Oprah talks to child molesters.....

bookmarking
will watch later

I also think that Oprah felt the most uncomfortable with the last guy who
violently raped young girls. You can see from her body language and how
she moves a lot in her chair as she questions him and he talks about his crimes.

I personally feel that the second guy, who fondled and molested his daughter,
is the most sincere.

I doubt that I could watch any of this without getting sick to my stomach. Either that or trying to discover where these low-life creeps reside so I can gun them down, one by one. I am not a mental health-care professional nor do I have any children that age who need protection. Those, I think, are the only two categories of viewers who can benefit from trying to "understand" such people.

You're right Andy, I interrupted after Part 2, as I got nauseated, but having
a child at a vulnerable age, where being liked by all is so important, I thought it was very important to watch.

I could not watch it with out my stomach jumping to many points and tears of just.. out right fuking rage .. at these men.

Im not, at all, in anyway, trying to bestow any honor on any of the men. Im watching their body language, listening to the words..etc. And the only one I could listen to and stop that immediate desire to punch was that man with the long hair.
Im not saying he is .... "cured" or.. better.. or anything like that. I think that he is capable and has grasped the concept of what he has done. This does not mean is not offending now, or will again.
Im simply saying he seems to be the one who ... GOT it..

The dad?
I want to , so much say that he gets it too. Thats because Im a parent too. I want to think that all parents protect and not harm. He makes me nervous.

The older man.. I agree with the bunny.
His intelligence level is too low to grasp what has happened. He gets it on a paper level.. a book learning level.. but not on a higher level.
He really comes across to me as someone who also self abuses. And I am thinking that one of the bigger parts if his abuse cycle with kids is the self abuse for what he did. He is the type of person that is always abused and I really believe he does that to himself, maybe even physically. There is a reward there for him in that behavior that he has not addressed.

I do not get that emotionally he has grasped how it feels
I do think that in a basic , these are the rules of society idea, he knows what he is doing is wrong and is able to follow that train of thought to the next obvious step which is that it harms the person ( victim ) for life.

I think he attracts kids because that is where his comprehension level is. And since he is able to , in a sense , match wits with kids, he there for thinks of kids as his equal with out realizing it. But common sense tells him kids are not OK to have sex with.. but since they are the only members of society he can communicate with, and the only members of society whos intelligence has not far surpassed his, he IS on there level and there IS nothing wrong ( In his mind)

He will not be able to say so.

The teenage rapist..
He seems to be alittle.. low in the IQ dept too.
I do not have any take on him really. I avoided him the same way Oprah did. Tooooooooo damn close to home. In my teen years was when the most rape ever happened in my life by men like him. I do better by shutting them out.

But I see the grooming and it makes perfect sense.

I remember as a 6 year old, when my mothers boyfriend started touching me, it began JUST as they described. He put himself in the daddy position and since I did not have one, that was FABULOUS to me. Just WOW!! look world! ! i have a dad!!!
Ot started with compliments. Statements like " when you grow up, you are going to be drop dead beautiful"
It moved to light touching on my body of places he thought were pretty. My back, my knees, my shoulders , my butt.
Grooming does not make you feel bad and that is what is the hardest part for the victim to realllllllllly grasp. My gut felt like what he was doing was wrong. Absolutely. But , his words and his behavior made me feel different. And after a certain amount of time, I began to be upset with MYSELF for not trusting him. I thought I was the bad guy for feeling uncomfortable with him.
I dont know that I can explain the grooming process from this side any better than that really.

Great post shewolf.

I watched the first part, and most of the 2nd.

I agree also that the older man is slow, not as intelligent, and everything else that has been said about him.

The guy with the long hair is the one I trusted least, and wanted to "punch out"

I can see all of them doing this again, or are currently.

To me an important message is that these people won't bother with girls that are confident, who look like they would tell, or if there were others around who were suspicious.

heh....that last part made me think of a thread here from long ago, about a stranger walking up to a kid and giving them money. Some of us got slammed for being awful for thinking the worst. It's all grooming.

I didnt watch this to ever attempt to understand them as people.
As people they are broken and there for worthless. Useless.

I watched this to hear from them, how they look at kids and maybe why.

Whats sad is that they really didnt offer any information most parents do not know already. Though the sheer paranoia this country lives in as it is because every where you turn people are screaming about danger.. well, Im sure this didnt help. Kids dont even play outside anymore. No one talks to each other in the grocery store, eye contact is avoided at all costs. This country is drowning in fear.

But they made good points about keeping your child confident. That can raise an entire issue of child rearing that may not fit into this thread but they are right on the money. Sadly, the children that are not confident, lonely and vulnerable are raised by parents who are the same way. You can only create what you know and thats what those parents know to do. The behaviors and parenting techniques that make those kinds of kids were exactly what those parents were taught.
Those men said that too. Its a cycle. Someone has to stop it.

I believe that child molesters have a real serious imbalance in their brain and are not 100% capable of getting rid of that desire. They can be "trained" to a certain extent, just like a dog, to do something different.. but just like a dog, will not always follow orders. I want to say it is a chemical imbalance that creates that attraction to children.. but Im not so sure that is everything.

My reason for that is the dad. he didnt start out that way. But he fed the idea and opened himself to that behavior. His was a creation. I do believe that.

I think the others were born that way. (no this doesnt excuse anything)
If that makes any sense at all.

Well, they ARE people.

And they are not necessarily "broken".

As long as people maintain that attitude, it is going to be really hard to stop this cycle.

As long as we demonize and fail to understand that this is HUMAN behaviour, that we are all probably a lot closer to committing this stuff than we want to realise, truly dealing with the causes of this stuff is going to be much harder.

Sometimes I want to shake the stuffing out of all you people who so blithely talk like that.

How many of you have sat down and spoken with people who have done such things? How many of you have taken even the tiniest bit of trouble to understand?

Remember...they are likely to be your friends, neighbours, partners and even your children.

This demonisation and self-protection hurts us all.

Broken-

Everyone is capable of molesting a child.
Sexual attraction begins when someone starts to develop sexually. This could be as young as 10 for some girls .
When we begin to look sexually mature, we begin to be sexually attractive.

Everyone has looked at someone younger than them in a sexual manner. Thats normal. Of course, everyone will balk at that and squack about it being wrong.. But we do not wear ID on our heads. And ID does not stop basic physicall attraction.

Broken-
Finding the ability to cross that line.

There is an area of "normal" ( I use that term loosely) that everyone just knows you dont cross. Crossing that does not even register as something most would even DO.
Yet others , this line is blurred, or even gone.
This is not necessarily their fault, but in a sort of basic programming explanation.. they are broken. They can be trained to behave differently , but that line that exists for everyone else is gone. There for they do not work the same way as everyone else. And if you look at humans as a running program ( with out judgement) they are like the computer with a trojan virus. broken. Will not function properly.

I can feel anger and hate and disgust to what they do but this does not mean i will jump on the bandwagon of 'lets kill them all'. But I do see them as broken humans. Broken programs with key "folders" missing..

more like sexually twisted in a non approved direction. This idea that they are broken usually comes from the idea that they like to/need to hurt kids, but this ignores that fact that in their minds they are not hurting kids, they are giving kids sexual pleasure which is a good thing.

I understand that they think it is a good thing.

we are more programmed to keep children safe then we are to cause harm

it is common sense that touching a child sexually is something that causes shame . That causes harm. Thats pretty simple. To not have that concept means something is missing..

See, I don't understand this attitude at all.
You're not a health care professional
You don't have children that age (who need protection)

Do you not know any children? Do you know people who have children?
Saying you don't "have" them, you mean unless they came from your loins, or adopted by you, it's none of your concern?

I have no children, never wanted them. But I have eyes, and intuition.

As adults, I feel we are responsible for all children, if we see them in a situation that troubles us.


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Anyway, it's true that what these men were saying are red flags are things all parents should know, but you know what? Some don't know, and others know, but don't want to, for whatever reason, press the issue.

Obvious flags, like "if you see someone spending more time with your kids than the adults" That includes uncles, aunts, cousins, all relatives.

I mean, duh. But, it obviously happens, all the time. Terrible to say, if you were to ask a parent why they didn't address it, I think there answer would be that they didn't want to upset/offend/start an argument/confront/etc. the person. So, they sacrifice their child.

All I meant was to explain why I have not watched this program, will not watch it, cannot watch it. It's a visceral thing. The thought of child molestation is so abhorrent to me that someone would have to force me to watch a show like that. For me -- and I am speaking only for myself, not others -- I can find no valid reason why I would want to watch something as detestable as interviews with people whose actions I loathe. I would gain nothing from it.

I think defining these people as "broken, worthless, useless" is pretty dangerous. I think for the most part these abusers live pretty normal lives. If you're looking for the "broken" people you'll miss the ones that are dangerous. What was scary about these four guys was how utterly normal they were otherwise.

I think it's really interesting that so many people on this thread alone had different reactions to the men in the interview -- the long haired guy was the worst v. the long haired guy seemed most remorseful. Strange.

I spent 20+ years as a primary child protection worker and have heard pretty much every excuse possible. Many of my investigations were incredbly bizarre but the bottom line for me was the police detective assigned to my team. He was our police liaison along with three asst D.A,s. he worked with our team for many years adding police support in arrests etc. A trusted member of our team. Following a 9 month investigation I busted him for sexually molesting (historically) his daughter and 3 granddaughters. I brought the case to court. The case never made it to court; the police dept gave him early retirement and demanded he move to another county.

interesting boomer. To me, these men, none of them, fit the model of what I would consider normal.

Of course, what IS normal? Me and thee I suppose.

Old man, with his maybe less than average intellect, seemed like someone who impressed me as someone who was always out of it his entire life.
I saw the pain in his eyes when he said he had been abused as a child, right after he said a couple times in a row (with was I heard as aggitation in his voice), "the cycle's got to stop! the cycle's got to stop!") If he lived in my neighborhood, I would see him as a slightly befuddled old guy, someone who had always been marginal.
I'll tell you one thing, that cheezy wig creeped me out.

The father guy? I think I'd view him as not normal if I was around him. It came out that even before his daughter lived with him, he was living in some rented room somewhere. Never mind he had his 12 year old move into that room with him, I'd think it was odd if he had a son move into that situation. A normal person would have found somewhere else, maybe not that nice if that was all he could afford, but someplace where you didn't have to be in the same room together all the time.

Long hair? Yeah, he was a braggart "I was real trouble in high school. I was the one who was going to bring that place falling down around my ears" He had that "I'm either the best or the worst" thing going on (I was so neglected, she idolized me, etc) He wasn't normal, he was the one who, IMO came closest to saying a few times something to the effect that 'it wasn't my fault'

Rapist boy? What a weasel.

I'm not saying I would immediately look at them and say "pedophile", but I wouldn't think they fit in anywhere.

There was a flicker at times with all of them that they weren't at all sorry, and would do it again.

None of them could quiiiiite keep their stories straight.
The old man saying that even though he didn't think he was hurting the girl, he really was because she had "a skin condition". If you do something that's hurting a 5 year old, especially in that way, they are gonna let you know. Then later on when the therapist was talking about them as a group, saying that they wanted to believe their actions was causing them pleasure, because that made it all right, he was nodding his head along with the rest.

Again, the long hair....he was worst at keeping his story straight, as far as sequence of events.

One other thing, all the, well, not really jargon they were using, but these washed down words they learned in therapy to describe their actions.
"I touched her vagina"
"I had oral copulation with her"
Of course on TV you can't use certain language, but this "I touched her vagina" I'm sure doesn't seem to make them feel as bad as "I finger fucked a five year old"

I'm sure glad at least molest is an ugly word.

Dys

I would very much like to hear your take on these 4 men.

Can you give us your opinion?

Do you think they feel remorse?

Yes, I'd like to hear from dys on that one too!

I also agree with Chai: I found that all four of them were reciting what they have been taught to say in therapy and I am not sure that they have really grasped
what damage they've done to their victims. The last one - the rapist, did admit
that he was not concerned with his victims physical/emotional scars. He barely
was out of prison and was at it again.

Did they mention anywhere how long they've been out of prison and if they're
wearing ankle devices, and if they're still in therapy?

I don't remember about the prison part, but the therapist said she's still seeing them on a monthly? basis.

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ok, this might be a really stupid, ignorant question, and doesn't even deserve to get answered. Something the father said makes me ask....

oprah had asked him how often he viewed pornography on the internet, and he said "daily".
she then asked him if he viewed child porn, and he said "no" (although he did frequent "barely legal" sites).

I don't understand how people access child porn sites. Maybe I'm being naive, but aren't they illegal?
wouldn't someone be monitoring those sites to see who was logging on?
I'd be scared to death to think of doing that.

we've all accidently accessed sites we didn't expect, but I've never heard of anyone mentioning they accidently access a child porn site.

Yes, I do think they're all pretty normal. We're listening to them talk about the most abnormal part of their life but I think outside that they lived like most other people.

Re: the single dad. If we didn't know he molested his daughter we'd probably pat him on the back for being a single dad caring for his daughter. We'd probably say "Gosh, he has to live in this dinky shithole apartment so he can care for his daughter..... blahblahblah....."

I'm really curious about what was going on with the daughter's mother that she was no longer allowed to live there. Something was said about legal reasons why she couldn't live with her mom.

I imagine all these guys got up and went to work/school whatever and lived their lives taking care of their dying wife, etc. and no one gave them a second look.