Politicans take the high road when orating on the horrors of child sex crimes but their attempts to balance victims rights and those of the accused sometimes defy reason.
Child molestation, whichever the sex, is without doubt considered most heinous of sex crimes. Heinous enough that five U.S. states can seek the death penalty for repeat offenders. Yet, the "repeat" part is puzzling. How many incidents preceded the "first" conviction? How many will follow before the second conviction is registered? Those questions make the issue complex, but the complexity goes deeper than that.
Hauled into court, many pedophiles plead their own abuse as children, their addiction to drugs or booze, or simply that some children are precocious. Others argue they didn't know the true age of their victims: "It was just a one-time thing, what's the big deal?" Prosecutors then jump up and cite victim trauma, pain, humiliation, peer rejection, and lifelong psychological scarring.
On both sides of the courtroom there may be a few kernels of truth popping. Defense counsel butters it, prosecutors salt it. Then, of course, depending on the location of the offence, an arbitrarily-legislated victim age determines whether the victim is child or adult. Sometimes it's 14, sometimes 16, sometimes 18 years old.
Then, there's incest. The pantheons of Greek and Roman gods of yore indulged themselves incestuously with impunity. This practice has been common to keep royal lines intact for centuries, as far back as the Egyptian pharaohs and as recently as the Hapsburg line, which is still with us.
Add, then, in some of today's societies, child brides (and grooms) are common. So is sexual indoctrination by relatives prior to marriage. There is custom and there is crime. It seems to depend on where you live. That may explain how an Oklahoman pedophile can go on a sex junket to Thailand or several other countries and freely engage in sexual activity that could draw the death sentence in his home state.
Legislators try to cover all of the bases, be all things to all people. The law becomes a generalized, somewhat universal proscription within their respective jurisdictions. They set ages and minimum sentences. The minimum sentences are blanket, reducing the judge's flexibility to take into account aggravating or mitigating circumstances. In effect, the judge is just a rubber stamp, despite that he is empowered to weigh evidence and circumstance and, presumably, render judgment. When legislators restrict the judge's capacity to do his job, presuming as we must that the judge is impartial - which ain't necessarily so -- neither the victim is served, nor the offender.
In Western civilization two other factors play heavily in relation to sex crime, and, particularly, child-related sex crime. These are our "cult of youth" and our overall sexual morality or lack thereof. These are for next week's article, speaking to "consent" and "status quo," parts of our society's changing face and the criminal code legislation that invariably lags behind a generation or so to sanction -- or articulate -- our social values. In all of the profound, if forever tangled complexities of these issues, perhaps we can be heartened (or saddened) that not a single child rapist has been put to death since 1964. Some laws appear to be empty gestures only to assuage the clamoring mob.
Next week: the social environment that contributes to sex crimes. Why are we shocked by the results of what we have blatantly encouraged for half a century?
