? He looks far from crushed. He’s angry. He’s pissed.
It is absolutely true that some people do seek help. Those people have a moral compass and usually haven’t inflicted harm on anyone but they’re aware that they might. But they are so rare.
There’s a reason rehabilitation programmes fail. It would be so interesting to hear Huw Edwards read from the common predator’s script: “He liked it/he never complained to me that he felt exploited/I loved him and he knew this.”
People like him are ‘right’. The world is wrong. And he won’t feel sorry. He’ll be angry. Very angry that he’s been wronged.
My daughter’s abuser repeatedly complained that his punishment is disproportionate to the crime; 5 years (that we know of) of sexual abuse of a minor. Two and a half years served in prison. And his victim will never get her childhood back. The abuse will show up lifelong in various ways. Therapy. Forever.
I’ve had a fair time of it trying to convince my daughter that having a vagina is not a gateway to receiving male violence. She has had to learn to value being female instead of hating it. She’s still learning.
Her abuser will live in his cottage with his dogs in the countryside. He’ll be angry at the injustice of it all. He’ll have been hard done by, in his view. He’ll never stop to consider what the destruction of a child’s blueprint looks like, feels like.
Oh the almighty will of the penis (breathtaking, right? One dick. One life. Destroyed. Not the abuser’s)!
He read from the predator’s script: “She never complained!”
He was our local pillar of society. And if pillars of society think they don’t need help (believe me, he doesn’t think he needs any help. He just slipped on a banana peel and happened to land on his own child… like, ‘accidents happen’), it’s hard to have faith that people who should access these programmes will do so.