Of course, a lot of people, including me (why do I want to type "myself included" there? Why is that a thing we say? When we know that referring to yourself as "myself" like that usually makes us sound ridiculous?) have the first reaction "good thing too!". Like, there's a bad guy here, and it's the dude who's having sex with a four year old kid. There are times when a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and those times include "finding someone assaulting your kid". And there are times when you can actually imagine yourself beating someone to death, and this is pretty much the definition of that sort of time.
On the other hand, I'm sort of nervous about that sort of instinct, to just be all "he got what he deserved!" because first of all, there's thumping a dude and hauling him off your kid, and then there's beating him all the way to death, which is sort of a different thing. Secondly, there's only his word for it. Thirdly, the poor kid, and lastly there's the whole precedent dealio.
So, I guess first things first; I can, as I said, totally understand. I also condone hauling off rapists and defending victims (kids or not), especially as compared the the rather less laudible instincts of the folks in that scandal last year (or early this year? I've forgotten the name of it; I mean the one where a bunch of folks saw that coach raping kids and were all like "huh, I guess I'd better not say anything, but maybe report it to a single superior and not follow up on it in any way!"). I could even understand if, as an American, you happened to be packing heat (as I believe they say) at the time and just straight up shot the guy on impulse. Or hitting him a bunch of times. But barring hit-him-a-couple-of-times-and-then-he-hit-his-head-on-something-and-oh-god-he's-not-breathing-what-have-I-done-? type stuff, surely it takes a fair while to beat someone all the way to death? Like, surely traditionally there's someone pulling back on the beaters elbow and saying "Jack, no! You're killing him! He's not worth it! Let him rot in jail!" I just feel like it's all a bit much to completely wave aside as hard-but-fair. Maybe what you need in a situation like this is a suspended sentence? A guy who can beat someone all the way to death is a guy who might well have some anger management issues and definitely a capacity for pretty full-on violence. Seems to me that what you want is a sentence along the lines of "Ok, no punishment this time because we totally understand, but lay so much as a finger on anyone ever again, and we lock you up and throw away the key, capisce?" Just in case, you know?
Then, we have the thing where if there was no-one going "Jack, no!" or whatever, then presumably the only person who can confirm or deny that he was assaulting the daughter is the 4 year old herself, and they're notoriously unreliable witnesses (we did this whole thing in Developmental Psychology about how people take advantage in courtroom settings of how easily led child witneses are, it's horrifying how easy it is to get the poor little things to say seriously anything, and to really believe it too; their memories are manipulable and they're used to doing what they're told. This is why paedophiles are able to get away with awful stuff like "if you tell anyone, I'll magically know"). It worries me that there's no way to be sure that the guy didn't just beat someone to death for kicks. I mean, depending on what sort of assualt it was, there might be DNA evidence, but it's the sort of evidence that might be smudged in that enthusiastic and vigourous "being beaten to death" process.
I'm also worried about this kid. It's super traumatic to be raped (if indeed that's what the assault was, I mean there's a very wide spectrum of unspeakably awful things a paedophile might decide to do to a kid), but it's also got to be pretty traumatic watching your Dad beat someone to death in front of you (unless he hauled the guy into the hallway first, in which case she'd only have heard it - which would still be nightmareish). Especially since a child that age might not have actually experienced low-level sexual assault stuff as traumatic, because she wouldn't have understood what it was about. If so, if all you're aware of is an over-friendly man giving you hugs and kisses and rubbing himself (or whatever - and also heaven forbid you should think I'm condoning that) and suddenly your Daddy comes in and is really really angry and beats him to death even though he's always been a nice Daddy and so on, then, as a very young child, you're liable to think you've done something wrong, or that you must never hug anyone again, or that your Daddy might hit you over and over too if you do anything bad, or whatever. That's all just speculation, but it's pretty plausible sounding, and it's a total nightmare. No kid needs to have seen anyone die violently.
My biggest concern, though, is precedent. Beating someone to death on the spur of the moment because they're raping your little girl is something I can more or less get behind, but I'm sort of worried that it sets a precedent which ends up (and I know that in general the slippery-slope argument is pretty dodgy, but I get the impression that when it comes to legal precedent, it actually works a bit that way?)... ends up at a point where people can cite this as a reason that they shouldn't get in trouble for spending 3 days torturing someone to death because they got the impression that their intentions toward their 15 year old kid, or their wife, were dishonourable. You know? And I just really really don't ever want to be tortured to death? Or even just tortured to injury! Obviously I don't much fancy being beaten to anything either, but there you go.
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what I think, but I'm certainly apprehensive about this whole thing being dismissed out of hand. Also, though, I definitely do not promise not to beat anyone to death who I catch in the act of raping a child. So heads up on that, would-be paedophiles. I'm not above a couple of good solid kicks to the family jewels in an emergency, and I pack a mean headbutt.
1 comment:
Post a Comment