Maybe the world needs more insensitive a**holes

[Dude]

Kidnapping suspect's prison term raises questions

 

This sickens me to no end. We regularly hand out absurd sentences for having minuscule amounts of weed in our possession (10 years), or growing marijuana plants on federal land (can send you to prison for life).

 

But we let this absolutely disgusting vermin Phillip Garrido serve only 11 years of a 50 year sentence after he abducted, hogtied and repeatedly raped a woman in a storage locker in Reno.

 

I'm sorry, but what the hell!?! I'm extremely liberal on most fronts. But it seems every one of these violent sex offender cases (the rapist-enslavers or the rapist-murderers, take your pick) ends up having prior convictions.

 

These men are sick, and no amount of prison or psychiatric treatment can rehabilitate them. I honestly think these guys should never see the light of day, and if we must show any level of compassion and allow them to go free, we should castrate them.

 

I'm interested in your thoughts... I mean, I think people on all sides of the political spectrum are enraged by this... it would be nice to raise our kids in a world where this kind of shit doesn't happen.

[remphish1]

Yeah I always though you had to serve at least 80% of your sentence?! I am appalled this happened too!

[buffy3kins]

As a woman trying to live a normal sane life, I admit I often wonder how many men are serial rapists in crowds when I'm going about my normal day doing such things as grocery shopping. Try living with the fact that some big bruiser of a nutjob might try to at least mug me while I'm with a group at a bus stop. I'm an average size woman and a bit past middle age. I'd have a hard time defending myself against a large man. Then having some of these perverts getting littlemore than a slap on the hand is truly disgusting. Please don't call me crazy for thinking my life is as good and worth as much as anyone else's life. If some nutcase should try to attack me in any way shape, or form, he needs to do some time in jail and have it really rough while he's in there.

[Guest Runaway Jim]

While I agree that's ridiculous and am appauled by such crimes, I don't think anyone deserves to be castrated.

 

Plus, it's pretty well accepted that people committing these types of crimes aren't just horny and want to get laid. It's more of a power issue. A psychological issue. Castrating them won't keep them from doing it. It'll probably just further fuel their issues. It'll probably also cause them to kill rather than rape.

[cryptique]

I'm appalled by some of the spelling in this thread.

[remphish1]

I'm appalled by some of the spelling in this thread.

 

Here comes the spelling police! Lock me up guilty as charged!

[Dude]

While I agree that's ridiculous and am appauled by such crimes, I don't think anyone deserves to be castrated.

 

I wasn't that serious about castration, but since you are responding seriously, I'll will, too.

 

Plus, it's pretty well accepted that people committing these types of crimes aren't just horny and want to get laid. It's more of a power issue. A psychological issue. Castrating them won't keep them from doing it. It'll probably just further fuel their issues. It'll probably also cause them to kill rather than rape.

 

Accepted by whom? How many people kidnap other people and hold them hostage for 18 years just so they have stimulating conversations and play chess with them from time to time?

 

How often are children abducted and killed by complete strangers with zero sexual involvement on the part of the abductor?

 

I honestly think this guy - while a total freak in his own right - would have been a harmless weirdo minus any sexual drive, the kind of freak you see on countless college campuses with megaphones ranting about Jesus and salvation.

[bjorn_skurj]

While I agree that's ridiculous and am appauled by such crimes, I don't think anyone deserves to be castrated.

 

Plus, it's pretty well accepted that people committing these types of crimes aren't just horny and want to get laid. It's more of a power issue. A psychological issue. Castrating them won't keep them from doing it. It'll probably just further fuel their issues. It'll probably also cause them to kill rather than rape.

Are the French doing anything with Devil's Island?

[Guest Runaway Jim]

I wasn't that serious about castration, but since you are responding seriously, I'll will, too.

 

Accepted by whom? How many people kidnap other people and hold them hostage for 18 years just so they have stimulating conversations and play chess with them from time to time?

 

How often are children abducted and killed by complete strangers with zero sexual involvement on the part of the abductor?

 

I honestly think this guy - while a total freak in his own right - would have been a harmless weirdo minus any sexual drive, the kind of freak you see on countless college campuses with megaphones ranting about Jesus and salvation.

 

Crimes of sexual nature are widely accepted to be more about power issues than just getting laid. A guy could call a hooker off craigslist if he really wanted to get laid. But he rapes for that satisfaction of having control over someone else. And to get laid.

 

Also, castration wouldn't tame a deviant sex drive - that's in his head.

 

Either way, I thought you seemed serious.

[Guest Speed Racer]

Accepted by whom? How many people kidnap other people and hold them hostage for 18 years just so they have stimulating conversations and play chess with them from time to time?

 

There's a HUGE difference between being randy and committing a single (or multiple) violent sex act(s). HUGE. The difference of, say, several million (billion?) horny people and several hundred gravely, emotionally and psychologicaly ill persons. The act of rape or assault or kidnapping from serious, violent offenders rarely has anything to do with the fact that they haven't been laid in a while - and that, I'm pretty sure, is widely accepted.

 

It is simplistic and shortsighted to connect the sex act with a simple desire for sex in these instances. (Relatively) normal people with a (relatively) simple desire for sex relieve the urge through any number of ways - ranging from safe and healthy to unsafe and unhealthy - without ever committing a violent, non-consensual sex act.

[Dude]

The act of rape or assault or kidnapping from serious, violent offenders rarely has anything to do with the fact that they haven't been laid in a while - and that, I'm pretty sure, is widely accepted.

 

When did I say it was simply due to the fact that he hadn't been laid in a while?

 

If modern psychology is doing such an ace coming up figuring out a lot of stuff "pretty well accepted", like the complex interactions between sex and the human psyche, which honestly I don't think anyone on this board can begin to understand from a clinical standpoint, why are mental health professionals, parole boards and our penal system allowing these guys to slip through the cracks and run rampant? He was a changed, better man after the first prison sentence, right? At least, it was "pretty well accepted" at the time that he was.

[stooka]

Also, castration wouldn't tame a deviant sex drive - that's in his head.

 

Then, decapitation it is!!!

[Guest Speed Racer]

I honestly think this guy - while a total freak in his own right - would have been a harmless weirdo minus any sexual drive

 

That's the part where I mistakenly assumed you were indicating that he did that because he was looking for sex. That, and the part where RJ said it's accepted it's not just that they're horny and you said, "Accepted by whom." So apologies for the misread.

 

And I stand by my assessment that your statement is simplistic - if he had been minus any sexually drive, he either would have been physically altered by someone in some way and, as RJ says, likely to still commit violent acts, or he would have been an entirely different person. Like, fantasy-land different, not turn-your-life-around different.

 

To reiterate - and as I'm sure you know - sexual violence is used more often as a weapon than it is a means of sexual gratification. You can commit acts of sexual violence without any sexual drive. In some instances, of course, the sex crime is a direct result of a desire for sex, but again, these people had a number of other ways to releive themselves and are obviously further distanced from reality.

 

You asked for our thoughts at the beginning of the thread. My thoughts: My friend was brutally murdered by a first-time offender, who never got around to assaulting her, though he did admit that was his intention; he said he was frustrated because he had never been on a date. He is now in prison and will never, ever leave. The system worked about as well as it could have in that instance. A girl a block away from me was raped by a man who scaled the wall into her second story apartment. She escaped by kicking out a window, jumping two stories and breaking her ankle. They caught him because he cut himself on a shard of glass; he was already in the state database because they took a DNA sample after he was caught sniffing some girl's underwear during a burglary. I had no idea they could even do that. Again, the system worked about as well as it could have.

 

Comparing drug sentencing to sexual crime sentencing doesn't work as far as I'm concerned. Two very different interest groups are seeking reform for both, and the government doesn't seem to have any interest in sentencing parity. Some people slip through the cracks, yes, and that's a tragedy - don't get me wrong. I think it sucks, I think it's an outrage, but I also understand that in these instances, the people applying the laws are working with a rubric they didn't write. The nature of bureaucracy dictates that parole boards and judges and everyone have to make decisions they don't agree with. And I can't blame them for that.

 

Even though sexual violence has come close to me on a number of occasions (we have another guy loose in the neighborhood now, too), I don't feel any more dangerous - and I don't worry for the children of the world - any more than I would about getting struck by lightning or hit by a car (the latter of which, as a bike commuter, is significantly more likely to happen to me).

 

If you want my opinion, the real blame in this particularly situation goes to the frappin' parole office who visited the house and didn't notice Little House on the Hellhole in the backyard.