I was listening to a local talk radio show this morning and they were on the topic of child abuse. On of the callers made the statement that child abusers should face the same punishment that they inflicted upon the child they abused.

I have to say I agree with this. Maybe I have a different perspective on this because I am a parent. But when I heard about the abuse case where a 3 year old was placed in a bathtub full of scalding hot water because he wet the bed, I almost had to pull off the road becuase of the anger I felt inside. This lowlife (what I would not call a human) who did this to that boy deserves neither freedom or liberty.

What is your opinion on this?

And please don't bring up the 'cruel and unusual punishment'. Tell that child what was done to him was not cruel...

The eye-for-an-eye argument is somewhat logical, but I have to say life in prison is worse... I'm a firm believer in the idea that the eye-for-an-eye philosophy makes the victim who seeks revenge no better then the person who attacked them in the first place. That is an interesting point however...

Yes, but if a person knew that, if caught, they would face the same punishment that they inflicted upon that child, don't you think they would rethink what they are about to do.

In the case of verbal abuse it would have to be treated differently. I am sure an adult can handle being told they are worthless far easier than a child can.

Unfortunately, no one believes that they will be caught, so punishments seldom deter people from doing what they want to. I remember reading that story and I was almost as angry as you were (although I have no kids yet and therefore can't really understand your feelings), but the eye-for-an-eye argument really isn't the answer. What about parents who molest their children? Who is going to violate those parents, and would that even necessarily be a punishment? When you have a gut reaction to something like child abuse, all you want is to make the perpetrator pay, but that's really not productive. Prison, fines, and loss of custody are sufficient, and if the abuser does get abused in prison, c'est la vie.

I guess what I am talking about are those cases where a child is scalded with hot water, or has their feet placed on red hot stoves, or had their fingernails pulled out with pliers(yes these are actual abuse cases).

You are correct there are some cases where eye for an eye would not seem to be punishment enough. But in the cases of those above, I believe it would be a very good deterrent.

As angry as child abuse makes me feel, I don't think the eye-for-an-eye punishment works. Pheeler mentioned that some of the "punishments" may not actually seem like punishments, and while you said that you don't want to hear it, we do have that pesky cruel and unusual punishment clause in the constitution. As intrinsically rewarding as it might feel to physically torture a child abuser, it is not the job of the justice system to act on emotion.

I think that harsher sentencing and in many situations, the complete loss of parental rights is a good idea. It makes me sick to know that some people who have abused their children can actually get them back after they get out of prison.

Just to add to this...

There is a case in Louisana where a man got the death sentence for savagely raping his 8 year old step daughter. It is on the books in Louisana that if you commit rape on a child 12 years and younger you can get the death sentence.

That's the same idea behind the death penalty, and it is really impossible to tell whether or not that has really deterred any would-be murderers.

Well the death penalty sure as hell kept the murderer it put to death from killing any more people.

Well believe that if you do wrong, one day somebody will do something equally wrong to you, in other words poetic justice.

The eye-for-the-eye approach doesn’t necessarily work, but if a child abuser is sexually abused by “Big Fred” in prison, that is poetic justice. In conclusion, I support poetic justice but not the eye-for-the-eye treatment.

This evil man got a fitting death:

Boston priest murdered in prision

Although cases like the one mentioned make me angry and want to see the abuser suffer, I think we have to behave like a civilized society. As much as the person probably deserves to be submerged in boiling water himself, we cannot revert to a tribal law system. In my opinion the imposition of punishments in court should be without an emotional desire for revenge.

In my experiance with dealing with abused children, there is already a "pay it forward system" going- about 99.999% of those cases, those very things were done to them- they learned to do it from THIER parents- and there is also an enormous set of guilt following thier behavior, so torturing them back may actually let them feel if they have been absolved as well- many imprisoned men and women I have talked to have a "I am paying my price" attitude towards the crime. You really get your skin crawling when the women feeling an entitlement to this behavior, that thier treatment somewhere by someone justifies thier behavior towards thier children. Poeple won't believe what a large percentage of child abusers and molestors are women. The man tries to hide it, the woman, justify it is the saying where I work. So some kind of torture may make them actually feel BETTER about thier crime.

So, as nice as it sounds, I am against it.

I don't subscribe to the "eye for an eye" school of thought at all, for three main reasons. (I'll come out for starters and say that all these arguments apply just as much to the death penalty, to which I am also opposed).

The first is simple pragmatics, and related to Pheeler's point:



All the analysis I've seen indicates to me that criminals either commit their crimes completely on the spur of the moment, not considering any consequences, and then once they have recovered some composure they try to hide what they have done for fear of detection. (If they also fear the punishment as much as an "eye for an eye" system would indicate, they would try even harder to avoid detection).

OR, they plan their crime in advance with a cool head, and believe that their careful planning will shield them from detection. Again, if the likely punishment is particularly harsh, the likely effect is that even more care will be taken to avoid detection.

The only situations I've heard of where a person commits a crime with full awareness of the likely consequences and no attempt at concealment are when "eye for an eye" subscribers take the law into their own hands to punish someone else.

Sitting here, now, thinking about myself, being boiled alive would deter me from boiling anyone else, adult or child. But, and here you'll have to take my word, I am never likely to boil any living creature (except perhaps a lobster). If I ever did, I can only imagine that I'd be in some kind of altered state (through exxtremes of illness, drugs, or emotional strain) where I would act impulsively without thought of apprehension by the authorities, or that I'd go out of my way to avoid such a consequence. After all, they can't boil me alive if they can't find me, or if they think they've found someone else.

NEXT, I do not trust the justice system enough to be completely convinced that all people convicted of a crime actually did it. The police and legal establishment are all human, and humans make mistakes. In a prison-based system of punishment, the worst that can happen is prison. I can live with that - wrongly convicted people can be released, compensated, and apologised to. That doesn't fully recompense them for their lost freedom, of course. But they are still alive and able to begin again, hopefully with all their faculties intact.

If we boil convicted baby-boilers, how do we compensate them when we find out we got the wrong guy in our haste to punish SOMEONE for such a horrible crime? They're dead - we can't bring them back to life.

My last reason follows on from this, but is more abstract, and I think more important. The state carries out these punishments, and I believe that, in every meaningful way WE are the state (depsite constitutional anachronisms here in the UK that says that a Mrs E Windsor of London is the sole personification of the British state). If we wrongly kill someone, even if we genuinely believe that we are right to do so at the time, that makes US murderers. In an eye-for-an-eye system, that means we should all be killed.

Furthermore, even if we know, uncontrovertably, that someone really IS guilty of baby-boiling as charged, boiling them (while not nearly as bad as boiling someone wrongly convicted, because the real baby-boiler set them up so they themselves could avoid punishment) just makes us as bad as they are - we think boiling people is a good idea in some circumstances - just as they did.

I expect someone to come back and say "so you would prefer to allow baby-boilers to go on boiling babies than to see one innocent person boiled by the state", so I'll pre-empt.

Yes and no. No, I'm no fan of baby-boiling, but it's a false dichotomy. My ideal would be for nobody to get boiled by anybody. And yes, I would prefer my hands to remain blood-free, through the state not doing anything in my name that I would not be prepared to do myself (which means that war in defence is allowed, just as I would be prepared to kill in self-defence as a last resort).

We are responsible for what we do, and by extension, for what is done in our name. We are not responsible for what other people do - only for how we react to them. We should act humanely to them, not because they deserve it, but because we set higher standards for our own behaviour than they do for theirs.

So, long prisons terms for baby boilers, by all means. But no boiling, flogging, mutilation, etc, just long years in jail.

Although child abuse makes my blood boil, I can't agree with the "eye for an eye" for reasons already stated here. But what about stopping it? In today's paper (the NY Times) there's an article about a 3-year-old who died yesterday after severe child abuse (she weighed 16 pounds). The neighbors knew and said nothing! Social workers around here each have 50-60 cases to keep track of. Kids fall between the cracks, and we usually only find out about them when they die. And with all the budget cuts, we're not going to be getting any more social workers soon. It's so frustrating and painful. Children are the most beautiful beings in the world. Their sense of wonder and awe, their joy, their lack of prejudices and racism. All they ask for is to be loved and accepted. I wonder at times if this world even deserves them.

As for punishing their abusers.... Hanging them from a meat hook is often the first thing that comes to mind. But, I will let the justice system deal with them. And then the prison system, where the population is notorious for tolerating just about anything but a child abuser.... as Father John Geoghan recently learned.