Child Predators What Should Be

¶ … Child Predators

What should be the criminal justice system response to those who perpetrate crimes against children? Should society treat or punish these individuals? If, as some argue, pedophilia cannot be cured, should child molesters be incarcerated for life?

Be sure to (a) reflect knowledge learned in this module and not just personal opinion and (b) incorporate the comments of your classmates in your response.

Please post one original response. Each original response should be a minimum of 125 words in length.

The format of this question disturbs me because it makes the same mistake that many people make and acts as if pedophiles and child molesters are the same group of people. Pedophilia describes people whose primary sexual attraction is prepubescent children. Child molesters are people who have sexually assaulted children in some manner. While pedophiles are going to be overrepresented among the population of child molesters, it is important to keep in mind that not all child molesters are pedophiles. On the contrary, many child molesters are situational predators. They do not choose child victims because of a primary sexual attraction, but because children make attractive victims: they are less likely to report assaults, they are less able to fight off attackers, they are less capable of causing harm to an offender, they are less likely to be believed if they report assaults, and, if they live in the home with the child molester, they may be unable to escape the predator. More importantly, not all pedophiles are child molesters. Someone can be attracted to children and not have sex with children. It is important to differentiate these two groups, because they may involve different treatment methodologies. For pedophiles who have sexually offended against children, chemical castration is a very good solution; by taking away a pedophile's sex drive, one takes away a pedophile's impetus to offend against children. However, for a non-pedophile child molester, sex drive may have little to do with the assaults and chemical castration may result in the child being sexually assaulted with objects or physically assaulted instead of sexually assaulted. Therefore, before one could attempt to answer this question, it would be critical to know what proportion of convicted child sex offenders are also pedophiles.

Discussion 2: Explanations for Elder Abuse

Which of the theories presented in Chapter 9 of the text explaining elder abuse do you find to be most compelling? Explain.

Before answering this question, be sure to review the PowerPoint presentation on Elder Maltreatment and read the relevant Handout.

Please post one original response. Each original response should be a minimum of 125 words in length.