Does your therapist treat offenders?

Again, you are missing the point. It has nothing to do with having or not having compassion.

Compassion = "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it"

Compassion is ---"I understand you had a hard life and that was terrible. I wish I could take that pain away"

Compassion is NOT--- "I understand you had a hard life and it justifies/excuses what you did."

In your examples: you are justifying behavior because "he had a bad life," "he got no presents on xmas morning, " "he was raised on a farm in foster care," etc.


There is no justifying child abuse. There is NO excusing child abuse.

And as I have stated, many abused children have had much worse than that and they choose not to abuse. Many children are raised in homes filled with violence, in foster care, etc. and know nothing different.......BUT they choose not to abuse as they become adults.

I have seen abused young adults who are now parents step away, take a time out, etc. breaking the cycle as they knew it. They make a conscious choice to not abuse their child; although that is all the knew in their childhoods.

It is also not about trying to understand or not understand. I know all the psychological and social reasons and understand very well why people do what they do. I understand stages of development, attachment theory, abuse, and motive. I understand brain changes in abused individuals and the cycle of poverty, addiction, and abuse. I know the research and I understand it very well. And I also understand that it comes down to a choice people make.

It is about holding people accountable for their actions accordingly and taking responsibility for harm done.

You are justifying behaviors, masking it as trying to be understanding or compassionate.

Again, research shows MOST abused individuals do NOT become abusers.
If we all fell back on the "this is what we learned in our lives," most children of abusers would also become abusers.
However, people choose to undo the cycle of abuse for whatever reasons. Most do.
Some state because they remember feeling pain; some state because they were hurt so much they don't want to hurt others; some state because they knew it wasn't right; some state because they hated their parents for doing that and they never wanted their children to hate them, etc. etc.

Compassion is not justifying behaviors. Compassion is not making excuses for why people do horrible things.

I have compassion for what my parents experienced in their life and I understand now as adult some of the reasons that led them to their choices.
But they made those choices.
And they 100% belong in prison, being held accountable for their horrible actions. And they should sit there for a very long time and they will.

Nothing justifies abuse of a child and nothing excuses child abuse. Period.

You might be interested in the book Soul Murder, by Morton Schatzman. It compares the writings of the pedagogue father Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber with his son Daniel Paul Schreber. The latter became a judge before breaking down into "insanity". Both of them wrote prolifically, so the latter-day writer has actual material with which to attempt to analyze what happened with those two long ago. Some of the child-training techniques of the father must have made their way to this country, because my mother would have heartily endorsed his methods and his intent.

Thanks, Pachyderm, I am definitely interested in that. I have no doubt that some of those child-training techniques made their way to this country, in part because my mother certainly brought them over here when she left Germany and came to the states. I'm sure she wasn't the only one.

Moosetracks, people who have abused children absolutely should be punished according to the law for their crimes. That goes without saying. In our society, if you break the laws, you pay the price, and that is exactly as it should be.
From what I have read here nobody here is saying that abusers deserve compassion INSTEAD OF punishment. I believe there are some people who have abused that are so disturbed and unsalvageable that letting them out of prison would be a grave mistake - but there are also many others who have abused who do NOT fall into that category. There are many that have the ability and the desire to learn new behaviors, and can do so, with appropriate treatment and support.
There is without doubt a high rate of recidivism among perpetrators of sexual crimes, but with appropriate treatment this rate reduces considerably. Yes, abusers present with all excuses under the sun, but in many instances (particularly in non-violent sexual abuse cases) what these are the result of defence mechanisms that protect them against acknowledging to themselves the harm their actions have caused. When these defence mechanisms can be broken through in therapy, the rates of reoffending are drastically reduced. This is not to say that therapy is always successful, because it is not. But once an offender has served their time in prison and is released into the community, successful therapy is society's only protection against further crimes by that person.
You keep reiterating the point that not all people who were abused as children go on to abuse others, therefore those that do are doing so by choice. You say this as though it is a black and white choice between choosing 'good' or 'bad', but I don't believe it is so simple.
To begin with, not all abuse is equal, and not all abuse will affect everybody in the same way. There are oh so many factors at play in how a child reacts to abuse, and how that abuse affects their development, defence mechanisms, reactions to stress, and ability to relate to others. The length of abuse, degree of abuse, number of abusers, other relationships in the child's life (whether positive or negative), the child's innate termperament, and other's reactions to disclosure about abuse (to name but a few variables), will all impact significantly on the developing child to contribute to the likelihood of him or her abusing others later in life. While abusive behavior is to some degree a 'choice', in other respects it is not. For some people, abusive words, behavior and actions are the entirety of their life experience, and they will perpetuate the abusive cycle until they are in a position to learn something different. For others, certain life circumstances will trigger learned reactions - and if you have neither the internal or external resources to do it differently at the time, it is not a real 'choice'.
I am in no way absolving people who abuse others from responsibility - as human beings our own behaviors and actions are ALWAYS our own responsbility - but I think it is as equally dangerous and detrimental to society to assume that all perpetrators of all abuse be lumped in the 'bad' pile, as it is to assume that abusers should be treated with compassion instead of being punished (which nobody here is proposing anyway.)
No one here is 'justifying' child abuse, but it does warrant understanding. It is KNOWN to be a cycle - some of those that experience abuse go on to become abusers. When therapists are able to help heal the pain of the past abuse, and get offenders to identify with the child they once were instead of the person that abused them, it helps stop that cycle from continuing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Luce! You explained this so much better than I could!

I have likened this in my own mind to what fetal alcohol syndrome must be like: being immersed in a milieu that is all you know. I once knew a young black boy, perhaps a teenager, in the mental hospital I was in; he wore a mask of hatred on his face that was quite unmistakeable to me. I think now he must have known little but abuse in his life, and probably wanted to revenge himself on everybody. Another time I saw a mother virtually out of control on a subway, mistreating her infant in a way which he could not possibly understand. Such things cannot avoid resulting in severe trauma, so severe that some really have little "choice" in how they react to it, given no meaningful intervention. I myself have reacted so strongly to things that triggered me in adulthood that it has sometimes been more than I could do to guess what was real and what was only reacting to the past and thinking it was present.

justification: a reason, fact, circumstance, or explanation that justifies or defends.

This entire thread became about justifying people's behaviors because "abusers had a difficult life experience" or "abusers circumstances were harsh" or "abusers learned nothing else except abuse."

Luce -- you state that it is NOT a choice based on numerous reasons. Many of those reasons I previously mentioned under "understanding" in an earlier post..

Our behavior is ALWAYS a choice.

Everything you do in life is a choice. Pick up the drugs or not. Steal or not. Goto school or not. Get out of bed or not. Rape a child or not. Beat a child or not. Choices.
We choose our behaviors and our actions...People make a choice.

If you learn something, you still make a choice to do it or not. That is true with everything.

Again, you are using "understanding the circumstances" to justify abusive behavior. There is no justification for abuse regardless of the circumstances. Just because one person's abuse history is worse or different than another, it still does not justify or excuse making a choice to abuse a child.
Abusers know their actions will get the result they want and they make their choice accordingly. For example how many times have you heard an abuser say something like: "I tried to get that kid to be quiet by punching him in the mouth, but that didn't work, so I taped his mouth and tied him to the bed." Choices made...to get the result the abuser wanted.

We make choices regarding our behaviors and actions, everyday. Everything we do is a choice.

And in regards to sex offenders, the studies on whether "treatment" statistically changes the recidivism rate are mixed.

"Although there has been a considerable amount of writing on the relative merits of these approaches and about sex offender treatment in general, there is a paucity of evaluative research regarding treatment outcomes. There have been very few studies of sufficient rigor (e.g., employing an experimental or quasi-experimental design) to compare the effects of various treatment approaches or comparing treated to untreated sex offenders"

"Using less rigorous evaluation strategies, several studies have evaluated the outcomes of offenders receiving sex offender treatment, compared to a group of offenders not receiving treatment. The results of these studies are mixed."
(I can provide the manuscript citations if you would like)

Cheer all you want. Justifying behavior that you have done or that others have done to you --past or present-- does not set you free.

For the time being, I'm closing this thread so it can be discussed amongst the Community Team. I do sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.


Christina
(co-admin)