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Thread: What separates us...

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    What separates us...

    ...from a person who rapes a two-year old girl and murders a 17 month-old boy (the latter having injuries 'resembling those sustained in a road accident' and a tooth swallowed probably after it was knocked out by a blow)

    ?

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    Registered User Danny's Avatar
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    Re: What separates us...

    The saddest thing is: Nothing separates us.

    Look into the crimes committed by thousands of Germans in concentration camps, the Nanking Massacre, human experimentation, even the Milgram experiment. Normal, everyday people like you or me committing acts of depravity.
    So nothing separates us in any tangible sense - but it certainly can not be excused. I hope he goes down for the rest of his life.

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    Commercial Operator Gus's Avatar
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    Re: What separates us...

    .... from shining examples such as Mother Teressa, MLK, heroes who lay doewn their life to save comrades/friends. Life and Humanity is a mixture of contrasts. Unfortunately the media seems fixated with the darker or banal aspects of humanity, murder, rape or any of Max Clifford's clients. It too easy to forget the shining examples of what we could aspire to. Lighten up Barry ... there are those who make life a joy rather than burden.

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    Re: What separates us...

    It becomes very hard to say a sensible when cases like this one arise doesn't it, and the temptation to scream "string 'em all up!" (- whoever is responsible I mean), is hard to avoid.

    I believe from my father's rights campaigning that Haringey social services has had a poor reputation for a long time (did Labour MP, and former Children's minister Margaret Hodge once preside over the council there or was that another London borough?). However I can imagine that whilst working for a large organisation such as Social Services the tendency to "keep your head down", or go along with "perceived wisdom" must be very difficult to resist.

    What is worse, the "Baby P" case or another Sally Clark case (or the other similar and notable miscarriages of justice - Trupti Patel, Donna Anthony etc.) where the poor woman/mother gets jailed and ultimately hounded or worried to death so that she cannot even allow herself to be in the same room alone as her remaining child for fear of being accused of harming him?

    These questions are unanswerable aren't they, and thank God most of us don't have to confront these terrible things too often in our own lives.

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    Re: What separates us...

    Quote Originally Posted by Gus View Post
    .... from shining examples such as Mother Teressa, MLK, heroes who lay doewn their life to save comrades/friends. Life and Humanity is a mixture of contrasts. Unfortunately the media seems fixated with the darker or banal aspects of humanity, murder, rape or any of Max Clifford's clients. It too easy to forget the shining examples of what we could aspire to. Lighten up Barry ... there are those who make life a joy rather than burden.
    Not sure I go along with either of your examples as 'shining'. They both appear to have had feet of (not too pleasant) clay.

    But your point is good. We all have the capability in us to be heroes OR villains.

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    Re: What separates us...

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    ...from a person who rapes a two-year old girl and murders a 17 month-old boy (the latter having injuries 'resembling those sustained in a road accident' and a tooth swallowed probably after it was knocked out by a blow)

    ?
    Maybe you're just being profound, but I'm still a bit concerned that you don't know what separates you from this guy. Are you really walking such a fine line between hero and villain?

    I know what separates me. I'm sure, on a smaller scale than MLK and Mother Theresa, I also have feet of clay depending on who is looking at my life, but at least I try to be a decent person.

    You surely don't have to have children, who you haven't mercilessly beaten, raped or murdered, in order to know that you wouldn't do those things, do you?

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    Registered User Miss Flicts's Avatar
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    Re: What separates us...

    What separates us? Our psychological set-up is different. For most of us, our personal set of urges/impulses does not include the urge to hurt/molest children, and does include a sense of conscience and ability to feel empathy.

    We are each a unique cocktail of ingredients and there are hundreds of unusual urges/impulses which most of us don't have, but occur in a small number of people. It's a big scale, from 'totally harmless' at one end, to 'totally horrific' at the other end.

    Unfortunately, at the horrific end of the scale some people have the desire/impulse to molest or hurt children. Some with the impulse don't act on it, because they also have other feelings which stop them (conscience or fear of getting caught).

    The ones who actually commit these horrific acts are the ones who also lack a sense of conscience or inhibition. This is the scary combination: Impulse to molest/hurt + lack of conscience/inhibition.

    Lack of conscience in itself does not mean someone will commit violent or horrific crimes though. There are plenty of self-serving people who lack conscience/inhibition, but don't have any urge to molest or hurt anyone. In this case, they will usually commit monetary crime - 'con men' are often in this category.

    I don't think any type of self-motivated crime can be compared with the nazis or war crimes, because crimes commited as part of a group/organisation or under orders have a completely different and more complex set of motivating factors, including obedience to authority and self-preservation.

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    Re: What separates us...

    What separates me from someone like that is not the fact that I don't torture, murder and rape little chldren. That's how you can tell I am different; what I want to know is what people think makes me different. (And everyone else who doesn't do that, of course.)

    As for conscience - is that what it is?

    I was just reading a Robert Crais novel - one of the characters says something like: "the difference between people and assholes is that when a person thinks about doing something terrible, they don't to it; an asshole thinks of doing it and just does it." "That's right" replies the other character "no impulse control."

    They're discussing something different from sustained infliction of pain and injury, but it made me think.

    Let me ask a slightly different question: imagine yourself doing these things - at least, to baby P - and then ask yourself if you can think of ANY set of circumstances which might have led you to that point. I can't. I just can't. I bet you can't. So what is it that makes us different? Psychology? Childhood? Brain chemistry? Genetics?

    He's been called a 'beast' and a 'monster' and 'evil'. But what made him like that?

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    Re: What separates us...

    I once asked the head of Cafcass in Wales, the Children and Families Conciliation and Support Service (- why in Wales? Because I attended a Families Need Fathers meeting whilst working down there) whether he could ever envisage contact between himself and his children not being in their best interests?

    He gave me what I believe was a disingenuous reply saying "If I was abusing them, then contact with my children wouldn't be in their best interests" (why disingenuous you might ask, because he suggested or introduced the idea of "harm" to the children, whilst the legal standard used to justify exclusion of a father/non-resident parent is simply a judgement on the balance of the child's interests, and are we really expected to believe a man charged with responsibility for ensuring the welfare of children in Wales could imagine abusing his own children?).

    Anyway, I am very pleased to say that my fellow campaigners at the meeting didn't let him get away with his answer and attempt at blurring of the distinctions.

    Moving on though to what bad things we are all capable of I have some insights myself, and contradictory thoughts.

    On the one hand I feel I had amazing tolerance for anything my own daughter did during the ten years of contact I managed to sustain with her following the marriage break up. I don't think I could have had that feeling towards any other child who wasn't my own. The ability to withstand the challenges and annoyances that went on as she tried to discover her boundaries and play me up (whilst myself and her mother couldn't or wouldn't effectively cooperate, and co-parent) were legendary I believe.

    However, I recently involved myself in a long running dispute about child contact between one of my sister's and her ex. (I have been trying to assist the father concerned to have contact with his daughter, especially as my niece is now showing signs of fairly serious illness, possibily largely caused by psychological factors). Anyway, in response my sister chose to verbally abuse me in a very aggressive and rather calculated way (doing it in front of our aged parents for example) and as a result I pushed her out of our parent's home. Having done this I did feel I had over stepped a line, and once having done so could imagine doing it again. Luckily this shouldn't happen again however, or the circumstances shouldn't arise again as each of us has declared (though I guess we don't mean it) that we are no longer sister and brother. We have met briefly since and both of us have chosen to be relatively pleasant and avoid any confrontation or dispute.

    I remain convinced that contact between my fourteen year old niece and her father would be in everyone's best interests, including my sisters ultimately (though she maintains "We don't need him" - referring to herself and her daughter, don't need the father's involvement).

    However, the point of telling you this story is to illustrate or suggest that I do feel anyone can be driven to do things that are out of character, or not what they would usually do. It isn't a defence for anyone abusing a child of course, because they could always remove themselves from that situation - no one forced "Baby P's" stepfather to live in the same house as the child did they? By the way I do get tired of the media portraying the terrible abuse in that case as being the responsibility of the "father" or blurring distinctions between stepfathers and natural fathers (especially as in this case the natural father is aggrieved as he was prevented from protecting his child I believe).

    I hope my "insights" are of some value to this discussion - one last maybe unrelated point though - I believe our Western ideology is at the heart of many failings in our family law, where promotion of self interest or the interests of the child above all else creates impossible dilemmas (for example legal experts say we parents all argue hypocritically when we ask for contact with our children in their best interests, as none of us can be totally unaware of the deletorious effects upon our own lives of losing contact with them).

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    Re: What separates us...

    Quote Originally Posted by Miss Flicts View Post
    What separates us? Our psychological set-up is different. For most of us, our personal set of urges/impulses does not include the urge to hurt/molest children, and does include a sense of conscience and ability to feel empathy.

    We are each a unique cocktail of ingredients and there are hundreds of unusual urges/impulses which most of us don't have, but occur in a small number of people. It's a big scale, from 'totally harmless' at one end, to 'totally horrific' at the other end.

    Unfortunately, at the horrific end of the scale some people have the desire/impulse to molest or hurt children. Some with the impulse don't act on it, because they also have other feelings which stop them (conscience or fear of getting caught).

    The ones who actually commit these horrific acts are the ones who also lack a sense of conscience or inhibition. This is the scary combination: Impulse to molest/hurt + lack of conscience/inhibition.

    Lack of conscience in itself does not mean someone will commit violent or horrific crimes though. There are plenty of self-serving people who lack conscience/inhibition, but don't have any urge to molest or hurt anyone. In this case, they will usually commit monetary crime - 'con men' are often in this category.

    I don't think any type of self-motivated crime can be compared with the nazis or war crimes, because crimes commited as part of a group/organisation or under orders have a completely different and more complex set of motivating factors, including obedience to authority and self-preservation.


    A good thread - and a question that we could sorely do with answering in society as a whole.

    The fact is that impulses (we've got the other thread on paedophiles as well of course) vary so much. Then add to this that some parts of society lack any structured setting of social boundaries or sense of responsibility and the 'cocktail' Miss Flicts mentions can simply become very toxic.

    When my son Douglas (now 16) was just months old he had 'colic' and for a period of about 3 months he would cry for most of the day it seemed. I'd come home from work and take Douglas from my wife so she could get a rest. One week was really bad for the little guy, he screamed for hours and nothing soothed him. I even took him for a long drives in the car in the night to see if the motion would soothe him but no. By the end of the week, one night at around 0400 I was completely drained and just wanted to shut him up, and my own feelings started to lead to anger towards Douglas. Now thankfully for me I have boundaries and self-control so I didn't harm him - I woke my wife and went back out myself to sleep in the car for a couple of hours - but that week taught me how even a well-balanced person could be driven over the edge. I always wonder how I might have behaved that night if my own experiences had been different growing up that had given me a different view on right and wrong behaviour.

    I've got another friend right now whose son suffered oxygen starvation at birth and who has lived with the impact of a son that medically has little control over his impulses. The result is some shocking behaviour even although my friend has been very careful in how she has brought her son up to try and compensate for his lower impulse threshold. He is doing better now, the many years of constant re-inforcement of good behaviour is having an effect, but what might have been the case if he'd not been so carefully brought up?

    So, what separates us? A combination of inherited and learned facets of behaviour means that the vast majority of us could never inflict the kinds of harm that we read about in the press. I do wonder though in a society where boundaries, self-control and personal responsibility seem to be eroding what things will be like in 50 years...............

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  11. #11
    Registered User Miss Flicts's Avatar
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    Re: What separates us...

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    What separates me from someone like that is not the fact that I don't torture, murder and rape little chldren. That's how you can tell I am different; what I want to know is what people think makes me different. (And everyone else who doesn't do that, of course.)

    As for conscience - is that what it is?

    I was just reading a Robert Crais novel - one of the characters says something like: "the difference between people and assholes is that when a person thinks about doing something terrible, they don't to it; an asshole thinks of doing it and just does it." "That's right" replies the other character "no impulse control."

    They're discussing something different from sustained infliction of pain and injury, but it made me think.

    Let me ask a slightly different question: imagine yourself doing these things - at least, to baby P - and then ask yourself if you can think of ANY set of circumstances which might have led you to that point. I can't. I just can't. I bet you can't. So what is it that makes us different? Psychology? Childhood? Brain chemistry? Genetics?

    He's been called a 'beast' and a 'monster' and 'evil'. But what made him like that?
    Great quote about Impulse Control, but of course you only need to control the impulses you actually have. Most of us never have the impulse to rape a toddler, so we don't need to control that urge.

    So where does that kind of impulse/urge come from? Bit of a mystery. There does seem to be a critical age in boys where sexual focus gets 'set'. This is the age where fetishes often get 'fixed' because the developing sexual feeling is associated with a certain object, experience or idea which was there at that time. That may be why some sexual abuse victims grow up to be abusers themselves. It's just a theory though - impossible to prove or disprove.

    I think generally the way people feel and behave is a combination of brain chemistry (which is partly genetic but also affected by many other factors) and learned behaviours/responses, which are down to the environment during development.

    It's also important to remember that what we call our 'personality' is not static or 'set'. It can be affected very quickly by changes in brain chemistry. There are some areas of the brain which are known to cause radical loss of inhibition if they are damaged or diseased. The patient loses their ability to understand social 'rules' and simply acts on their basic impulses. This often means grossly inappropriate sexual behaviour in normal company. Very distressing for the family to see this in someone who was previously their respected and completely normal family member.

    On the 'conscience' topic...I hate the word because it has no scientific meaning, but there is no other single word which can be substituted. It's a concept which makes my brain ache because it's so complex!

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    Registered User Isis's Avatar
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    Re: What separates us...

    Quote Originally Posted by grahamg View Post
    I believe our Western ideology is at the heart of many failings in our family law, where promotion of self interest or the interests of the child above all else creates impossible dilemmas
    Why is it a failing to promote the interests of the child above all else?

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