Do you ever have sympathy for abusive men?

[COVIDcausesCHAOS]

Does anyone fancy a chat about this?

I'm asking on FWR, as I know that many here are well-versed on this subject.

Last night, my partner and I were talking about Michael Jackson. I mentioned that I have quite a lot of sympathy for Michael, even though I do think he was guilty of abusing those children. My partner had far less sympathy, and said that he didn't feel anything but revulsion towards Jackson. My dp also pointed out that it is perhaps inconsistent to have sympathy for the likes of Jackson, but then not similar abusers, such as Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris.

Is it wrong to have sympathy for some abusive men but not others?

Also, I feel guilty that I have sympathy for someone like Jackson. It must hurt his victims to hear people say that.

I'm wondering what other people's thought are on this?

Sympathy for abused or neglected children is useless unless we do something about it.

Abusers choose it. That's it.

I've been treated horribly and yet I manage to live an ethical life and treat others with respect.

Blaming a bad childhood on abusive behaviour just masks the fact that abuse is a choice.

I’m not sure sympathy is the correct word...but I do feel an understanding that people’s past experiences or disadvantages might impact negatively on the way they have developed and who they have become.

All childhood trauma is a tragedy. I know my abuser had childhood trauma in spades. I experience empathy for the child he was.

I don't feel sympathy for his adult choices.

Yes. At some point we have to take responsibility for our actions. My xh gets a visible high from his abuse.

@AnnaMagnani

I work in a prison. Some of the prisoners have childhood histories of absolutely shocking abuse that you would not believe if you saw it reported.

Unsurprisingly they have grown up to have personality disorders, not be safe around women and be highly abusive.

So yes, I can be sorry for them, wonder what would have happened to the child they were if they had different parents who actually knew how to love and parent and gave them a chance, while still feeling their crimes are horrific, they absolutely need to be in prison and being concerned about WTF they will be like on release.

Yes agree with this.

My father was abusive.

He had a terrible childhood, as an adult he did some terrible things.

I can feel sympathy and empathy for the child he was who suffered so badly and feel nothing but anger and disgust for the adult he turned into.

As humans we tend to simplify things into 'this or that' when in reality people and life are complex.

Obviously not, since I don't know his childhood, other than that he was a child singer. No one can see inside your head and can presume to know any individual's reasons for expressing sympathy for a child abuser. Unless you say what they are, they are bound to remain obvious to you but opaque to everyone else. The same applies in general to expressions of opinion.

I have all the sympathy for their past, for the child they once were. I even share their anger at a system,parents etc that harmed or failed them. I have no sympathy for the offender.
The only ones I have some sympathy for are the ones that are seriously mentally ill or severely mentally incapacitated and have been failed by system,left to roam free, homeless, no meds,no support etc.

I have sympathy for my own abuser to a degree. As awful as my father was, I’ve spent time with his mother, my grandmother. There is a reason my dd has never met her. My father is a deeply flawed man with mental health issues and a tendency to self-medicate with alcohol. I will never excuse the things he has done, but I understand how he got there.

I have sympathy for my cousins DH who has been emotionally and verbally abusive to her. I have known him for 27 years and he is a great guy and been brilliant to us, helping us out and like a brother to my DH. BUT he has a really shit childhood with a violent and drunk dad. He has been unable to form a good relationship which his 4 children.

I am in no way excusing him and I would of left him years ago if I was married to him but he has no other family left and he tried to change but he's just a really crap husband and dad. My cousin has finally chucked him out and we completely support her But i do feel sympathy for him as it's obvious he is really screwed up because of his childhood

@TheChampagneGalop

In fiction and media I feel like we are often encouraged to sympathise with men no matter what they have done, including serial killers. ("He had a bad childhood! A shitty mum!") While women don't get the sympathy they deserve.

Really? I've seen sympathy being expressed on here for some appalling women because they themselves had abusive childhoods.

This entire discussion worries me because the implication is that having had a shitty childhood should be taken into account in sentencing (because what else would the relevance of sympathy be?).

I’m not convinced Cries Unheard is useful in this context. Mary Bell was a child. Where children commit offences - yes, I think their environment should definitely be taken into account in sentencing. But an adult? No. Adults make choices. Those choices may well be significantly constrained by adverse childhood experiences, but they are still there.

Sure. MJ was terribly abused as a kid, including what most would consider sexual abuse. It made him who he was later and if he abused others, I think there is no doubt they are connected.

Things like this are true of the vast majority of seriously problematic people IME. Someone upthread mentioned a prison guard - I have a cousin who is a psychiatrist who specialises in working with sexual offenders, mostly in the prison system and she says the same thing. Most had pretty horrific childhoods and pathetic adulthoods. They are damaged.

I have, once, met and in fact dated someone who was, I think, a psychopath. My feeling was he was born that way - something was missing - it didn't seem to relate to anything in his childhood. But it's also difficult to blame someone for something like that, though he created a swath of damage and hurt people wherever he went, and I would say almost seemed to be a conduit for evil.

I've never seen this kind of sympathy or empathy or wanting to understand as meaning that really, what they did wasn't so bad. It's quite possible that it is very bad and that also the perpetrator had it very bad. Nor that any lack of moral culpability in their actions, if they were unable to function at that level, means they were less serious for the person who was on the receiving end. Or that they need to be dealt with legally and socially in some way, or that behaviour needs to be denounced.

I think sometimes people feel that sympathy for someone like that implies lack of sympathy for their victims, or minimising the effect of their actions, but I see those as things that can all be true at the same time.

It’s not an either/or proposition. You can have sympathy and compassion for abusers who they themselves have been victims of abuse. In fact if it increases our resolve to provide better support and services for the current crop of survivors to ensure they don’t go on to perpetuate abuse of argue it’s a good thing.

If however we feel inclined to minimise the abuse of those because we like the art they produced, the sport they play or they are a member of our political tribe we run the risk of perpetuating a climate where abuse is minimised.

With regard to Michael Jackson, we were the same age and i grew up seeing him on tv and seeing the recordings again on the BBC does make me terribly sad for the little boy. He was so joyous in his performance , it is appalling to think he was already being abused by his family. But I also saw the interviews he gave in the 90s when questions were being asked about his behaviour and I saw a consciously manipulative man avoiding the question and relying on a projection of naive charm. He knew full well what he was doing was wrong and he had the resources and money to have arranged private therapy to deal with his issues. Instead he used his money to create a trap for children blinded by celebrity and their families corrupted by money to practise his abusive inclinations exactly as he pleased.

It does seem to be a problem for those who see him as some kind of great musical influencer to just say he was a child abuser. Having musical.artistic, literary, scientific, sports, intellectual or political abilities is irrelevant. I just wish we as a society could stop celebrity culture but it seems to be getting worse rather than better.

An interesting aspect of his self-representation is that , as far as I know, he always refused to discuss his changes to his appearance , insisting that was who he was and always had been. Sorry if I am wrong about that. IE. that he never acknowledged the changes.

When it comes to child abusers I am sad for the child they were that was abused, in most western societies there is more than enough access to free education and counselling to try and nip it in the bud. If you know that you have those urges you also know that there is no way that anyone is going to justify acting out on them ever as acceptable. Ever. Perpetuating the child porn industry makes you complicit in child abuse, etc, and society deems you guilty. You can’t not know this. Child abusers are psychopaths who are able to filter through all the inner voices that tell them that their instant gratification is not more important than the physical and psychological safety and well-being of a child in that single moment. They are able to continue to justify it so that they can live with themselves afterwards.

Also, the internet has made it possible for them to form communities for the first time where they can justify their urges and “naturalise” it to each other. I think it makes them more likely to act out when they were more likely to keep their urges hidden and fetishized. (I know they did, but there wasn’t as much or an industry before then.)

I don’t feel any sympathy now for child abusers. Psychologists and psychiatrists consider them to be virtually impossible to rehabilitate, and their remorse to be disingenuous.

This entire discussion worries me because the implication is that having had a shitty childhood should be taken into account in sentencing

That is a dangerous path if it means that people who present a risk to others have their sentences minimised.

But if taking it into account meant sentences being based on the risk the prisoner presented, but imprisonment stepped away from being a punishment and moved towards being humane and based on reducing recidivism, then I think everyone would be better served.

I think too a definition of 'sympathy' would help here.

There's a modern mawkish sentimentality that has been attached to so many words like sympathy and kindness which obscures actual meaning, and is often about speakers preferring to avoid uncomfortable feelings. And often about enabling and patronising when you really dig down into it.

Sympathy by definition means less 'awww bless' and 'he didn't mean it' than having pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune, as it's sympathy FOR rather than sympathy WITH (common feeling, 'we were in sympathy about the latest speech from Boris') It's perfectly possible to feel pity and sorrow about how someone came to do something without making excuses for them, or enabling them to avoid taking responsibility.

For me if you can choose a victim, you can choose to get help. If you can put the effort into abusing, covering up, you can put the effort into therapy and working on not being a danger to others.

So like many PP, I can feel for the abused child, but do not excuse the abusive adult.

Maybe we need to drop the intrigue of ‘why’ and just focus on if someone is abusive how do we stop them abusing right now and worry about why they did it later.

If you are really unable to control yourself then you aren’t out picking on the weak and vulnerable are you? If you are fit to make a choice between that 6’ 4” sober, smart, physically-able, NT, and valued in society, surrounded by family & friends male and a previously abused, mentally fragile, isolated female or neglected, bullied with additional needs child, then you are fit to make a choice between abusing at all and getting help for yourself to break whatever chain of abuse that led up to you.

I did what I could to help an ex abused as a child but his efforts went to perpetuate abuse not seek recovery

And thats where my sympathy/understanding/desire to protect him ended.

@BarefootInTheMoonlitSnow

For me if you can choose a victim, you can choose to get help. If you can put the effort into abusing, covering up, you can put the effort into therapy and working on not being a danger to others.

So like many PP, I can feel for the abused child, but do not excuse the abusive adult.

Maybe we need to drop the intrigue of ‘why’ and just focus on if someone is abusive how do we stop them abusing right now and worry about why they did it later.

If you are really unable to control yourself then you aren’t out picking on the weak and vulnerable are you? If you are fit to make a choice between that 6’ 4” sober, smart, physically-able, NT, and valued in society, surrounded by family & friends male and a previously abused, mentally fragile, isolated female or neglected, bullied with additional needs child, then you are fit to make a choice between abusing at all and getting help for yourself to break whatever chain of abuse that led up to you.

I did what I could to help an ex abused as a child but his efforts went to perpetuate abuse not seek recovery

And thats where my sympathy/understanding/desire to protect him ended.

The why is useful in understanding and improving the way we help and support the children that are being abused now. Early intervention is key to prevent (some) future abuse.

There was a study done that has shown that while males that have been sexually abused as children went on to become abusers themselves, that number increases(3 times more likely if I remember correctly )when they were also exposed to further violence,DV, abuse and neglect . I think the sex of the sexual abuser made a difference too, with men abused by a female(particularly close relative) more likely to commit crimes against women.

It's not an excuse and it's definitely not a defence, but changing the things we are doing now for abused children might hopefully mean that we'll have less predators in the future.

Professionally I understand all about complex trauma, attachment issues, ACEs etc and have to have my professional head in when supporting 15 year olds who have raised and are pleased about it, ir a 16 year old that has tried to strangle his girlfriend and so on.
Do I feel sympathy for them?
No. Its awful when I read up on their backgrounds but my sympathy is with the girls and young women they harm.

They never try to abuse anyone bigger or stronger than themselves so that tells me they know exactly what they are doing.

I'm sorry as a childhood abuse surveyor, both sexual and physically from the age of 6 and then raped again as a teen I have not sympathy with child abusers or anyone who hurts another. My abuse was terrifying and had very very bad affect on my mental health. I was suicidal until my mid 30s and even now I struggle with feelings of inadequacy. I have 3 dd's and 1 dgs. I am the absolute reverse parent as mine were. I don't tie my kids to the bed when they are terrified to sleep or lock them in cupboards. I have no desire to hurt or abuse them and would kill anyone who did. Yes its absolutely tragic when it turns out that some abusers had a terrible childhood and I feel they were let down by those that should have protected them but then what they go on to do is abhorrent. Why would you want to inflict the same pain on another when you know how it feels to be that little child? Not all abusers had a bad childhood though and then its the old argument of nature versus nature. I believe MJ abused those children. He groomed them over time and tried to cover his tracks. Thats not a spontaneous attack. Sometimes I can understand an angry outburst as I've had them myself but to carry on putting people through pain and terrifying them consistently is unforgiveable. My abusers came from normal back grounds. There was no excuse just a need to fulfill sick and twisted desires.

Slightly better than the death penalty. We have at least moved on from that.

I genuinely cannot see how the death penalty is a punishment, certainly not for people who would otherwise spend life in a supermax or something. I know if I commited a crime and the sentence was life (meaning life, not these pathetic 7 year 'life' sentences) or death, I would 100% chose death. Have found myself a little confused when high profile cases hit the press, where they try as hard as possible to not get the death penalty..and instead try to get life. I would be the opposite. Would all be over with quickly, instead of 50 years rotting in a cell seeing noone.

A bit offtopic though.

Sympathy isn't the right word. I have been abused, and I also know that the person who abused me didn't have it easy as a child, and was abused himself by his father, so grew up thinking his behaviour was normal.

I am sorry for what he as a child went through, and I strongly believe that abusers and criminals in general - SOMETIMES - need to be treated rather than criminalised. I.e. if my ex had counselling or was educated about why he was the way he was, that might have changed things. But ultimately, he made my life a living hell for 6 years - so no, sympathy is not the right word at all.