Flea, why would you be worried about getting flamed or neg-repped to oblivion for that post. Most ..*ahem* excuse me... ALL of us here have a secret desire to take child abusers, molesters, killers, et al into a room without any windows or cameras and work out MA-skills out on them for a few hours... then take 'em outside to be shot, castrated or otherwise be subjected to death by stoning.
You answered your own question there. :uhyeah: I've learned over the years to keep my mouth shut over what is, sadly, a deeply controversial position. Compassion for the criminal. It started 12 years ago when there was a shooting on my campus at Penn State University. One fatality, one severe injury, one minor injury, suspect apprehended unharmed. Imagine my disbelief a few days later when I found out that the shooter was in one of my circles of friends! Not only that, but she was the beautiful stranger I often enjoyed smalltalk with at the bus stop. And we both cashiered at the same greasy spoon, though not at the same time. Another close friend took me aside and told me that they had dated for several months and he had considered proposing.
I never really knew her myself, but I felt enough affinity that I couldn't simply write her off as a person. Do I feel responsible for not picking up on her illness? Of course not - you don't walk up to a virtual stranger at the bus stop and confide that you've fantasized about being The Campus Sniper. Ultimately she's responsible for her choices, but it's well-documented that she went way out of her way to get help. She
did detail that fantasy to a therapist who didn't take her seriously. But I do feel some responsibility in the abstract - as a member of the human community I need to pay better attention in general. We
all let Jill down, and Melanie Spalla paid the ultimate price for it. (Wow, I didn't even have to look that up. This really has stuck with me.)
So when I come across these cases I can't just demonize the perps like I used to. The crime is usually only the icing on the cake of what's
really going on. The substance beneath is usually years or decades in the making, impossibly complex and painful. The casual reader will never know or even ask what that mothers' story was. What prompted her to move from Trinidad? What of the teenage pregnancy? What was it about that cult that caught her eye? And how many warning signs did Grandma miss before she realized her daughter was in too deep?
I learned really quickly after the campus shooting to keep my sympathy for criminals to myself. People can't handle the idea of identifying with them; it removes that barrier of denial and "There but for the grace of god." It's too scary to acknowledge our own capacity for getting
that lost or
that sick ourselves. But no one is invincible, and I do believe that given the right set of circumstances no one is immune.
