Humiliation Doesn't Help
NBC recently did an undercover investigation to catch online predators "in the act". I first saw this story on Tuesday, but they've been milking it ever since. In this investigation, people posed as young girls and lured unsuspecting guys into coming over. The guys seek to take advantage of young girls home alone, but when they get there all they find are video cameras and accusing reporters.
When first watching this story, something didn't sit right with me. I'm certainly not in favor of grown men taking sexual advantage of underage girls, but I highly doubt that this story was done purely for the good of protecting children.
The guise of this story was that it was intended to bring awareness to parents about how dangerous the internet is for kids, and how online predators are everywhere. (Something that has been known by parents and most everyone with a brain for quite some time) I believe that if that were truly the objective, the faces and names of these men would have been protected, but they were not. The true purpose of this story was to publicly crucify potential sex offenders and to humiliate these men and destroy their lives, purely for the entertainment value of viewers at home who are full of distain for pedophiles and sex offenders. The result is that these men will forever be shunned by society for something they may or may not have been about to do. It’s like Minority Report. We are convicting them for a crime they haven’t even committed yet. It also shouldn't come as a shock that in a society where youthfulness is equated with beauty, situations like this will occur. (Women in magazines are often so thin that they look like 12-year-olds, but I plan to rant about that on another occassion)
It is my belief that pedophilia is a disorder. Many suffering from this disorder seek treatment because they know that what they are doing or what they desire to do is wrong. They would give anything to have the sickness removed from them. Likewise, I believe that some of the men duped in this investigative study are not necessarily horrible people who deserve to be publicly humiliated. These are human beings. They make mistakes. They have sick desires. They are lonely, and in their desperateness, they made a very poor decision. Because of this, they are treated with disgust by society. Many of these men lost their jobs after their employers saw them on the news.
Shame is powerful thing. If someone is suffering from some sort of sexual depravity it's no wonder that they keep it to themselves in a world where people are treated like this. If we really believe that everyone deserves equal treatment in our society, then we should be helping these people, not humiliating them.
protecting your kids online
posted by Heidi Bloom @ 7:51 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Pedophilia may be a disorder, but it is a dangerous one which causes ruin to thousands of innocent lives. Society must balance the damage done by pedophilia, and the desire to help pedophiles. Children need protection in society, not 'equal treatment'. Identifying those with the disease is a good start for both goals. I congratulate the people at NBC.
I agree it's a delicate balance, but I'm still not clear on what the point of humiliating these men was. Can someone clear that up for me?
Because the people doing the story are human, and not clinical automatons. The fact that a camera is rolling does not stop journalists from feeling normal human emotions. Fear, revulsion, joy, anger, annoyance are all experienced by journalists while doing stories. Humiliation was the only legal form of emotional expression that was available to a very human CBS news crew who worked to flush out the real behaviour of imposters who prey on those most vulnerable in our society. Had the news crew worked with law enforcement, these men would have been arrested, tried, and convicted of a crime. It is a crime to solicit sex from minors, but it is such a reprehensible crime that even among criminals, pedophiles are reviled. The men were publicly revealed attempting to act out a sexual fantasy about child rape that played over and over in their heads. All research about this type of behaviour indicates that once begun...once the potential pedophile crosses from fantasy to action (as was the case with all of thise men) it is not reversible; it is an intractable behavioural loop. One pedophile typically destroys the lives of hundreds of children in the pursuit of their compulsion.
The news crews knew these facts about pedophiles, and also knew that it was likely that these men had already destroyed lives and had not been caught. It was unlikely that this was the 'first' time these men had acted on their compulsion. They knew that victims of these men would, best case, never feel safe again in the world, never smile freely, never be completely comfortable with their own bodies or sexuality, never really know a carefree moment again...for the rest of their lives. Worst case, they would be killed terrifyingly, alone, away from their parents, in a strange place, in sickening pain.
Still not clear about the explanation? Watch the video.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/23/avila.sentencing.ap/index.html
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