The rape of a child destroys that child's life.

i'm sure that there are a number of child abuse survivors who would disagree

anyone for tennis?

This is really offensive to people who have been raped as children or have friends who were.

Yes, raping a child is bad. And yes it can cause a great deal of harm. But that doesn't mean their life is over. And it doesn't mean they can't have a good life.

Children, even abused ones, grow up. And they are people too.

I had a very close friend who was raped as a child by a coach from school. The rapes went on for three or four years until my friend's family moved away from that school. He hated NAMBLA with a passion that pushed him to the edge of speechlessness, but he was willing to talk about the subject of the sexual abuse of children, not his own event (something I pieced together), but in general and more theoretically.

By age twenty he was on a roller coaster of prescribed drugs for manic depression, including lithium, and by age 30 he died of arterial blockage, after a decade of suicidal thoughts, not taking care of himself, and supreme under-achievement. (He sailed through undergraduate organic chemistry in an enviable way, but couldn't finish his degree: he kept dropping out of school because of depression, mostly working as a night security guard.)

I don't see how anyone could be an activist against child sexual abuse, or even honor the memory of such a friend, while being unable or unwilling to discuss the subject publicly and rather generally, for fear of being "really offensive." If the world is a nasty enough place where such things can happen to children then talking about such things has to be possible for there to be hope of stopping such things. Repression and censorship surely cannot be the answer.

The claim as is is voted on so far to mean that the child will never transcend the event. Fair enough. The question remains of just how "bad" the raping of a child is--what is the nature of the "great deal of harm" that is incurred and how should society respond: where do we rank such a crime on the list of crimes against another? Ultimately I am interested in reaching conclusions about the criminal penalties that should apply to those who rape children.

Can a child surviving such an event live a normal life? Of course, but I know better than to pretend that the achievement of such normality is to be expected, is something that is par for the course, and that being able to successfully and fully put such a thing behind one is simply a matter of growing up. There's more to it than that and a great deal of risk.

Leading a normal life is not par for the course, but being told that your rape destroyed your life is not helpful and I consider it rather cruel. My main problem is the generalization. Yes, this will be true for some people, but there are rape survivors, even those who were raped as children, who do not define their identity by that event.

Also, one of the fascinating things discussed sometimes in psychology is that some people do not get seriously damaged by things you would expect to have harm them. They cope quite well for no clear reason with massive traumas.

This doesn't mean that people who do not (which is more normal) should be expected to or that harming them is in any way more justifiable, but it means it is very rude and possibly hurtful to discard their experiences as any less real.

I'm fine with saying that the rape of a child is a hideous offense. In fact, I think any rape is a pretty hideous offense. I just don't like people deciding for other people when their life is destroyed. This is a common thing to run across both in the areas of abuse and in the areas of disability. Lots of people will say that if such and such happens to you, then your life is over or worthless or they'd rather be dead. And it is often incredibly hurtful to those who have actually had it happen to them and are trying to have the best life that they can and feel that they still have a worthwhile life to lead.

XISTH:

I would consider it cruel to tell a rape victim to his or her face that his or her life is over. But I'm writing a claim on Jyte, which is not, to my knowledge, a closed support group for rape victims.

And I do appreciate the "futile pursuit of happiness" sort of research that says that having something happen to you that is conventionally thought to be terrible can turn out to be not so bad after all, but then are we saying that crime victims, victims of rape in particular, should not expect the criminals to pay a debt to society? How large a debt should that be? And when measuring that debt, how do we calculate the pain and suffering of a victim who has been robbed of his childhood and had his future prospects put at great risk? (It's interesting to consider what Daniel Gilbert's research could mean for criminal law or for the nature of crime--how much real harm is done to the victim and shouldn't punishments be lightened accordingly?)

Jyte is open to the public and thus is likely to be read by rape victims. So, it's not as if anything you say won't directly affect rape victims. There are enough people on Jyte that it is statistically unlikely. But beyond that, would you not say it because it is unhelpful and cruel or because you don't believe it is always true?

I do believe that rape does sometimes destroy someone's life. It can do that. But I do not believe it always does, and this claim feels too absolutist to me.

I do not believe that the fact that someone can lead a good life after a horrible crime is a reason to judge the crime lightly. If we can improve treatment for such victims, we should. If we link the two too closely it would make improved treatments require us to consider is a lesser crime. That doesn't make sense to me. To me the problem is that it is wrong, not that it does long-term damage. It remains just as wrong if the person recovers in a week.

In the sense that rape can be a catalyst for (ongoing) suffering, yes it can destroy a part of a persons life, more-so if that person is a child.

As a public venue Jyte can at least expect to have on its pages any sort of material that could find its way into a newspaper (and all the more so because of a loose editorial standard on Jyte) or onto a television for that matter. As such, discussions about child rape and a range of claims about child rape are as likely at various times to find their way into responsible newsprint: I don't think a letter or longer opinion piece that included a claim about the completely destructive power of rape over a child's life would have that much difficulty getting published in major newspapers; I'm not even convinced that most editorial page editors would bat an eye at publishing such pieces, provided the standards of decorum and reasoning in public writing are maintained.

In answer to your first question, I would say both: telling a victim of childhood rape that his or her life chances are nil is of course neither helpful nor a given, no matter how pessimistic one might be about those chances. In the description of my claim (cf. "almost assuredly") and in my comments (see the last paragraph of my first comment), I think I've made clear that I believe and recognize that people can recover from such events. To that extent, the claim is inaccurate and should be recast.

I agree that our capacities to help people recover should not count in the criminal's favor, though I can imagine the arguments coming in from some quarters: "If there is no lasting harm, how bad can the crime truly be?" This leads to some of my earlier questions, in particular, "what is the nature of the 'great deal of harm' that is done" to the child? You say that the crime of raping a child is "wrong," without regard to duration of damage. Why? Specifically, what makes it wrong?

And again, I'm looking to fit a punishment to the crime.

Well, I don't believe in punishment, so I don't care.

Also, most thefts don't cause any lasting harm, but we don't care about that when we set sentences. You get the same sentence for robbing a rich person who won't be particularly affected as robbing someone who is just scraping by. So, why should it matter in the slightest for rape?

I blame the Daily Mail.