*****My belief that pedophiles deserve permanent jail time is based on his (or her) ruining his victim's life, so that the victim will never again be truly normal****

Maven, do you personally know anyone who has been molested, raped and abused as a child? no one that i know, or have had in group therapy, entirely gets over and becomes "truly normal".

yes, we move on. yes, we say that this will not define our lives. do we forget it? no, we don't. do we feel as though someone that we trusted did something wrong to us? yes. there is anger, sadness, grief, a huge sense of loss. especially when we mature and we know that we've already had our "first" sex, etc. there isn't the "choice" of having a "first" time. that was taken years and years ago.

perhaps, a good question for you would be this, "how do you define "truly normal"? maybe that is what i'm confused about. i think a lot of us here are confused by your thinking that a victim can become "truly normal" after having been molested, abused, raped, etc.

i definitely do not believe that any abuser does it one time and never again. i do not believe that. i never have had one abuser, in group, who only did it once.

i understand part of what you're saying, but i am still confused by the above. xoxo pat