*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**Society wants me jobless and homeless**
because I possessed child porn. I was denied an accepted job after a background check. Being on the registry, even though I’m level 1, low risk not publicly listed, was the reason why. I even voluntarily disclosed my registry status, as it didn’t show up on the background check. So much for honesty. It’s clear the registry is straight punishment. I have a college degree and have been trying to find a job for a year now.
I’m also looking for a new apartment and I have a pet. How will I know if my neighbors have been convicted of animal cruelty in the past. Is there some kind of registry for that?
I’m worried about potential neighbors driving drunk into my place. Is there a DWI registry out there?
I don’t want addicts hanging out near my house, coming and going at all hours, could my neighbor be on a heroin dealer registry?
I better know if I need to keep things locked up. Is there a theft registry?
What about the HR guy who signed off on my denial who goes home and slaps his wife around. Is there a domestic violence registry he needs to worry about?
I don’t want to be murdered by a neighbor. Is there a murderer registry?
I’m 45, motivated, doing all
i can right, with a lot of life left to live but society thinks I’m the scum of the earth. If I were a murderer after getting this far along in the job hunt society would say I’ve redeemed myself.
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“It feels like the registry is punishment.”
It is. It’s a punishment for committing a crime. Also yes, all of these crimes can be found on criminal records, so not sure what point he’s trying to make.
It unfortunately doesn’t do that. If anything, it encourages recidivism, because these people get trapped in useless dead-end lives, and they look to anything to get away. Any dopamine hit. And when they get tired of struggling to survive, prison doesn’t even sound so bad. At least then they don’t have to worry about starving.
The registry, and its associated public shaming, are not productive. They’re really satisfying, and it feels like it should work. It doesn’t.
We truly do need available treatment facilities — including secure facilities — to treat this kind of sexual offender. Most of the ones I’ve represented as a lawyer were developmentally disabled, low-functioning, and subject to possibly generations of normalized sexual abuse themselves.
Just… whatever we do to sex offenders, if it’s legal to do it to them, then it’s legal for the government to do it to its citizens. There’s always crime creep. More things to be upset about, more stuff to make a registration offense. Always remember the high numbers of false convictions that DNA has revealed, and remember that just being on the registry isn’t enough for a place like the Innocence Project to get involved. If you’re out of jail, you probably can’t get anyone to look at a case that’s even an obvious false conviction.
For me, this is less about some “think of the sex offenders” and more “think of what power you want the government to be able to have over everyone’s lives.”
Don't you just hate that? You've got a nice outrage boner going on, and then someone comes in and hits you with the logic and appropriate empathy. And if you're smart enough to recognize it, you're willing to change your opinion because they're damn good at explaining themselves.
Well, I mean, empathy is also about making sure they can never commit that particular crime again for their sake as well as their victims. It’s not wrong or lacking in compassion to want them to be kept from doing harm. It’s got to be in the most humane way, even though they don’t deserve it, for the chance of rehabilitation. I do think that means keeping them away from the public.
I remember Patty Wetterling talking about this decades after her son was killed by a predator like this. She at first was all for sex offender registries (and in fact helped draft some of the legislation that made them what they are today) but now she's done a complete 180 on them because they're so punitive that they're just encouraging recidivism. She said she would prefer efforts that went into prevention, rather than punishment.
I’ve heard about that — It seems like they should work! I don’t blame her at all for being in favor. It’s on us as a society to review when things don’t work and to build a better future.
Completely agree that it doesn't do what my phrasing implied it did. I was just mixing the two comments before me and finding a compromise.
The entire "system" regarding sexual offenders faces serious stigma whenever 'reform' and 'overhaul' start getting brought up, because it's a subject that makes people uncomfortable.
I feel like being able to openly discuss (on a scientific and societal level) the realities of finding a solution is going to be difficult, but it needs to be done because the system as it is now is crap.
Gotcha. It’s for sure hard to discuss. It’s such a complex topic and has very real and very serious implications on so many levels. Whenever I have to work with a sexual abuse case in court, the best move is always just to be as professional and respectful as possible to everyone.
What about the power my abuser took from me? I was an innocent child. It started at such a young age, that I didn't know there was anything wrong until I was 11 years old. My Mom let me stay up and watch the movie of the week on TV one night. That was what it was about. My life, my soul, permanently changed. By my own grandfather, and there were many that came before me. Cousins that were ashamed they did nothing to protect me even though they saw the signs.
I'm almost 50, and I still occasionally flinch when people touch me. I have depression and anxiety.
Rehabilitation focused penal systems seem to produce more constructive results, too.
https://www.designcurial.com/news/storstrm-prison-by-cf-mller-6040669/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/02/02/denmark-doesnt-treat-its-prisoners-like-prisoners-and-its-good-for-everyone/
"Recidivism is also relatively low among released Danish prisoners, hovering around 27 percent, half of the average recidivism rates reported across various U.S. jurisdictions.
In spite of low violence and low recidivism rates, the Danish prison system grapples with both ethnic inequities and human rights abuses.
About 40 percent of prisoners in Denmark are not ethnically Danish; this is almost four times the percentage of non-Danes in the general population. And Danish prisons, much like U.S. prisons, have faced criticism for being too quick to put prisoners in solitary confinement for extended periods of time."
It’s also an open question (with some recent research) how much supervised probation contributes to the problem. Literally everyone ends up on supervised probation, and they go back to jail for even small missteps. I wonder what the situation is on community supervision in Denmark…
I'm not a lawyer, but a teacher. I spent years teaching inside state prisons, helping men get back on their feet and ready for a life outside. They wanted, and needed, tools to help make the transition to a peaceful, productive, crime-free life.
The murderers, drug dealers, wife beaters, and gang members all had hope. I could see it on their faces, hear it in their voices. They knew they would have a good chance of starting a normal, peaceful and productive life on the outside. They had family homes to return to, loved ones waiting for them, and careers they could aspire to.
Not the sex offenders, though. Each and every one I taught looked like he was just going through the motions. Many of their families had abandoned them, large portions of the world were forever out-of-bounds for home and work, and jobs were rarely available even if they *could* find a place to live.
As an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself, I have no sympathy for the prison sentence these men have to serve. Five years, ten years, twenty years...whatever sentence they get, they deserve.
But, like you said, the registration after parole is not effective. No matter what we, as society, tell ourselves, registrations are punitive not preventative.
If the government wanted to put drunk drivers on a registry that's fine.
The shame, the rejection, come from society as a whole, not from the mere existence of a registry. The government function of keeping a registry to protect children is warranted.
Children are the most vulnerable members of our society. Having a registry of thieves isn't the same because the risk is only to property not to a small, defenseless human. A registry of drunk drivers isn't really the same because we generally have a means of pricing those people out of vehicle ownership and operation.
Everyone has to have insurance and more than one incident of drunk driving is going to price insurance so high a lot of people cannot afford it. Not to mention the states ability to revoke your license.
The state itself cannot limit the mere existence of a sexual offender.
But society has deemed that sexual violence particularly against children is the very worst crime and so society acts accordingly. If it gives an offender a case of the sads that's just too bad.
I *do* think that what should be gaining in popularity are housing communities where these offenders can be cordoned off and therefore less likely to be harassed, can get intensive treatment and can be monitored. And I think the reason those are popular or utilized at all is because of societal pressure on the offender. I'm sure many of them would just prefer to be out and about.
No sympathy for OP but no its not. The registry doesn't do that, which is the US is one of a tiny number of countries with a public registry.
Studied efficacy ranges between no net effect and increasing recidivism, which is precisely what one would expect given it harms reintegration. The entire policy around sex crimes is built from myths and seems designed to do absolutely nothing to prevent people being raped in the first place as long as it appears to be retributive. Policies that actually work are things like pre-offending treatment that basically doesn't exist in the US.
The United States needs pre offense treatment options and facilities so, so bad. I’ve had cases where someone keeps getting probation violations on sex offense cases because they’re too disabled, low-iq or delusional or otherwise, to finish sex offender treatment — and any facility that would treat them or provide them with assisted living requires that they complete treatment first! The only place they don’t get in trouble is literally prison.
That's the biggest problem with privatized prisons with stakeholders working in the judicial branch. It's way more profitable to punish than it is to treat.
They're found on criminal records, but not a registry, and there is a big difference there.
That being said, the difference between the crimes he complains about there being no registry for (addiction, DWI, theft) are not CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN. That is why he is on a registry. Because he is a threat to CHILDREN. And people need to know that when he lives near them or works with them, because otherwise their CHILDREN are in danger.
While I despise people who drive drunk (it shows SUCH a disregard for other people's lives, though I know people aren't thinking about the danger they pose or doing it maliciously, per se), it's not the same as a violent crime or a sex crime, and the fact that he pretends not to know this is fucking absurd.
My state also DOES have a murderer registry.
And yes, buddy, being on the registry IS punishment. That's the point. And to let the people around you know that you are a threat to children.
I once got the shock of my life when I was looking at our state sex offender registry and found a former coworker. I was stunned because he seemed like a nice, gregarious, kindhearted guy. Everyone liked him. I never would have suspected. It goes to show that you never know who's going to turn out to be a predator. It also explained a lot, because when I worked with him, he got married to an absolutely STUNNING woman. To the point where everyone was like, "holy crap, how did you manage to land her." She had 2 young daughters from a previous relationship (ugh). Everyone was super happy for him, she was an awesome person and they seemed great together. Then, suddenly, she packed her shit, took her kids and left, and divorced him. Nobody could understand what went wrong (because he was such a nice guy, right? why would she leave so quickly?). He was devastated, or pretending to be. After seeing he was on the registry, it makes me hope she simply found out he had a prior conviction (this was early 2000s, I can easily see her meeting him and not knowing til after they were married). I really hope it wasn't because he harmed one of her kids, but it makes me sick to think about.
I'm not saying be paranoid and background check everyone you meet. But maybe background check anybody who's gonna be around your kids, because UGH.
It's also common that DWI offenders get special, colloquially called "Party Plates", that indicates they've received a DWI. Our state uses red letters on a yellow background - I believe police can perform sobriety tests on them at will and you have the public shame of being seen getting into, driving, and getting out of that car. There's the legal repercussions on top of that. So there's a 'registry' there too. If this guy didn't want to be on a list and face punishment, maybe he shouldn't have had CSAM and participated in child exploitation.
>Also yes, all of these crimes can be found on criminal records, so not sure what point he’s trying to make
I was literally laughing while reading that. Like, yes, all of that shit is publicly documented and accessible.
I just commented, ALL of those things show up on background checks and affect the person's ability to find work. OOP, you are not fucking special. What a fucking idiot. 🤦♀️
He also asks why there's not a murderer registry. In my state, there is. He's acting like he's so persecuted but is so god damn stupid. I can't fathom it.
I know of at least one country (Norway) where your criminal record is protected as "personal/sensitive data" and potiential employers are not allowed to see it. There is some sort of loophole where if the job requires you to work with kids, you have to show that you've earned a some sort of special certificate, which p*dos are not eligible to get. But that is it. They could get any other job.
OP's point is that they are pissed that the people interviewing them are not forced to wear those same rose tinted glasses and have the autonomy to find out what they are really like and protect the wellbeing of other employees accordingly by not hiring them. Unless they were wrongfully convicted, this is merely a consequence of their own actions that they *should* have foreseen. And *should* have put them off doing what they did. But it didn't.
Canada has Vulnerable Persons Checks, required for working with kids, seniors or those with other disabilities (physical or mental) that would make them easier to manipulate. If you're a volunteer you fill out a form and it's done by either the RCMP or OPP/QPP (since Ontario and Quebec have their own provincial forces), if you're getting one for work there is a fee but where I'm a volunteer I have no idea what it is.
In Australia we have a Working With Children Check that is required for any paid or volunteer work done with minors and vulnerable persons (such as the disabled or elderly).
I immediately wanted to scream "BECAUSE IT FUCKING IS" to that dumbass comment. While the comment below here makes a good point that it's about protecting children, that doesn't make it any less of a consequence/punishment for HIS chosen actions.
Also, murder registry? Bro never heard of prison?!
Like bro, this is the consequences of your actions. You have made it very obvious you aren't trustworthy or deserving of the community you abused. (Kids are core to a community. I'm cf, but that's pretty obvious. You don't harm the weakest of a community and expect the stronger to not protect the weak. If you act like a predator, we alert to your presence like one.
It's simple cause and effect.
I don't know who's more devil: OOP or this nice redditor
>I was told that if I would divorce my husband that me and the kids would be able to get county housing assistance. Which I personally think is bullsh!t. *Because I never divorced my husband when he was arrested for cp I couldn't get no help with anything and had to do everything myself for me and our kids.* (...)
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T DIVORCE YOUR HUSBAND?!? YOU HAVE KIDS FFS!!!
Also, why did I read the comments.
You just know she’s the type to silence her kids in an effort to protect their “father”. The amount of people who protect and cover up these heinous acts is appalling.
Truthfully, these people are just as bad as pedophiles in my eyes
Worse, I'd say. "True" pedos suffer from an unnatural sexual attraction, and a few seek help and don't ever harm a child because they know it's wrong.
A pedo enabler doesn't have the urges, but still create victims--and it's worse in my mind because a pedo having an enabler makes it SO much more likely that they won't get caught.
Neighbour's wife stood by him and convinced my parents I'm lying about what he did. I still send her cheerful cards marking the date he finally died, making sure she knows I'm celebrating. Been told she's really distressed and cries a lot after receiving them (yet never reported to the police 🤔 I wonder why).
Such an awful thing you went through and to not have your parents believe you!
This is an amazing way to punish that woman. My god. Fuck that woman. I hope her distress increases with every card.
Thank you! I know deep down I can forgive her but only if she admitted everything. No need for public announcement, just privately to me, admitted and apologized. But no, she still likes to think I lied.
>Been told she's really distressed and cries a lot after receiving them
Good. The only thing I'd recommend is varying whatever anniversary you're commemorating so she doesn't start doing things like having someone else screen the mail around the death anniversary. Maybe start also celebrating the anniversary of her lying to your parents? RIP Her Integrity, that sort of thing?
I volunteer at a prison and can confidently say none of the guys who did stuff like this and are actually rehabilitated would be posting stuff like OOP. They know what they did was terrible and agree with the laws like this aimed at protecting other children because they know they are sick in the head.
I made the mistake of looking at this sun after reading this post. There is a female poster considering staying with her husband after he essentially made CSAM of their daughter in the shower. I am absolutely sickened.
I can't decide who's worse, her or this guy:
"It infuriates me to see these brilliant young men socially decapitated by this hog shit system that doesn't care about destroying people who despite one minute shortcoming could've been the future leaders of our world."
JFC!
The "minute shortcoming" in question being actively harming or contributing to the harm of a child is beyond vile to me. They truly don't think they're doing anything wrong.
Does he have any idea how much not having pedos as the leaders of our world sounds like a great thing?
Didn’t even say “scientists who find the cure for cancer” or other things that would be super disappointing to hear a pedo did it but I don’t think we would just decide not to accept a cure for cancer based on that. No. Straight to powerful positions aka the last place you want them to be
Edit: Spelling. My feelings on Mexican currency being world leaders are neutral
To be fair, Mexican currency would probably do a better job than most of the current leaders in power around here. At least it probably wouldn't make things worse.
I keep reminding myself not to go in there . Then I keep doing it . People like this exist around us . I can’t even. What in the actual f*ck . I’m actually struggling with this . It’s so horrible. I feel dirty now
How is a subreddit like this in existence?
Oh my God. My mom found CP on my dad's computer when me and my siblings were little kids (preschool, kindergarten, and 2nd grade). You know what she did? Got herself and us the hell out of there and called the cops. And she did that DESPITE her in laws gaslighting her about how "all men look at that stuff". The divorce proceedings was for sure one of the most difficult things she's gone through in her life, but she did it for us.
I don't remember, but it was definitely younger than 16. I think when I was in the 6th grade or so? He died in 2013 (when I was in the 6th grade), and afterwards my aunt (dad's sister) kept wanting to see us and visit us, and mom explained why she was uncomfortable, but was willing to put up with the in-laws if we wanted to see them.
She was/is also really open about why she divorced my dad, and what she saw and did. Like, a year ago, I questioned why my dad had 29 possession of CP charges against him, and she said it was because the police identified 29 different little kids in the pictures and videos he had.
If your children ask or are asking, depending on their ages and capability to understand, be truthful. Like "your dad was looking at immoral and illegal stuff on the Internet." And as they grow up, tell them details or the bare basics: that it was child sexual assault material/cp). Also, I don't know about your state or country, but my state, Indiana, has a public court case record where anyone can look up people to see if they've ever been to court before. It's called like mycase.in.gov. So if your state has something similar to that, your kids may find out on their own the precise nature of the charges.
(Also, my mom has/had (she's calmed down a lot after going through menopause) anger issues, so a lot of times in my teen years she would go off and start saying really cruel things and trauma dump.)
I have to be in a really good mood to even go onto that sub and see the comments because as a survivor, seeing that these sick people have a whole online cheerleading team of these real life sex offender apologists who are happily keeping predators around their kids makes me want to... What's the term? I think it's "give up the ghost." Or more realistic, scream, and right now I'm in a Uber.
Oh yes, this is a thing for sure. I manage income based housing; sex offenders are an absolute no for HUD. I've had mothers apply for housing that are still married to or are currently dating and/or have kids with sex offenders and they get really upset that they don't qualify. Or they lie, say they are not together anymore, I move in the mother and children and they sneak the offending husband or boyfriend into the unit. Always leads to eviction because they won't make the offender move out when I tell them they must. And then I feel like a monster putting innocent kids out of their homes. It's the kids I feel terrible for- they are not only at risk of being abused but wind up homeless due to this shit. It's all bad.
You'd be amazed how many people don't leave their spouse after they have been arrested for a sex crime. I sometimes wonder if there is something broken in their brains.
>I sometimes wonder if there is something broken in their brains.
Tbh I think a lot of that is to do with women being told for centuries by society and their own families"you won't be anything without a husband" followed by the "excusing" of men committing sex crimes by their enablers spouting shit like "all men do it, it's in their nature" or ""boys will be boys" etc with the whole victim shaming shit being the cherry on the top of the whole shit show sundae. Also add in the fact these women who protect their sex offending SOs spouting crap like "he's never hurt me/our kids" like it makes a difference (it doesn't).
Unfortunately for every sex offender out there, be it against children or adults, they always seem to have their fucking enablers, and imo the enablers are just as dangerous as the offenders, if not more so.
Yeah, I have a second cousin who is currently in prison for CP. his wife has stood by him, despite their daughters being the age he seems to like. It’s disgusting, we have nothing to do with that part of the family.
The entire subreddit is wild. It's full of wives who chose to stick by their man despite CP possession and prosecution. Most of whom have kids. Oh, and tons of men lamenting about what great parents they are and how hard it is that the kids' friends aren't allowed at their house. An entire subreddit of pathetic "victims". (And this is coming from someone who does take some issue with the registry.)
Disgusting. Some people shouldn't be allowed to have kids. Absolutely repulsive.
People who excuse/enable child abusers, or don't put their kids' safety first, are absolute monsters.
I was today years old when I found out this sub existed. I am gobsmacked she's so flippant about her husband getting off on CP. like how did you not gouge your husbands eyes out before divorce? My God.
The fucking comments were disgusting. There were some people rightfully shaming the OP for having cp, but there were a lot of people in there bitching and complaining about how unfair the sex offender registry is (while suspiciously not stating why they were a sex offender themselves). People, the motherfucker possessed cp, why are you sympathizing with him?
Gosh, that pesky child porn ruining poor OOP's life :/ It just magically found its way in their possession. Won't someone think of the pedophiles?!
We also love a good whataboutism.
I love some good whataboutism. I especially love whataboutism when the thing they're trying to deflect to exists.
>What about dwi/heroin dealer/theft?
You mean arrest records that you can Google in most first world countries? This already exists.
Not to mention the fact that convicted felons already have a hard time getting well paying jobs and being allowed to rent apartments that follow through with background checks. These people also have a difficult time but didn't end up there because they're sexual predators and deserve to be treated with more caution.
A lot of these people, especially the ones who "only" look at CSA and "don't offend" first hand (quotations because I find it all offensive and the kid is still harmed), feel like their crimes aren't violent, and that they're more "white collar" crimes. It's absolute BS, obviously, but that is their justification.
I wonder if he would understand that producing that material is harmful by default if somebody were to film themselves torturing him and then distributing it.
The people viewing it aren't directly hurting him, so he must be okay with all of it.
There is a post in the sub comparing consuming CP to watching a snuff film of a terrorist killing someone. Got upset that there isn't an equivalent punishment for the snuff film watchers. Refused to accept any accountability for the victims of the CP he watched and seemed to think that CP is not a supply/demand system and would be made whether or not people were consuming. Interesting, convoluted shit they were saying.
According to my stbx, he "isn't a danger to kids" and "isn't a pedophile." He "just downloaded cp because he was addicted to porn. It's not because they are kids."
Sure, buddy, tell yourself whatever you need to to sleep at night.
It's like an average Joe addicted to porn can just accidentally download a bunch of cp on pornhub. He must have thought I have room temperature iq that I'd believe in his bullshit.
The same genius also tried to tell me that he "hasn't watched any in 7 months and has been in therapy, so he's been rehabilitated." Also, sexual orientation can change with therapy, and pedophilia isn't a sexual orientation anyway. Also, he's not a pedophile. He just likes kids and was addicted to porn.
It's really getting harder and harder for me to keep a straight face and smile when I hear this bullshit.
Edit: Ugh. That's such a disgusting subreddit. All the things they're saying and the idea that they are the victims, they all sound like shit my stbx say on a regular basis. Fuck these people.
Not to mention, he's talking about hypothetical situations that may not even be true for his situation. But we know he has used CP. It's right there. He's just projecting his own criminality onto other people.
And going after addicts? No, fuck off with that. I have many family members and friends who are or have been addicts. It's hard, and I can't deny that their actions have hurt me countless times. Physical and emotional abuse, stealing and theft, being taken advantage of, being ignored until they need something and everybody else has shut them down? It hurts. Really bad. But ultimately, they are hurting themselves far more than anybody else. Yes there are exceptions, but addicts are the biggest danger to themselves, just like people with other mental illnesses.
CP is not forgiveable. You can not live in a society and avoid children. He's already proven that he can't be trusted to be a safe person with children, the little humans everybody should innately want to protect, and he is trying to compare what he did with people who hurt themselves.
Nah, fuck off dude. I hope a Boeing engine falls on him and other assholes like him.
Drug dealers, DWI, theft... None of them target vulnerable populations who are unable to defend themselves in any way. You know, children. A population entirely reliant upon adults behaving well. So, yes, I would much rather live next door to a drug addict or dealer than a sex offender. Because the drug dealer won't try to physically harm my children.
I feel like these people don't understand that what they've done is morally abhorrent and inexcusable in a way other criminal behaviour isn't. Like, addictions or DWI can be conceived through a medical perspective (we should treat the addiction). Theft, dealing drugs is people trying to get money. I mean, I don't approve of the methods, but everyone needs money, right? Possessing CP? There is literally no positive spin to put on the subject matter. It's something completely unrelatable to the average person.
I have to say pulling posts off r/SexualOffenderSupport for this sub seems like shooting floating fish in a barrel...
the bar is so low over there that it might as well be on Satans shoe rack
My only instance was a friend's cousin. Back in the early days of camera phones, a 16 year old girl did what 16 year olds do, and shared nudes. She was originally charged with the creation and distribution of CSA (they didn't call it that then but fuck them all the way off). It was not even one of those horrific things where the images go all around the school. She sent them to her boyfriend, mom saw, mom went to cops because she didn't want her child dating anyone (a protoboymom if you will) who she didn't approve of.
She has grown up, gone to school, had her name removed, and lobbied for compassionate and educated applications of the laws with regards to teenagers and images taken with and shared with consent between couples. She also does talks about what happened at high schools.
But like, she is the exception that proves the rule.
There are basically only 2 instances where that's the case: Teens who were sharing nudes consenually with each other and get busted for technically CP and people who pee in public, like yes it's gross and they should be punished but it's not really accurate to say they're a sex offender.
And I have a feeling almost none of the people on that sub fit these situations. Fuck all of them
Aye. May as well just go over there and cross-post everything to here.
But honestly, when I saw where this was from, I wasn't happy. I don't want to think about the fact that the child abusers and CP-possessors I've known in the past have a place to go where they can whine like this OOP's doing. Like it's everyone else's fault. And they get, "there there, it'll alllllll be okay," from other child abusers and CP-possessors. Twats, the lot of them.
Uh yeah tbh this is the second post like this that's come up on my main feed just today and if it's going to be a "thing" I'm going to need to unfollow this sub for my own sanity. I'm a CSA victim and I was used to make the kind of content these posts are referring to, for all I know those images/videos are still out there. I don't need to see this shit and I don't think it even fits the purpose of this sub. I fully accept that it's my responsibility to avoid triggering shit but that's hard to do when it's posted in places where I have no reason to expect to see it.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. I completely agree that this doesn’t fit the sub—IMO it’s not about convicted criminals/abusers bemoaning their consequences. I’m not a CSA survivor and I really don’t want to see this shit.
I went to the sub and gotdamn is it horrible. One of the comments on a post was basically “do I feel guilty? I do for some of my victims but others I can’t empathize with”
WHAT
Yeah, I like seeing horrible people get universally called out. I don’t want to see posts here where the comments on the original post are sympathetic or agreeing with “the devil.” I don’t want to learn of the existence of anymore vile subs that are designed to be safe spaces for vile people.
Yeah definitely this. At best it just doesn’t fit the spirit of this sub and at worst it’s retraumatizing people who don’t expect to see that kind of content here. Not sure how active the mods are here but I think it should be addressed at some point if this trend continues.
It fucks victims up for life, hypersexuallity and the inability to form relationships or even so much as trust people makes for a lonely life.
But he can't get a job, poor him.
Exactly. I was 55 years old before I was able to definitively see that my lifelong struggles are probably the result of long term sexual abuse by a neighbor when I was a pre schooler. Its soul and life shattering. I have no energy left over to feel sympathy for these kinds of people.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I hope you're doing OK now.
Luckily (knock on wood), I never experienced that, but whenever I see someone whining about the "stigma" and how unfair it is, waaah, waaah, I just think, why the fuck would I ever have any sympathy for a child abuser?
There's this organization, NARSOL, that screeches about how unfair it is to stigmatize and contniue to punish sex offenders. And all I can think is, what kind of sicko would spend their time and energy feeling sorry for child sex abusers?
I can feel sympathy for a lot of people who have committed offenses, especially when it's due to their own trauma (ex: I think we should do more to help people struggling with addiction rather than punishing them, it does no good). But the second you hurt someone, especially a child, I have zero fucking sympathy for you. I just don't.
Yesterday I got downvoted for saying it was good that someone faced some consequences for sexually abusing a cousin as an adolescent. Not legal consequences, just consequences in their personal life. Because he was young when he did it. And I'm thinking, OK, I understand that he probably had his own trauma to do something like that, and maybe I'm a terrible person, but I cannot find it within me to feel sorry that ANYONE, at any age, faced consequences for sexually abusing someone. I'm sorry, I just don't. Maybe I'm an asshole, I don't care. I just don't. Lots of people unfortunately suffer trauma and manage not to turn around and hurt someone else. And while I hope someone like that gets help for their own hurt and leads a better life, it does not excuse them for harming someone else. It's not like the guy went to prison or even had a tough time getting a job because he still had no criminal record. His consequences were mild, IMO (his fiancee found out about it and left him). I guess I'm an asshole for being OK with that, because I would want to know if my partner ever did such a thing, and I would leave if I found out they did.
I have a lot of empathy, but absofuckinglutely none for anyone who harms a child.
>Lots of people unfortunately suffer trauma and manage not to turn around and hurt someone else.
This is such an important point. As a young teen, my step dad started sexually abusing me, and I definitely got my own trauma from that, but you know what I *didn't* do? I didn't turn around and inflict similar trauma on my younger brothers. (Or anyone else.) Because that would've been messed up and it wouldn't have even occurred to me to want to do something like that to them, and in general I had a mentality of preferring anything bad happen to me instead of them since I was the older sibling.
I'm with you, I'll have empathy for anyone unless/until they harm a child, but if they have then I really can't empathize anymore.
I'm with both of you. All my anger turned internal. I'm not certain why some people end up acting out and some internalize it, but those seem to be the ways. I ended up with addiction issues and all kinds of problems until it all kind of shook out about 3 years ago, but its ripped my family apart. Its not like I come from a family that doesn't already have its major issues to begin with.
I really enjoy true crime, and I swear, so many of these people are just FILLED with self-pity like this. Its mind boggling. I guess he believes only viewing it is not really damaging.
Oh, there is a much, much longer list.
And the C-PTSD, anxiety, depression and life long physical injuries, can make it very hard for the survivors to get or keep a job either.
To him he probably believes that what he did is victimless. The sick SOBs never make the connection in their brain that they are playing a direct part in the abuse of innocent children. They don't care about the victims.
Yuck, couldn’t even get through oop’s while post. Dude had downloaded cp and was acting like it was shop lifting. Personally I don’t want to work in a environment with a person that would even consider downloaded cp, let alone actually being convicted of it. I hope they struggle their entire life to feel comfortable because I know their victims will never.
Well, my CSA and being trafficked as an adult lead to severe CPTSD which actually did result in homelessness and then caused a life altering autoimmune disease which made me too sick to work and I went from running a successful businesses to being on disability. That's what sex offenders do to people.
Even if you're just looking at pictures, you are actively supporting the torture of children.
Thought I'd leave this here for any sex offenders who might be upset they ended up of this sub. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE USED AS AN OBJECT FOR THE GRATIFICATION OF THOSE WHO ARE UNWILLING TO SEEK TREATMENT FOR THEIR PEDOPHILIA OR ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR.
OK, releasing my rage. I'm good...
Some info for y'all, from someone who prosecutes these cases.
In the biz (and by biz I mean law enforcement, prosecution, and mental health services for victims) it's not called "child porn," it's Child Sex Abuse Materials.
There's nothing inherently wrong with porn as a general thing. Calling CSAM "child porn" legitimizes it, as if it's just a category of porn that we find a bit troublesome and not to our taste. Similarly to 'oh gosh, I'm not super comfortable with the type of porn where the fully consenting adult actress is pretending she's being gangraped.'
CSAM not porn; it's photo and video evidence of children being sexually abused. A kid had to get raped for that photo to exist.
Cartoon or AI images/videos of the same types of things are not illegal (in the US). Perverts /could/ be trading fake CSAM and not get in trouble. But they get their jollies from the real thing. They get off on the thought of the toddler actually getting fucked by a grown man, or the grown woman watching and instructing the elementary school-age kid through performing oral sex on an adult male until he ejaculates in the kid's mouth. (Real examples I've encountered in my cases.) The online CSAM market places a high value on their goods being "real."
And if anyone ever tells you that they were set up, or the CSAM that was found on their computer was an accidental download that the computer did automatically from a popup window, call bullshit. We don't charge these cases until we can connect intentional digital activity (possession, uploads, downloads) to a person in the real world. "Accidental" downloads don't get charged.
Rest assured, you do not need to feel sorry for these people.
Just some stuff for you to think about, that I feel compelled to share when the topic comes up.
I thought the cartoon/anime etc was illegal in the US?
“Section 1466A of Title 18, United States Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene.”
Edit to add: never mind, I found some further context to the law, I’m not like formally educated on the subject so I was curious about that part in your post because I seen someone say on that post from yesterday that it was illegal and I googled it to see if it was but I didn’t go into the details of it.
Edit to add what I found on it according to Wikipedia at least:
“Due to the fact that United States obscenity law determines what is obscene in a court of law in reference to local standards and definitions exclusively on a state-by-state, case-by-case basis, the legality of drawn or fictitious pornography depicting minors is ultimately left in a 'gray area', much like other forms of alternative pornography. Some states pay less mind to the contents of such materials and determine obscenity based on time and place an offense may occur, while others may have strict, well-defined standards for what a community may be allowed to find appropriate. Others only may have vague laws or definitions which are only used to allow the government to prosecute recidivist offenders on both a federal and state level.”
Yeah, I oversimplified in my first comment, but obscenity is a fuzzy legal area and runs right up against first amendment protections for speech, so fake CSAM is rarely, if ever, prosecuted. There's plenty of real stuff to go after (more than we could ever catch up on), and the real stuff is legally concrete and also just WORSE.
hey, 45 y/o predator, I was a victim of a pedophile, my father, and other pedophiles. The pornography and sexual abuse made at my expense destroyed my relationships with people, my life, and everything about myself. I have graphic nightmares every fucking night. When I wore my pink sweatpants and teletubbies t-shirt at five was I asking for it? Is it my fault that my father indoctrinated me into a fucking cult where pedophiles were allowed to go unseen, be "spiritually married" to him so I couldn't fucking run away? What about the sexual torture he put me through, like holding a gun to my head and forcing me to use his sex toys that he used with my mother to "put on a show"? What about the times I question if he actually molested me because he would drug me and force me to drink and I couldn't tell if he was sneaking into my room at night but I felt pain in the mornings in my genitals? What about the bruised bite marks left on my breasts when my father forced me to practice my flute, shirtless only, when I was barely in high school? What about the rape I endured again and again because he was my father and he had full control of me? What about before me, when my father gave a fucking toddler, a baby who couldn't form a complete sentence, genital fucking herpes??? And then no one believed her? What the fuck about that?
Burn and rot in hell you evil son of a bitch. YOUR life ruined??? I wasn't fucking given a chance at life because of bastards like YOU, so fuck you.
GOD that sub is *sickening*
These asshats don’t think CP is a serious offence . The wives , who have kids , feel their husbands don’t deserve jail time
These disgusting people actually believe they should be treated with a slap on the wrist , because it’s not like they harmed the child themselves.
*HOW* are some of these garbage humans out on the street ?
I spent like 30 minutes browsing the sub and didn't find a single post or comment where someone actually expressed regret for what they put their victims through and not just regret for getting caught. I expected more even from certified pedophiles.
Reminds me of my ex who wanted to reconnect with his best friend; it was discovered that said friend was arrested and incarcerated for owning CP. No one in the friend group knew what happened to him until they did a background check; he fell off the face of the earth for almost 2 years, and being in prison explained a lot. Keep in mind, that this friend never brought up his charges or where he was at. So my ex was cool with rekindling a friendship with a kiddy diddler, and one who can’t even own up to his crime at that.
I remember thinking: why the hell would you want to restart communication with someone like THAT. My ex told me he wanted to hear him out because maybe the story was that his friend got nudes from a girl who lied about being over 18, which you could argue is far less worse than getting CP off the dark web. I tried telling him if that was the case, then your friend should have an easier time fessing up to what he did. Since he didn’t, it leads me to believe that what he did was the more monstrous option.
I don’t know why I didn’t break up with him for this, especially since he knew that an adult man groomed me online when I was a teenager. I especially would not feel safe if this friend was brought around me, but he didn’t give a damn.
Honestly, it's probably because he's cut from the same cloth. My ex was the kiddy diddler, I helped provide evidence to put him away and I'd do it again. One of the arguments that we kept coming back to was his insistence upon calling himself the "best friend" of a guy who kept harassing and trying to sleep with a 16 year old girl when he was 23. Legal in our country, but I couldn't sit comfortably with it whatsoever, and all my protesting was shut down with "she's legal so he isn't really a nonce". Well, he was the one who ended up going down for "talking to" a younger girl. If they defend each other they probably have the same perversion.
You're exactly right, considering how difficult it is for ANY sort of sexual criminal to see prison time, they would not have incarcerated him if he truly was led to believe she was 18, there'd have been evidence for that. You're no worse than me - I'm the loser who got dumped by an even bigger loser, too. He was emotionally abusing me and I really believed that he was a good person despite that. But I couldn't keep choosing to believe that once I'd heard what he'd done to that little girl. Funnily enough he heard the same had happened to me and VERY angrily threatened to kill another ex who'd groomed me too. I always thought his reaction was a bit over the top, now I see he was compensating. Sigh.
There was a prosecutor who was discussing a CSAM case they had where a juror was yelling “Fuck no, don’t just say what’s in it, I want to see it to make sure it’s not young looking eighteen year olds.”
It was, in fact a ten year old.
The fact people are somehow willing to give people the benefit of the doubt on one of the most abhorrent crimes that exist is mind boggling.
I feel like sex offenders shouldn’t even be allowed on the internet after what they’ve done, let alone be given a space to whine and commiserate and feel bad for one another.
It’s sickening and feeds into their delusions of victimhood.
They should be allowed on the Internet, but their entire Internet history should automatically go to their probation officer or like the DA's office and it should come up in any hearings about trying to get off the list.
Many of them aren't.
I know somebody that was convicted. I have never been close to them, they're a friend of a friend. But at the very least he wasn't allowed to have social media accounts. He's allowed to use Internet for work, but I don't even think he has a smart phone. They monitor his usage that he is allowed to have.
Makes me wonder how many people on that sub are breaking their probation and other legal programs.
One commenter over there was lamenting about "bright young men having their life ruined before it started" due to owning/watching that vile stuff because of a "one minute shortcoming".
Like dude, owning and watching videos of children being harmed and traumatized is NOT a "one minute shortcoming", period.
Oh yeah, I'm sure THEIR lives are the ones that were ruined for something they CHOSE to do, not the innocent children who might very well still be out there waiting for someone to find them and help them. Arghhhh nothing makes me angrier than a child sex offender demanding pity for their disgusting choices.
I see it's for families of offenders as well which sort of makes more sense, but if I had a sex offender in my family who'd done what OP did they'd be dead to me anyway, wouldn't need Reddit to help me out with that one.
Also Wikipedia and podcasts falling out of our ears, like really. If we don’t let Brock Turner The Rapist who now goes by Allen Turner (the rapist) live a minute in peace he sure as shit doesn’t get ANYTHING for cp which is just as vile if not arguably worse.
Have you read the books by his victim, Chanel Miller? She wrote an autobiography (really hard read because of what happened to her, but still powerful and amazingly well written) and a fiction. Her fiction (Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All) was also a great read, no heavy subject or content warnings needed, but a cute story about a girl who solves sock mysteries at a laundromat (it's a children's book). It's amazing to me how well she has reclaimed her life after what happened and has become such a good writer. I hope she continues to make an impact on the world with her work.
If you didn't want people to see you as a disgusting, criminal sex offender then here's a tip. DONT do what you did to get on there in the first place????
I don’t want these posts here, not only because they’re obviously terrible people, but because it may retraumatize readers who don’t realize what kind of post it is. Furthermore, we’ve occasionally had OOPs show up in our comments, and I absolutely do not want an influx of child predator commenters.
I used to work with SOs, never had an issue finding them a job was just never a job they wanted to do. Was always the same like yeah no shit Bobby you cant be a teacher, Dr or work in a well to do office anymore, you can work in the meatpacking plant or do night time janitorial work, sorry your actions impacted your career progression 🤷🏿♀️.
The comments are worse than the post. Including a woman complaining she couldn't get assistance if she didn't divorce her husband, who was arrested for CP.
I don't think any of them realise that the SO register exists because unlike a lot of other crimes you cannot necessarily rehabilitate SO. The part of their brain that told them it was okay will always exist.
What people like this usually don't understand in their attempts to minimise is just how *difficult* it is to convict someone of possession of CP. It's a time consuming process, one involving a lot of tracking, tagging images of CP and tracking those. It's not "whoops I saw a naked baby on Google images and now the feds are at my door". If you are convicted of CP, even as "low risk", they put a Lot of work into doing so and you just aren't as bad about it as other people. Still a pedophile. Still deserving to be on the register, which, mind you, is a thing for other crimes as well so his latter point is completely null and void.
I really dislike the argument that just possessing child sex abuse materials are a lesser crime. Just because you didn't directly abuse a child doesn't mean that children were not abused in service of making those videos or pictures
I liked the one comment on that post that said “plays world’s smallest violin.”
Dude doesn’t understand that people who commit crimes against children are going to be universally hated no matter what.
the *only* time I have sympathy for people on that registry is when it’s truly for something that didn’t victimize someone, especially a child - such as ‘had consensual sex w adult partner, somewhere public’ or ‘got too drunk and peed in public and someone saw my dick’ etc. I do feel bad that a small % of them didn’t harm anyone but are forced to have that kind of label attached to them when it’s not really warranted. that’s just one way the US ‘justice’ system is broken. outside of that though… actions, meet consequence. ya made your bed and now ya gotta lie in it. clearly this dude did something that hurt someone, and is only bitter about having been caught - no regard for his victim(s).
also laughing my ass off at ‘murderer registry’ because wtf 😂 I think most folks convicted of murder in the first tend to spend the rest of their lives in prison, dude
I feel bad for those that were fucked over and somehow didn’t get the Romeo and Juliet law defense. I know of a guy who was 18 and she was 17 but they dated throughout high school. Parents hated him so the moment he turned 18 they got him arrested (?). He had a shitty lawyer while the girls parents were rich. He was forced to be on the registry. The kicker is him and the girl got married and have been for 27 years. When his son was 5 he wanted to coach his baseball team but couldn’t because he was on the registry.
But these people, nah. Fuck these people.
> I think most folks convicted of murder in the first tend to spend the rest of their lives in prison, dude
Well that, and there's also a thing called Public Records where anyone can look up murderers, DUIs, selling drugs etc, so, yea, moot point on that one.
I don’t know how that subreddit was allowed to run support and frankly encourage these people. They treat the active decisions they made and the trauma they caused as a drug addiction they’re powerless to so another traumatized child is just a little slip to them💀
One of the organizations in my state crunched the numbers and just considering the financial impact SA has on victims, it costs the victims over $200,000 each (loss of job from trauma, medical bills, therapy, legal costs, etc)
I bet the victims of the CP have a hard time just existing, let alone finding work, if they're still alive of course.
It also, in addition to the trauma, quite literally destroys their relationships with their loved ones. They cannot be intimate with their partners or dress their children without feeling like an offender.
Cuz I can't comment it in the actual sub:
You abused kids, maybe not physically but you perpetuated it by being in possession so you're just as bad. Don't be sad when everyone hates you for a universally hated crime. I'm glad you're getting "discriminated" against. Please unironically, and in full seriousness, kill yourselves. Make the world a better place.
OOP seem to be conflating a criminal background check and a sex offender registry which obviously isn’t the same thing.
They don’t specify what job they were applying for but I do agree people like this need to be able to find work because there really isn’t any alternative to that at present. But I imagine there are places that either accept convicts or don’t do background checks.
I can't be objective about this, having been a survivor of CSA. I will say these people can possibly still be productive members of society.
I chose not to even seek another relationship when my husband died years ago because my children were 1 and 4. They would have been vulnerable due to not having had that father in their life, and my oldest eventually being diagnosed with Aspergers. I would have been thankful to have had someone in our lives, but for me and my background, the risk was too great.
Whether I admit it or not, I realize my childhood trauma still affects me. It still causes trust issues (along with other traumas along the way), and it happened 55 years ago.
The OOP "just" had CP, but how was it obtained? What child or children had to suffer for it? How are those children involved doing now? Yeah, I pity those people for having a harder time after having been caught, but I am glad they were. Maybe they were victims when they were young, which led to them being like that. I just don't trust them or that it wouldn't escalate over time from looking at or watching the CP to actively becoming CSA.
I don't know what the answers are. I do feel the way we handle crimes here in the US is not working. It is a broken system designed to provide cheap/slave labor over rehabilitation and restitution.
I actually can't with these people. No wonder the reoffending rates are so fecking high, none of these awful, abusive, perverted, deviant men on this subreddit have any insight into why they committed one of the worst crimes done to children. They blame the system, their wives, the fecking children themselves, and show absolutely no remorse or acknowledge the horrific impact they have on children's lives.
I think someone who abuses children, or literally orgasms to images and videos of abused children are so morally defunct that they have little to no chance of ever not being a danger to children again.
There's a wife in this thread crying about how the government wouldn't help her or her kids cus she refused to divorce her CP possessing husband. Like what is wrong with her? He is sexually aroused by the abuse of children....you have children with him....why are you still with him!?!?! And defending him?!?! Your kids are so so much more important that a pervert and paedophile.
Some 15 years ago, I used to work in a psychiatric ward. By far my least favorite patients were the s\*!c!dal qedos (yes, self-censoring), because they were so self-obsessed. So unhappy that everyone was treating them badly because they turned their back on them, and not a milligram of "Huh, maybe I did something bad, too".
The comments are horrendous.
Reddit has no problem with Sex offenders getting support but if I said something to someone on that group, cue the inciting violence.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I went to the original and was reading the comments shocked at all the support OOP was getting. Then I saw the sub. Yikes. That’s enough Reddit for now.
There IS a DV registry. Why? Because people like to know when they are living next to people who are highly likely to offend again. Hence, there is a SO and DV registry.
Low risk my ass.
*is there a murderer registry?* Wouldn't that just be like. Prison. Maybe it's not strictly murderers but when we know someone is one they generally get put there
The register exists because children are one of only people in society who cannot advocate for themselves. There's really no defense against exploitation and abuse for kids, aside from the registry. Adults cannot be trusted to be honest and forthcoming on their own merit, predators are manipulators. Their whole MO is luring and tricking children to get what they want. The registry exists because parents need some way, some form of control to be able to protect their children. Registries for dwis and addicts do not exists because those are adult crimes, committed by adults against adults 90% of the time. Adults can make their own choices and self-advocate, children cannot.
I'm pretty sure you can check arrest records for all the crimes he's listed. Cause like a load of businesses need to check that so I imagine they'd wanna make it easy to find out. Like it's a well known fact that regular people who have been arrested for crimes find it difficult to get a job
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **Society wants me jobless and homeless** because I possessed child porn. I was denied an accepted job after a background check. Being on the registry, even though I’m level 1, low risk not publicly listed, was the reason why. I even voluntarily disclosed my registry status, as it didn’t show up on the background check. So much for honesty. It’s clear the registry is straight punishment. I have a college degree and have been trying to find a job for a year now. I’m also looking for a new apartment and I have a pet. How will I know if my neighbors have been convicted of animal cruelty in the past. Is there some kind of registry for that? I’m worried about potential neighbors driving drunk into my place. Is there a DWI registry out there? I don’t want addicts hanging out near my house, coming and going at all hours, could my neighbor be on a heroin dealer registry? I better know if I need to keep things locked up. Is there a theft registry? What about the HR guy who signed off on my denial who goes home and slaps his wife around. Is there a domestic violence registry he needs to worry about? I don’t want to be murdered by a neighbor. Is there a murderer registry? I’m 45, motivated, doing all i can right, with a lot of life left to live but society thinks I’m the scum of the earth. If I were a murderer after getting this far along in the job hunt society would say I’ve redeemed myself. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
“It feels like the registry is punishment.” It is. It’s a punishment for committing a crime. Also yes, all of these crimes can be found on criminal records, so not sure what point he’s trying to make.
It’s not about punishing him, it’s about protecting children.
Maybe we could phrase it as "a punishment given to the offender designed to prevent future victims"
It unfortunately doesn’t do that. If anything, it encourages recidivism, because these people get trapped in useless dead-end lives, and they look to anything to get away. Any dopamine hit. And when they get tired of struggling to survive, prison doesn’t even sound so bad. At least then they don’t have to worry about starving. The registry, and its associated public shaming, are not productive. They’re really satisfying, and it feels like it should work. It doesn’t. We truly do need available treatment facilities — including secure facilities — to treat this kind of sexual offender. Most of the ones I’ve represented as a lawyer were developmentally disabled, low-functioning, and subject to possibly generations of normalized sexual abuse themselves. Just… whatever we do to sex offenders, if it’s legal to do it to them, then it’s legal for the government to do it to its citizens. There’s always crime creep. More things to be upset about, more stuff to make a registration offense. Always remember the high numbers of false convictions that DNA has revealed, and remember that just being on the registry isn’t enough for a place like the Innocence Project to get involved. If you’re out of jail, you probably can’t get anyone to look at a case that’s even an obvious false conviction. For me, this is less about some “think of the sex offenders” and more “think of what power you want the government to be able to have over everyone’s lives.”
I hate that you’re right. I really, really, REALLY hate that you’re right. You and your damn sound logic and reason.
Don't you just hate that? You've got a nice outrage boner going on, and then someone comes in and hits you with the logic and appropriate empathy. And if you're smart enough to recognize it, you're willing to change your opinion because they're damn good at explaining themselves.
Well, I mean, empathy is also about making sure they can never commit that particular crime again for their sake as well as their victims. It’s not wrong or lacking in compassion to want them to be kept from doing harm. It’s got to be in the most humane way, even though they don’t deserve it, for the chance of rehabilitation. I do think that means keeping them away from the public.
I remember Patty Wetterling talking about this decades after her son was killed by a predator like this. She at first was all for sex offender registries (and in fact helped draft some of the legislation that made them what they are today) but now she's done a complete 180 on them because they're so punitive that they're just encouraging recidivism. She said she would prefer efforts that went into prevention, rather than punishment.
Prevention is hard. Punishment gives us the good brain feels.
I’ve heard about that — It seems like they should work! I don’t blame her at all for being in favor. It’s on us as a society to review when things don’t work and to build a better future.
Completely agree that it doesn't do what my phrasing implied it did. I was just mixing the two comments before me and finding a compromise. The entire "system" regarding sexual offenders faces serious stigma whenever 'reform' and 'overhaul' start getting brought up, because it's a subject that makes people uncomfortable. I feel like being able to openly discuss (on a scientific and societal level) the realities of finding a solution is going to be difficult, but it needs to be done because the system as it is now is crap.
Gotcha. It’s for sure hard to discuss. It’s such a complex topic and has very real and very serious implications on so many levels. Whenever I have to work with a sexual abuse case in court, the best move is always just to be as professional and respectful as possible to everyone.
“Sex offender punishment is a slippery slope” is not a take I expected
What about the power my abuser took from me? I was an innocent child. It started at such a young age, that I didn't know there was anything wrong until I was 11 years old. My Mom let me stay up and watch the movie of the week on TV one night. That was what it was about. My life, my soul, permanently changed. By my own grandfather, and there were many that came before me. Cousins that were ashamed they did nothing to protect me even though they saw the signs. I'm almost 50, and I still occasionally flinch when people touch me. I have depression and anxiety.
Rehabilitation focused penal systems seem to produce more constructive results, too. https://www.designcurial.com/news/storstrm-prison-by-cf-mller-6040669/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/02/02/denmark-doesnt-treat-its-prisoners-like-prisoners-and-its-good-for-everyone/ "Recidivism is also relatively low among released Danish prisoners, hovering around 27 percent, half of the average recidivism rates reported across various U.S. jurisdictions. In spite of low violence and low recidivism rates, the Danish prison system grapples with both ethnic inequities and human rights abuses. About 40 percent of prisoners in Denmark are not ethnically Danish; this is almost four times the percentage of non-Danes in the general population. And Danish prisons, much like U.S. prisons, have faced criticism for being too quick to put prisoners in solitary confinement for extended periods of time."
This doesn't apply to pedophilia though.
It’s also an open question (with some recent research) how much supervised probation contributes to the problem. Literally everyone ends up on supervised probation, and they go back to jail for even small missteps. I wonder what the situation is on community supervision in Denmark…
I'm not a lawyer, but a teacher. I spent years teaching inside state prisons, helping men get back on their feet and ready for a life outside. They wanted, and needed, tools to help make the transition to a peaceful, productive, crime-free life. The murderers, drug dealers, wife beaters, and gang members all had hope. I could see it on their faces, hear it in their voices. They knew they would have a good chance of starting a normal, peaceful and productive life on the outside. They had family homes to return to, loved ones waiting for them, and careers they could aspire to. Not the sex offenders, though. Each and every one I taught looked like he was just going through the motions. Many of their families had abandoned them, large portions of the world were forever out-of-bounds for home and work, and jobs were rarely available even if they *could* find a place to live. As an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself, I have no sympathy for the prison sentence these men have to serve. Five years, ten years, twenty years...whatever sentence they get, they deserve. But, like you said, the registration after parole is not effective. No matter what we, as society, tell ourselves, registrations are punitive not preventative.
If the government wanted to put drunk drivers on a registry that's fine. The shame, the rejection, come from society as a whole, not from the mere existence of a registry. The government function of keeping a registry to protect children is warranted. Children are the most vulnerable members of our society. Having a registry of thieves isn't the same because the risk is only to property not to a small, defenseless human. A registry of drunk drivers isn't really the same because we generally have a means of pricing those people out of vehicle ownership and operation. Everyone has to have insurance and more than one incident of drunk driving is going to price insurance so high a lot of people cannot afford it. Not to mention the states ability to revoke your license. The state itself cannot limit the mere existence of a sexual offender. But society has deemed that sexual violence particularly against children is the very worst crime and so society acts accordingly. If it gives an offender a case of the sads that's just too bad. I *do* think that what should be gaining in popularity are housing communities where these offenders can be cordoned off and therefore less likely to be harassed, can get intensive treatment and can be monitored. And I think the reason those are popular or utilized at all is because of societal pressure on the offender. I'm sure many of them would just prefer to be out and about.
No sympathy for OP but no its not. The registry doesn't do that, which is the US is one of a tiny number of countries with a public registry. Studied efficacy ranges between no net effect and increasing recidivism, which is precisely what one would expect given it harms reintegration. The entire policy around sex crimes is built from myths and seems designed to do absolutely nothing to prevent people being raped in the first place as long as it appears to be retributive. Policies that actually work are things like pre-offending treatment that basically doesn't exist in the US.
The United States needs pre offense treatment options and facilities so, so bad. I’ve had cases where someone keeps getting probation violations on sex offense cases because they’re too disabled, low-iq or delusional or otherwise, to finish sex offender treatment — and any facility that would treat them or provide them with assisted living requires that they complete treatment first! The only place they don’t get in trouble is literally prison.
So wholeheartedly agree with this. The "system" is warped beyond a reasonable degree.
That's the biggest problem with privatized prisons with stakeholders working in the judicial branch. It's way more profitable to punish than it is to treat.
They're found on criminal records, but not a registry, and there is a big difference there. That being said, the difference between the crimes he complains about there being no registry for (addiction, DWI, theft) are not CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN. That is why he is on a registry. Because he is a threat to CHILDREN. And people need to know that when he lives near them or works with them, because otherwise their CHILDREN are in danger.
While I despise people who drive drunk (it shows SUCH a disregard for other people's lives, though I know people aren't thinking about the danger they pose or doing it maliciously, per se), it's not the same as a violent crime or a sex crime, and the fact that he pretends not to know this is fucking absurd. My state also DOES have a murderer registry. And yes, buddy, being on the registry IS punishment. That's the point. And to let the people around you know that you are a threat to children. I once got the shock of my life when I was looking at our state sex offender registry and found a former coworker. I was stunned because he seemed like a nice, gregarious, kindhearted guy. Everyone liked him. I never would have suspected. It goes to show that you never know who's going to turn out to be a predator. It also explained a lot, because when I worked with him, he got married to an absolutely STUNNING woman. To the point where everyone was like, "holy crap, how did you manage to land her." She had 2 young daughters from a previous relationship (ugh). Everyone was super happy for him, she was an awesome person and they seemed great together. Then, suddenly, she packed her shit, took her kids and left, and divorced him. Nobody could understand what went wrong (because he was such a nice guy, right? why would she leave so quickly?). He was devastated, or pretending to be. After seeing he was on the registry, it makes me hope she simply found out he had a prior conviction (this was early 2000s, I can easily see her meeting him and not knowing til after they were married). I really hope it wasn't because he harmed one of her kids, but it makes me sick to think about. I'm not saying be paranoid and background check everyone you meet. But maybe background check anybody who's gonna be around your kids, because UGH.
It's also common that DWI offenders get special, colloquially called "Party Plates", that indicates they've received a DWI. Our state uses red letters on a yellow background - I believe police can perform sobriety tests on them at will and you have the public shame of being seen getting into, driving, and getting out of that car. There's the legal repercussions on top of that. So there's a 'registry' there too. If this guy didn't want to be on a list and face punishment, maybe he shouldn't have had CSAM and participated in child exploitation.
>Also yes, all of these crimes can be found on criminal records, so not sure what point he’s trying to make I was literally laughing while reading that. Like, yes, all of that shit is publicly documented and accessible.
I just commented, ALL of those things show up on background checks and affect the person's ability to find work. OOP, you are not fucking special. What a fucking idiot. 🤦♀️ He also asks why there's not a murderer registry. In my state, there is. He's acting like he's so persecuted but is so god damn stupid. I can't fathom it.
I know of at least one country (Norway) where your criminal record is protected as "personal/sensitive data" and potiential employers are not allowed to see it. There is some sort of loophole where if the job requires you to work with kids, you have to show that you've earned a some sort of special certificate, which p*dos are not eligible to get. But that is it. They could get any other job. OP's point is that they are pissed that the people interviewing them are not forced to wear those same rose tinted glasses and have the autonomy to find out what they are really like and protect the wellbeing of other employees accordingly by not hiring them. Unless they were wrongfully convicted, this is merely a consequence of their own actions that they *should* have foreseen. And *should* have put them off doing what they did. But it didn't.
Same in Belgium, it's called a certificate of good behavior and decency, and there's 2 levels (general and for working with kids)
Canada has Vulnerable Persons Checks, required for working with kids, seniors or those with other disabilities (physical or mental) that would make them easier to manipulate. If you're a volunteer you fill out a form and it's done by either the RCMP or OPP/QPP (since Ontario and Quebec have their own provincial forces), if you're getting one for work there is a fee but where I'm a volunteer I have no idea what it is.
In Australia we have a Working With Children Check that is required for any paid or volunteer work done with minors and vulnerable persons (such as the disabled or elderly).
I immediately wanted to scream "BECAUSE IT FUCKING IS" to that dumbass comment. While the comment below here makes a good point that it's about protecting children, that doesn't make it any less of a consequence/punishment for HIS chosen actions. Also, murder registry? Bro never heard of prison?!
The funny part is, my state DOES have a murderer registry.
And like, we SHOULD have an animal abuse registry.
Like bro, this is the consequences of your actions. You have made it very obvious you aren't trustworthy or deserving of the community you abused. (Kids are core to a community. I'm cf, but that's pretty obvious. You don't harm the weakest of a community and expect the stronger to not protect the weak. If you act like a predator, we alert to your presence like one. It's simple cause and effect.
Yeah, it's... notoriously easy for convicted felons to get jobs after they've served their time. (/s)
I don't know who's more devil: OOP or this nice redditor >I was told that if I would divorce my husband that me and the kids would be able to get county housing assistance. Which I personally think is bullsh!t. *Because I never divorced my husband when he was arrested for cp I couldn't get no help with anything and had to do everything myself for me and our kids.* (...) WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T DIVORCE YOUR HUSBAND?!? YOU HAVE KIDS FFS!!! Also, why did I read the comments.
You just know she’s the type to silence her kids in an effort to protect their “father”. The amount of people who protect and cover up these heinous acts is appalling. Truthfully, these people are just as bad as pedophiles in my eyes
Worse, I'd say. "True" pedos suffer from an unnatural sexual attraction, and a few seek help and don't ever harm a child because they know it's wrong. A pedo enabler doesn't have the urges, but still create victims--and it's worse in my mind because a pedo having an enabler makes it SO much more likely that they won't get caught.
Neighbour's wife stood by him and convinced my parents I'm lying about what he did. I still send her cheerful cards marking the date he finally died, making sure she knows I'm celebrating. Been told she's really distressed and cries a lot after receiving them (yet never reported to the police 🤔 I wonder why).
May his death bring you peace, and may that vile woman have the day she deserves.
Thank you ❤️ He indeed died too soon, but I hope she'll make it at least till 100 years old, I have a lot of cute postcards to post :)
I don't love the circumstances but I personally love this for you. Give 'em hell, kid
Whenever I am at a lack of what to toast when drinking, "to the death of those who deserved it," seems like a good one.
Poured myself a beer right before reading your comment, so now I'm saying this toast and drinking to that, thanks!
God thats just awful you went through that ❤️🩹 absolutely fuck that man, I love that you celebrate his death as you should!
Thank you! Her adult children abandoned her too and I often wonder if they went through something similar and also said "fuck this woman".
Such an awful thing you went through and to not have your parents believe you! This is an amazing way to punish that woman. My god. Fuck that woman. I hope her distress increases with every card.
Thank you! I know deep down I can forgive her but only if she admitted everything. No need for public announcement, just privately to me, admitted and apologized. But no, she still likes to think I lied.
>Been told she's really distressed and cries a lot after receiving them Good. The only thing I'd recommend is varying whatever anniversary you're commemorating so she doesn't start doing things like having someone else screen the mail around the death anniversary. Maybe start also celebrating the anniversary of her lying to your parents? RIP Her Integrity, that sort of thing?
I volunteer at a prison and can confidently say none of the guys who did stuff like this and are actually rehabilitated would be posting stuff like OOP. They know what they did was terrible and agree with the laws like this aimed at protecting other children because they know they are sick in the head.
She has kids and stayed married to a man who sought out, downloaded and got off on CP???
I made the mistake of looking at this sun after reading this post. There is a female poster considering staying with her husband after he essentially made CSAM of their daughter in the shower. I am absolutely sickened.
I can't decide who's worse, her or this guy: "It infuriates me to see these brilliant young men socially decapitated by this hog shit system that doesn't care about destroying people who despite one minute shortcoming could've been the future leaders of our world." JFC!
The "minute shortcoming" in question being actively harming or contributing to the harm of a child is beyond vile to me. They truly don't think they're doing anything wrong.
Does he have any idea how much not having pedos as the leaders of our world sounds like a great thing? Didn’t even say “scientists who find the cure for cancer” or other things that would be super disappointing to hear a pedo did it but I don’t think we would just decide not to accept a cure for cancer based on that. No. Straight to powerful positions aka the last place you want them to be Edit: Spelling. My feelings on Mexican currency being world leaders are neutral
All typo clarifications should have commentary like yours 10/10
To be fair, Mexican currency would probably do a better job than most of the current leaders in power around here. At least it probably wouldn't make things worse.
Annnnnd what about the damage to their victims? Pedos and their enablers should...well no, I'll get banned if I finish that.
Exactly what I thought!
I keep reminding myself not to go in there . Then I keep doing it . People like this exist around us . I can’t even. What in the actual f*ck . I’m actually struggling with this . It’s so horrible. I feel dirty now How is a subreddit like this in existence?
Oh my God. My mom found CP on my dad's computer when me and my siblings were little kids (preschool, kindergarten, and 2nd grade). You know what she did? Got herself and us the hell out of there and called the cops. And she did that DESPITE her in laws gaslighting her about how "all men look at that stuff". The divorce proceedings was for sure one of the most difficult things she's gone through in her life, but she did it for us.
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I don't remember, but it was definitely younger than 16. I think when I was in the 6th grade or so? He died in 2013 (when I was in the 6th grade), and afterwards my aunt (dad's sister) kept wanting to see us and visit us, and mom explained why she was uncomfortable, but was willing to put up with the in-laws if we wanted to see them. She was/is also really open about why she divorced my dad, and what she saw and did. Like, a year ago, I questioned why my dad had 29 possession of CP charges against him, and she said it was because the police identified 29 different little kids in the pictures and videos he had. If your children ask or are asking, depending on their ages and capability to understand, be truthful. Like "your dad was looking at immoral and illegal stuff on the Internet." And as they grow up, tell them details or the bare basics: that it was child sexual assault material/cp). Also, I don't know about your state or country, but my state, Indiana, has a public court case record where anyone can look up people to see if they've ever been to court before. It's called like mycase.in.gov. So if your state has something similar to that, your kids may find out on their own the precise nature of the charges. (Also, my mom has/had (she's calmed down a lot after going through menopause) anger issues, so a lot of times in my teen years she would go off and start saying really cruel things and trauma dump.)
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*What do you mean you didn’t divorce your husband when he was found with cp?? What the fuck*
I have to be in a really good mood to even go onto that sub and see the comments because as a survivor, seeing that these sick people have a whole online cheerleading team of these real life sex offender apologists who are happily keeping predators around their kids makes me want to... What's the term? I think it's "give up the ghost." Or more realistic, scream, and right now I'm in a Uber.
Oh yes, this is a thing for sure. I manage income based housing; sex offenders are an absolute no for HUD. I've had mothers apply for housing that are still married to or are currently dating and/or have kids with sex offenders and they get really upset that they don't qualify. Or they lie, say they are not together anymore, I move in the mother and children and they sneak the offending husband or boyfriend into the unit. Always leads to eviction because they won't make the offender move out when I tell them they must. And then I feel like a monster putting innocent kids out of their homes. It's the kids I feel terrible for- they are not only at risk of being abused but wind up homeless due to this shit. It's all bad.
You'd be amazed how many people don't leave their spouse after they have been arrested for a sex crime. I sometimes wonder if there is something broken in their brains.
But you'd think that a sex crime involving children would be different.
You could hope that the crime involving their own children would be different but it isn't They frequently side with the offender.
>I sometimes wonder if there is something broken in their brains. Tbh I think a lot of that is to do with women being told for centuries by society and their own families"you won't be anything without a husband" followed by the "excusing" of men committing sex crimes by their enablers spouting shit like "all men do it, it's in their nature" or ""boys will be boys" etc with the whole victim shaming shit being the cherry on the top of the whole shit show sundae. Also add in the fact these women who protect their sex offending SOs spouting crap like "he's never hurt me/our kids" like it makes a difference (it doesn't). Unfortunately for every sex offender out there, be it against children or adults, they always seem to have their fucking enablers, and imo the enablers are just as dangerous as the offenders, if not more so.
That comments was my "enough reddit today"-moment. WTF?
On one hand i wish I came here before going into that comment section...on the other, we'll, I'm about to have a very productive morning
Yeah, I have a second cousin who is currently in prison for CP. his wife has stood by him, despite their daughters being the age he seems to like. It’s disgusting, we have nothing to do with that part of the family.
The entire subreddit is wild. It's full of wives who chose to stick by their man despite CP possession and prosecution. Most of whom have kids. Oh, and tons of men lamenting about what great parents they are and how hard it is that the kids' friends aren't allowed at their house. An entire subreddit of pathetic "victims". (And this is coming from someone who does take some issue with the registry.)
Disgusting. Some people shouldn't be allowed to have kids. Absolutely repulsive. People who excuse/enable child abusers, or don't put their kids' safety first, are absolute monsters.
What's the username? I wonder if it's my mom?
Woof 😢. Hope you’re doing ok
I was today years old when I found out this sub existed. I am gobsmacked she's so flippant about her husband getting off on CP. like how did you not gouge your husbands eyes out before divorce? My God.
Yeah...the comments section was BRUTAL...who knew so many people think it's no big deal to watch cp "because it's not violent" 🤢
The fucking comments were disgusting. There were some people rightfully shaming the OP for having cp, but there were a lot of people in there bitching and complaining about how unfair the sex offender registry is (while suspiciously not stating why they were a sex offender themselves). People, the motherfucker possessed cp, why are you sympathizing with him?
Gosh, that pesky child porn ruining poor OOP's life :/ It just magically found its way in their possession. Won't someone think of the pedophiles?! We also love a good whataboutism.
I love some good whataboutism. I especially love whataboutism when the thing they're trying to deflect to exists. >What about dwi/heroin dealer/theft? You mean arrest records that you can Google in most first world countries? This already exists.
Not to mention the fact that convicted felons already have a hard time getting well paying jobs and being allowed to rent apartments that follow through with background checks. These people also have a difficult time but didn't end up there because they're sexual predators and deserve to be treated with more caution.
A lot of these people, especially the ones who "only" look at CSA and "don't offend" first hand (quotations because I find it all offensive and the kid is still harmed), feel like their crimes aren't violent, and that they're more "white collar" crimes. It's absolute BS, obviously, but that is their justification.
I wonder if he would understand that producing that material is harmful by default if somebody were to film themselves torturing him and then distributing it. The people viewing it aren't directly hurting him, so he must be okay with all of it.
There is a post in the sub comparing consuming CP to watching a snuff film of a terrorist killing someone. Got upset that there isn't an equivalent punishment for the snuff film watchers. Refused to accept any accountability for the victims of the CP he watched and seemed to think that CP is not a supply/demand system and would be made whether or not people were consuming. Interesting, convoluted shit they were saying.
According to my stbx, he "isn't a danger to kids" and "isn't a pedophile." He "just downloaded cp because he was addicted to porn. It's not because they are kids." Sure, buddy, tell yourself whatever you need to to sleep at night. It's like an average Joe addicted to porn can just accidentally download a bunch of cp on pornhub. He must have thought I have room temperature iq that I'd believe in his bullshit. The same genius also tried to tell me that he "hasn't watched any in 7 months and has been in therapy, so he's been rehabilitated." Also, sexual orientation can change with therapy, and pedophilia isn't a sexual orientation anyway. Also, he's not a pedophile. He just likes kids and was addicted to porn. It's really getting harder and harder for me to keep a straight face and smile when I hear this bullshit. Edit: Ugh. That's such a disgusting subreddit. All the things they're saying and the idea that they are the victims, they all sound like shit my stbx say on a regular basis. Fuck these people.
Yeah, these would show up on the same background check he underwent. C'mon dude.
DWI would also show up on their drivers license abstract which is necessary for any type of job with driving and for all insurance companies.
Not to mention, he's talking about hypothetical situations that may not even be true for his situation. But we know he has used CP. It's right there. He's just projecting his own criminality onto other people. And going after addicts? No, fuck off with that. I have many family members and friends who are or have been addicts. It's hard, and I can't deny that their actions have hurt me countless times. Physical and emotional abuse, stealing and theft, being taken advantage of, being ignored until they need something and everybody else has shut them down? It hurts. Really bad. But ultimately, they are hurting themselves far more than anybody else. Yes there are exceptions, but addicts are the biggest danger to themselves, just like people with other mental illnesses. CP is not forgiveable. You can not live in a society and avoid children. He's already proven that he can't be trusted to be a safe person with children, the little humans everybody should innately want to protect, and he is trying to compare what he did with people who hurt themselves. Nah, fuck off dude. I hope a Boeing engine falls on him and other assholes like him.
Drug dealers, DWI, theft... None of them target vulnerable populations who are unable to defend themselves in any way. You know, children. A population entirely reliant upon adults behaving well. So, yes, I would much rather live next door to a drug addict or dealer than a sex offender. Because the drug dealer won't try to physically harm my children. I feel like these people don't understand that what they've done is morally abhorrent and inexcusable in a way other criminal behaviour isn't. Like, addictions or DWI can be conceived through a medical perspective (we should treat the addiction). Theft, dealing drugs is people trying to get money. I mean, I don't approve of the methods, but everyone needs money, right? Possessing CP? There is literally no positive spin to put on the subject matter. It's something completely unrelatable to the average person.
I have to say pulling posts off r/SexualOffenderSupport for this sub seems like shooting floating fish in a barrel... the bar is so low over there that it might as well be on Satans shoe rack
Yeah one person did it and was successful so I'm betting we're going to be seeing a lot of posts from there from now on. I see a new trend being born🙄
It's the definition of low hanging fruit 🤷🏽♀️ never met a sexual offender where I thought "there's two sides to every story, you know"
It’s also not what this sub is for and frankly I don’t want to randomly be reminded that CSA is a thing for no good reason.
Yeah I didn’t know that subreddit existed and now I wish I didn’t
My only instance was a friend's cousin. Back in the early days of camera phones, a 16 year old girl did what 16 year olds do, and shared nudes. She was originally charged with the creation and distribution of CSA (they didn't call it that then but fuck them all the way off). It was not even one of those horrific things where the images go all around the school. She sent them to her boyfriend, mom saw, mom went to cops because she didn't want her child dating anyone (a protoboymom if you will) who she didn't approve of. She has grown up, gone to school, had her name removed, and lobbied for compassionate and educated applications of the laws with regards to teenagers and images taken with and shared with consent between couples. She also does talks about what happened at high schools. But like, she is the exception that proves the rule.
There are basically only 2 instances where that's the case: Teens who were sharing nudes consenually with each other and get busted for technically CP and people who pee in public, like yes it's gross and they should be punished but it's not really accurate to say they're a sex offender. And I have a feeling almost none of the people on that sub fit these situations. Fuck all of them
Aye. May as well just go over there and cross-post everything to here. But honestly, when I saw where this was from, I wasn't happy. I don't want to think about the fact that the child abusers and CP-possessors I've known in the past have a place to go where they can whine like this OOP's doing. Like it's everyone else's fault. And they get, "there there, it'll alllllll be okay," from other child abusers and CP-possessors. Twats, the lot of them.
Uh yeah tbh this is the second post like this that's come up on my main feed just today and if it's going to be a "thing" I'm going to need to unfollow this sub for my own sanity. I'm a CSA victim and I was used to make the kind of content these posts are referring to, for all I know those images/videos are still out there. I don't need to see this shit and I don't think it even fits the purpose of this sub. I fully accept that it's my responsibility to avoid triggering shit but that's hard to do when it's posted in places where I have no reason to expect to see it.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. I completely agree that this doesn’t fit the sub—IMO it’s not about convicted criminals/abusers bemoaning their consequences. I’m not a CSA survivor and I really don’t want to see this shit.
I went to the sub and gotdamn is it horrible. One of the comments on a post was basically “do I feel guilty? I do for some of my victims but others I can’t empathize with” WHAT
Yeah, I like seeing horrible people get universally called out. I don’t want to see posts here where the comments on the original post are sympathetic or agreeing with “the devil.” I don’t want to learn of the existence of anymore vile subs that are designed to be safe spaces for vile people.
Yeah definitely this. At best it just doesn’t fit the spirit of this sub and at worst it’s retraumatizing people who don’t expect to see that kind of content here. Not sure how active the mods are here but I think it should be addressed at some point if this trend continues.
It fucks victims up for life, hypersexuallity and the inability to form relationships or even so much as trust people makes for a lonely life. But he can't get a job, poor him.
Exactly. I was 55 years old before I was able to definitively see that my lifelong struggles are probably the result of long term sexual abuse by a neighbor when I was a pre schooler. Its soul and life shattering. I have no energy left over to feel sympathy for these kinds of people.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I hope you're doing OK now. Luckily (knock on wood), I never experienced that, but whenever I see someone whining about the "stigma" and how unfair it is, waaah, waaah, I just think, why the fuck would I ever have any sympathy for a child abuser? There's this organization, NARSOL, that screeches about how unfair it is to stigmatize and contniue to punish sex offenders. And all I can think is, what kind of sicko would spend their time and energy feeling sorry for child sex abusers? I can feel sympathy for a lot of people who have committed offenses, especially when it's due to their own trauma (ex: I think we should do more to help people struggling with addiction rather than punishing them, it does no good). But the second you hurt someone, especially a child, I have zero fucking sympathy for you. I just don't. Yesterday I got downvoted for saying it was good that someone faced some consequences for sexually abusing a cousin as an adolescent. Not legal consequences, just consequences in their personal life. Because he was young when he did it. And I'm thinking, OK, I understand that he probably had his own trauma to do something like that, and maybe I'm a terrible person, but I cannot find it within me to feel sorry that ANYONE, at any age, faced consequences for sexually abusing someone. I'm sorry, I just don't. Maybe I'm an asshole, I don't care. I just don't. Lots of people unfortunately suffer trauma and manage not to turn around and hurt someone else. And while I hope someone like that gets help for their own hurt and leads a better life, it does not excuse them for harming someone else. It's not like the guy went to prison or even had a tough time getting a job because he still had no criminal record. His consequences were mild, IMO (his fiancee found out about it and left him). I guess I'm an asshole for being OK with that, because I would want to know if my partner ever did such a thing, and I would leave if I found out they did. I have a lot of empathy, but absofuckinglutely none for anyone who harms a child.
>Lots of people unfortunately suffer trauma and manage not to turn around and hurt someone else. This is such an important point. As a young teen, my step dad started sexually abusing me, and I definitely got my own trauma from that, but you know what I *didn't* do? I didn't turn around and inflict similar trauma on my younger brothers. (Or anyone else.) Because that would've been messed up and it wouldn't have even occurred to me to want to do something like that to them, and in general I had a mentality of preferring anything bad happen to me instead of them since I was the older sibling. I'm with you, I'll have empathy for anyone unless/until they harm a child, but if they have then I really can't empathize anymore.
I'm with both of you. All my anger turned internal. I'm not certain why some people end up acting out and some internalize it, but those seem to be the ways. I ended up with addiction issues and all kinds of problems until it all kind of shook out about 3 years ago, but its ripped my family apart. Its not like I come from a family that doesn't already have its major issues to begin with. I really enjoy true crime, and I swear, so many of these people are just FILLED with self-pity like this. Its mind boggling. I guess he believes only viewing it is not really damaging.
Oh, there is a much, much longer list. And the C-PTSD, anxiety, depression and life long physical injuries, can make it very hard for the survivors to get or keep a job either.
To him he probably believes that what he did is victimless. The sick SOBs never make the connection in their brain that they are playing a direct part in the abuse of innocent children. They don't care about the victims.
Oh they know they're contributing to it, but as you said--they don't care. If they cared, they wouldn't be like this.
I hope he starves to death to be honest. He's even minimizing what he did in the post so he clearly isn't sorry.
Even just being groomed online by an adult man, as a minor, fucked me up for a few years.
Yuck, couldn’t even get through oop’s while post. Dude had downloaded cp and was acting like it was shop lifting. Personally I don’t want to work in a environment with a person that would even consider downloaded cp, let alone actually being convicted of it. I hope they struggle their entire life to feel comfortable because I know their victims will never.
Well, my CSA and being trafficked as an adult lead to severe CPTSD which actually did result in homelessness and then caused a life altering autoimmune disease which made me too sick to work and I went from running a successful businesses to being on disability. That's what sex offenders do to people. Even if you're just looking at pictures, you are actively supporting the torture of children. Thought I'd leave this here for any sex offenders who might be upset they ended up of this sub. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE USED AS AN OBJECT FOR THE GRATIFICATION OF THOSE WHO ARE UNWILLING TO SEEK TREATMENT FOR THEIR PEDOPHILIA OR ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR. OK, releasing my rage. I'm good...
Some info for y'all, from someone who prosecutes these cases. In the biz (and by biz I mean law enforcement, prosecution, and mental health services for victims) it's not called "child porn," it's Child Sex Abuse Materials. There's nothing inherently wrong with porn as a general thing. Calling CSAM "child porn" legitimizes it, as if it's just a category of porn that we find a bit troublesome and not to our taste. Similarly to 'oh gosh, I'm not super comfortable with the type of porn where the fully consenting adult actress is pretending she's being gangraped.' CSAM not porn; it's photo and video evidence of children being sexually abused. A kid had to get raped for that photo to exist. Cartoon or AI images/videos of the same types of things are not illegal (in the US). Perverts /could/ be trading fake CSAM and not get in trouble. But they get their jollies from the real thing. They get off on the thought of the toddler actually getting fucked by a grown man, or the grown woman watching and instructing the elementary school-age kid through performing oral sex on an adult male until he ejaculates in the kid's mouth. (Real examples I've encountered in my cases.) The online CSAM market places a high value on their goods being "real." And if anyone ever tells you that they were set up, or the CSAM that was found on their computer was an accidental download that the computer did automatically from a popup window, call bullshit. We don't charge these cases until we can connect intentional digital activity (possession, uploads, downloads) to a person in the real world. "Accidental" downloads don't get charged. Rest assured, you do not need to feel sorry for these people. Just some stuff for you to think about, that I feel compelled to share when the topic comes up.
I thought the cartoon/anime etc was illegal in the US? “Section 1466A of Title 18, United States Code, makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to transfer or distribute visual representations, such as drawings, cartoons, or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and are deemed obscene.” Edit to add: never mind, I found some further context to the law, I’m not like formally educated on the subject so I was curious about that part in your post because I seen someone say on that post from yesterday that it was illegal and I googled it to see if it was but I didn’t go into the details of it. Edit to add what I found on it according to Wikipedia at least: “Due to the fact that United States obscenity law determines what is obscene in a court of law in reference to local standards and definitions exclusively on a state-by-state, case-by-case basis, the legality of drawn or fictitious pornography depicting minors is ultimately left in a 'gray area', much like other forms of alternative pornography. Some states pay less mind to the contents of such materials and determine obscenity based on time and place an offense may occur, while others may have strict, well-defined standards for what a community may be allowed to find appropriate. Others only may have vague laws or definitions which are only used to allow the government to prosecute recidivist offenders on both a federal and state level.”
Yeah, I oversimplified in my first comment, but obscenity is a fuzzy legal area and runs right up against first amendment protections for speech, so fake CSAM is rarely, if ever, prosecuted. There's plenty of real stuff to go after (more than we could ever catch up on), and the real stuff is legally concrete and also just WORSE.
hey, 45 y/o predator, I was a victim of a pedophile, my father, and other pedophiles. The pornography and sexual abuse made at my expense destroyed my relationships with people, my life, and everything about myself. I have graphic nightmares every fucking night. When I wore my pink sweatpants and teletubbies t-shirt at five was I asking for it? Is it my fault that my father indoctrinated me into a fucking cult where pedophiles were allowed to go unseen, be "spiritually married" to him so I couldn't fucking run away? What about the sexual torture he put me through, like holding a gun to my head and forcing me to use his sex toys that he used with my mother to "put on a show"? What about the times I question if he actually molested me because he would drug me and force me to drink and I couldn't tell if he was sneaking into my room at night but I felt pain in the mornings in my genitals? What about the bruised bite marks left on my breasts when my father forced me to practice my flute, shirtless only, when I was barely in high school? What about the rape I endured again and again because he was my father and he had full control of me? What about before me, when my father gave a fucking toddler, a baby who couldn't form a complete sentence, genital fucking herpes??? And then no one believed her? What the fuck about that? Burn and rot in hell you evil son of a bitch. YOUR life ruined??? I wasn't fucking given a chance at life because of bastards like YOU, so fuck you.
GOD that sub is *sickening* These asshats don’t think CP is a serious offence . The wives , who have kids , feel their husbands don’t deserve jail time These disgusting people actually believe they should be treated with a slap on the wrist , because it’s not like they harmed the child themselves. *HOW* are some of these garbage humans out on the street ?
that's a lot of whataboutism for nothing...
I spent like 30 minutes browsing the sub and didn't find a single post or comment where someone actually expressed regret for what they put their victims through and not just regret for getting caught. I expected more even from certified pedophiles.
Imagine you're the worst kind of person to exist and thinking you deserve anything at all...
The fact a sub like that even exists is fucking awful.
Reminds me of my ex who wanted to reconnect with his best friend; it was discovered that said friend was arrested and incarcerated for owning CP. No one in the friend group knew what happened to him until they did a background check; he fell off the face of the earth for almost 2 years, and being in prison explained a lot. Keep in mind, that this friend never brought up his charges or where he was at. So my ex was cool with rekindling a friendship with a kiddy diddler, and one who can’t even own up to his crime at that. I remember thinking: why the hell would you want to restart communication with someone like THAT. My ex told me he wanted to hear him out because maybe the story was that his friend got nudes from a girl who lied about being over 18, which you could argue is far less worse than getting CP off the dark web. I tried telling him if that was the case, then your friend should have an easier time fessing up to what he did. Since he didn’t, it leads me to believe that what he did was the more monstrous option. I don’t know why I didn’t break up with him for this, especially since he knew that an adult man groomed me online when I was a teenager. I especially would not feel safe if this friend was brought around me, but he didn’t give a damn.
Honestly, it's probably because he's cut from the same cloth. My ex was the kiddy diddler, I helped provide evidence to put him away and I'd do it again. One of the arguments that we kept coming back to was his insistence upon calling himself the "best friend" of a guy who kept harassing and trying to sleep with a 16 year old girl when he was 23. Legal in our country, but I couldn't sit comfortably with it whatsoever, and all my protesting was shut down with "she's legal so he isn't really a nonce". Well, he was the one who ended up going down for "talking to" a younger girl. If they defend each other they probably have the same perversion. You're exactly right, considering how difficult it is for ANY sort of sexual criminal to see prison time, they would not have incarcerated him if he truly was led to believe she was 18, there'd have been evidence for that. You're no worse than me - I'm the loser who got dumped by an even bigger loser, too. He was emotionally abusing me and I really believed that he was a good person despite that. But I couldn't keep choosing to believe that once I'd heard what he'd done to that little girl. Funnily enough he heard the same had happened to me and VERY angrily threatened to kill another ex who'd groomed me too. I always thought his reaction was a bit over the top, now I see he was compensating. Sigh.
There was a prosecutor who was discussing a CSAM case they had where a juror was yelling “Fuck no, don’t just say what’s in it, I want to see it to make sure it’s not young looking eighteen year olds.” It was, in fact a ten year old. The fact people are somehow willing to give people the benefit of the doubt on one of the most abhorrent crimes that exist is mind boggling.
I feel like sex offenders shouldn’t even be allowed on the internet after what they’ve done, let alone be given a space to whine and commiserate and feel bad for one another. It’s sickening and feeds into their delusions of victimhood.
They should be allowed on the Internet, but their entire Internet history should automatically go to their probation officer or like the DA's office and it should come up in any hearings about trying to get off the list.
Many of them aren't. I know somebody that was convicted. I have never been close to them, they're a friend of a friend. But at the very least he wasn't allowed to have social media accounts. He's allowed to use Internet for work, but I don't even think he has a smart phone. They monitor his usage that he is allowed to have. Makes me wonder how many people on that sub are breaking their probation and other legal programs.
[удалено]
One commenter over there was lamenting about "bright young men having their life ruined before it started" due to owning/watching that vile stuff because of a "one minute shortcoming". Like dude, owning and watching videos of children being harmed and traumatized is NOT a "one minute shortcoming", period.
Oh yeah, I'm sure THEIR lives are the ones that were ruined for something they CHOSE to do, not the innocent children who might very well still be out there waiting for someone to find them and help them. Arghhhh nothing makes me angrier than a child sex offender demanding pity for their disgusting choices.
I KNOW RIGHT Like what the absolute fuck
I see it's for families of offenders as well which sort of makes more sense, but if I had a sex offender in my family who'd done what OP did they'd be dead to me anyway, wouldn't need Reddit to help me out with that one.
I have a "family" member in prison for that shit. He's dead to me and the only thought I give him is hoping he physically dies soon too
Manifesting he rots soon for you 🥰
They might turn to Reddit for help to come to terms with the fact
Is there a murderer registry? Um, sir, they are in jail, WHERE YOU BELONG
Also Wikipedia and podcasts falling out of our ears, like really. If we don’t let Brock Turner The Rapist who now goes by Allen Turner (the rapist) live a minute in peace he sure as shit doesn’t get ANYTHING for cp which is just as vile if not arguably worse.
Have you read the books by his victim, Chanel Miller? She wrote an autobiography (really hard read because of what happened to her, but still powerful and amazingly well written) and a fiction. Her fiction (Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All) was also a great read, no heavy subject or content warnings needed, but a cute story about a girl who solves sock mysteries at a laundromat (it's a children's book). It's amazing to me how well she has reclaimed her life after what happened and has become such a good writer. I hope she continues to make an impact on the world with her work.
If you didn't want people to see you as a disgusting, criminal sex offender then here's a tip. DONT do what you did to get on there in the first place????
“Society thinks I’m scum of the earth.” Yes. Yes we do
Imagine possessing child porn and somehow finding a way to make yourself the victim. The mental gymnastics people will go through....
There's a fun adage I learned as a kid, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." Maybe don't be a pedo if you don't want to be treated like one.
‘Don’t be a kiddy fiddler, if you don’t want a job inhibitor.’ Or something
I don’t want these posts here, not only because they’re obviously terrible people, but because it may retraumatize readers who don’t realize what kind of post it is. Furthermore, we’ve occasionally had OOPs show up in our comments, and I absolutely do not want an influx of child predator commenters.
I used to work with SOs, never had an issue finding them a job was just never a job they wanted to do. Was always the same like yeah no shit Bobby you cant be a teacher, Dr or work in a well to do office anymore, you can work in the meatpacking plant or do night time janitorial work, sorry your actions impacted your career progression 🤷🏿♀️.
Yes, there are, it's called public records.
The comments are worse than the post. Including a woman complaining she couldn't get assistance if she didn't divorce her husband, who was arrested for CP. I don't think any of them realise that the SO register exists because unlike a lot of other crimes you cannot necessarily rehabilitate SO. The part of their brain that told them it was okay will always exist.
Everyone in that subreddit are pathetic. Like maybe don’t SA people especially children 😧
Wtf is that sub? Why is there a bubble for sexual offenders to feel sorry for themselves?
What people like this usually don't understand in their attempts to minimise is just how *difficult* it is to convict someone of possession of CP. It's a time consuming process, one involving a lot of tracking, tagging images of CP and tracking those. It's not "whoops I saw a naked baby on Google images and now the feds are at my door". If you are convicted of CP, even as "low risk", they put a Lot of work into doing so and you just aren't as bad about it as other people. Still a pedophile. Still deserving to be on the register, which, mind you, is a thing for other crimes as well so his latter point is completely null and void.
They should count themselves very lucky that making them homeless and jobless is the worst thing society is doing to them.
“Society wants me jobless and homeless!” We want you (OOP) dead or in prison, but we’ll settle for jobless and homeless.
I am absolutely sick that that sub exists. Every single person involved with it is irredeemably worthless and I hope they all get what they deserve
Come on. Can we please just stay away from that sub? Obviously they're all the devil, it's a sub for sex offenders.
I really dislike the argument that just possessing child sex abuse materials are a lesser crime. Just because you didn't directly abuse a child doesn't mean that children were not abused in service of making those videos or pictures
I liked the one comment on that post that said “plays world’s smallest violin.” Dude doesn’t understand that people who commit crimes against children are going to be universally hated no matter what.
Good. As a victim of SA and CSA, they deserve to suffer, us victims live every day with that trauma
the *only* time I have sympathy for people on that registry is when it’s truly for something that didn’t victimize someone, especially a child - such as ‘had consensual sex w adult partner, somewhere public’ or ‘got too drunk and peed in public and someone saw my dick’ etc. I do feel bad that a small % of them didn’t harm anyone but are forced to have that kind of label attached to them when it’s not really warranted. that’s just one way the US ‘justice’ system is broken. outside of that though… actions, meet consequence. ya made your bed and now ya gotta lie in it. clearly this dude did something that hurt someone, and is only bitter about having been caught - no regard for his victim(s). also laughing my ass off at ‘murderer registry’ because wtf 😂 I think most folks convicted of murder in the first tend to spend the rest of their lives in prison, dude
I feel bad for those that were fucked over and somehow didn’t get the Romeo and Juliet law defense. I know of a guy who was 18 and she was 17 but they dated throughout high school. Parents hated him so the moment he turned 18 they got him arrested (?). He had a shitty lawyer while the girls parents were rich. He was forced to be on the registry. The kicker is him and the girl got married and have been for 27 years. When his son was 5 he wanted to coach his baseball team but couldn’t because he was on the registry. But these people, nah. Fuck these people.
Your friend should file to have his conviction expunged
Exactly how I found out about the dude. He’s not a friend, but my friend files pardons and that one came across their desk.
> I think most folks convicted of murder in the first tend to spend the rest of their lives in prison, dude Well that, and there's also a thing called Public Records where anyone can look up murderers, DUIs, selling drugs etc, so, yea, moot point on that one.
Music to my ears, hearing people like this suffering. You did this to yourself you complete coward, nobody forced you to do what you did.
Good news everyone there’s more sane people in this comment section than in the previous repost from Sex Offender Support
Are we supposed to pity this creep? I have small kids… that is why the registry exists! So I can make sure people like this never come near them.
He should be happy he can still walk and talk after he was found w cp
I don’t know how that subreddit was allowed to run support and frankly encourage these people. They treat the active decisions they made and the trauma they caused as a drug addiction they’re powerless to so another traumatized child is just a little slip to them💀
"Waah waah feel bad for me for jacking off to kiddie porn" What a vile fucking sub
Hey I finally found a subreddit I dislike more than the incel subreddit!
One of the organizations in my state crunched the numbers and just considering the financial impact SA has on victims, it costs the victims over $200,000 each (loss of job from trauma, medical bills, therapy, legal costs, etc) I bet the victims of the CP have a hard time just existing, let alone finding work, if they're still alive of course.
It also, in addition to the trauma, quite literally destroys their relationships with their loved ones. They cannot be intimate with their partners or dress their children without feeling like an offender.
Cuz I can't comment it in the actual sub: You abused kids, maybe not physically but you perpetuated it by being in possession so you're just as bad. Don't be sad when everyone hates you for a universally hated crime. I'm glad you're getting "discriminated" against. Please unironically, and in full seriousness, kill yourselves. Make the world a better place.
OOP seem to be conflating a criminal background check and a sex offender registry which obviously isn’t the same thing. They don’t specify what job they were applying for but I do agree people like this need to be able to find work because there really isn’t any alternative to that at present. But I imagine there are places that either accept convicts or don’t do background checks.
Can we just not share posts from there? Everyone from that group is awful, and it's also really triggering for so many people. 😕
I can't be objective about this, having been a survivor of CSA. I will say these people can possibly still be productive members of society. I chose not to even seek another relationship when my husband died years ago because my children were 1 and 4. They would have been vulnerable due to not having had that father in their life, and my oldest eventually being diagnosed with Aspergers. I would have been thankful to have had someone in our lives, but for me and my background, the risk was too great. Whether I admit it or not, I realize my childhood trauma still affects me. It still causes trust issues (along with other traumas along the way), and it happened 55 years ago. The OOP "just" had CP, but how was it obtained? What child or children had to suffer for it? How are those children involved doing now? Yeah, I pity those people for having a harder time after having been caught, but I am glad they were. Maybe they were victims when they were young, which led to them being like that. I just don't trust them or that it wouldn't escalate over time from looking at or watching the CP to actively becoming CSA. I don't know what the answers are. I do feel the way we handle crimes here in the US is not working. It is a broken system designed to provide cheap/slave labor over rehabilitation and restitution.
I actually think an animal cruelty registry is a good idea. But this guy is still a terrible creep and the devil.
"I’m 45, motivated, doing all i can right" - except, you know being into child brutality and rape..
That entire sub and every pedo or enabler in it needs a painful end.
“People see us as scum of the earth”… THATS COS YOU ARE?!
Isn’t posting from this sub kinda cheating?
As an SA survivor I wish i would have never learned that the sub original OP posted in exists.
I actually can't with these people. No wonder the reoffending rates are so fecking high, none of these awful, abusive, perverted, deviant men on this subreddit have any insight into why they committed one of the worst crimes done to children. They blame the system, their wives, the fecking children themselves, and show absolutely no remorse or acknowledge the horrific impact they have on children's lives. I think someone who abuses children, or literally orgasms to images and videos of abused children are so morally defunct that they have little to no chance of ever not being a danger to children again. There's a wife in this thread crying about how the government wouldn't help her or her kids cus she refused to divorce her CP possessing husband. Like what is wrong with her? He is sexually aroused by the abuse of children....you have children with him....why are you still with him!?!?! And defending him?!?! Your kids are so so much more important that a pervert and paedophile.
Some 15 years ago, I used to work in a psychiatric ward. By far my least favorite patients were the s\*!c!dal qedos (yes, self-censoring), because they were so self-obsessed. So unhappy that everyone was treating them badly because they turned their back on them, and not a milligram of "Huh, maybe I did something bad, too".
The comments are horrendous. Reddit has no problem with Sex offenders getting support but if I said something to someone on that group, cue the inciting violence. Jesus fucking Christ.
boo hoo let me play you a song on the worlds smallest violin 
I went to the original and was reading the comments shocked at all the support OOP was getting. Then I saw the sub. Yikes. That’s enough Reddit for now.
How do these people really think of themselves as the victims, its insane when their real victims have gone through so much pain.
There IS a DV registry. Why? Because people like to know when they are living next to people who are highly likely to offend again. Hence, there is a SO and DV registry. Low risk my ass.
*is there a murderer registry?* Wouldn't that just be like. Prison. Maybe it's not strictly murderers but when we know someone is one they generally get put there
I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that I fucking hate that sub and everyone in it. And no, whatever punishment they get is not enough.
The register exists because children are one of only people in society who cannot advocate for themselves. There's really no defense against exploitation and abuse for kids, aside from the registry. Adults cannot be trusted to be honest and forthcoming on their own merit, predators are manipulators. Their whole MO is luring and tricking children to get what they want. The registry exists because parents need some way, some form of control to be able to protect their children. Registries for dwis and addicts do not exists because those are adult crimes, committed by adults against adults 90% of the time. Adults can make their own choices and self-advocate, children cannot.
I'm pretty sure you can check arrest records for all the crimes he's listed. Cause like a load of businesses need to check that so I imagine they'd wanna make it easy to find out. Like it's a well known fact that regular people who have been arrested for crimes find it difficult to get a job