What to do with...

[Admiral Beez]

As a parent, and seeing that Graham James getting two years, and the rest of the news we see on the subject, I have to think that Canada needs a national policy on how to deal with pedophiles.

 

[SP!RE]

We also need to, as a society, be mature about how it's handled, and regardless of how we feel about people's compulsions or personal dysfunctions, respect people for the fact that they are human beings. What I'm getting at is that we need to make it safe for people to turn themselves in to seek help (yes, this does happen and would happen a lot more if we made a safer space for people to do this).

To be a pedophile isn't inherently harmful unless the person acts on it... someone should be able to seek help because they are dealing with pedophiliac urges without being labeled a monster and subsequently losing their freedoms and having their lives turned upside down. Then we are just victimizing the very people who are seeking to get help before they have even harmed anyone.

At the same time, of course there then need to be, on the other hand, stringent and effective sentences and treatment programs (lots of research on them at the moment I'd imagine) to deal with offenders.

 

[Admiral Beez]

The court should make a solutions...but anyway they should be sent into prison, I'm sure and to think about their awful mistakes.

Yes, agreed 100%, jail them all with the assumption that rehab is not possible. But, what to do with them before they assault someone? The ISPs know who is visiting such material on line, and sporting, scouting and other organizations that involve kids are developing tools to find these folks within their midsts.

 

[gristle]

If we can agree that pedophilia is a hard wired sexual orientation like adult heterosexuality, adult homosexuality, adult bisexuality, etc. .

Yes, agreed 100%, jail them all with the assumption that rehab is not possible.

There is a big risk in identifying pedophiles as being "hard-wired" like heterosexuality and homosexuality. First, this has not been proven. Second, within your statement, there is a suggestion of something naturally appearing - a product of nature and not of choice or of some some possible external cause. If this is so, then proposing automatic jail time as a punishment for something that cannot be changed by those individuals is unfair. It also suggests that no matter how many pedophiles you jail today, more will be born tomorrow.

It's clear that a pedophile who has a strong sexual attraction for very young children or infants has a very serious problem and presents a potential danger for all the obvious reasons. Since one can't automatically assume some sort of "innateness" in this kind of urge - at least not yet - that would mean that there still is a serious mental health issue is involved. I would imagine that getting funding for appropriate research is difficult given how emotionally charged this subject is (also for all the obvious reasons), but if we really want to find out what the cause is, that might be a better route to begin addressing the matter.