The thing that struck me more than anything reading through this thread is the fact that for so many people the only right & proper reaction to such a horrific act of mindless brutality is to try to top it. Of course it's an emotive matter when incidents like this are brought to widespread public opinion - it's fukkin horrible, lashing out in that way to somebody so very young and ending her life in the most viciously meaningless way. I can understand anger, but what I can't understand is sustained anger and at such levels. Not just this particularly brutal case but whenever these thinga happen. It's one of few situations where not only do people feel justified in calling for not just stringing people up but torturing and maiming and anybody who suggests anything less than that is somehow in favour of murdering children/
So long as you realise your punishment for him comes from the same place as his punishment for her.
The fact so few do really is really quite concerning. None of us know exactly what happened in this case but it seems fairly clear that this individual lashed out in anger - and not for the first time it would appear - but this time didn't hold back at all. A moment of fury over nothing. The level of anger directed towards him is quite extraordinary though - not cos it's not perfectly natural to feel that way but this is not a moment of fury it's... well it's several decades of tragic cases of messed up people killing children. I'm not for one moment suggesting this was anything less than what it was - may have been a moment of fury but seems they happened fairly often. Of course a man like that should be locked up for a very long time indeed and of course people feel shock, anger and disbelief, but tortured daily for life? Burnt alive? And those at the less extreme end of the scale.
Is it genuine belief in black and white and good and evil and that's all there is to it? Cos if not some people really could do with thinking a little on what they're actually saying. I have no interest in trying to mitigate the horrendous nature of his actions but however unthinkably brutal those actions were I don't imagine it was premeditated in any way. That doesn't make it any better cos he was clearly violent towards the girl regularly enough to have left a number of prior - and not insignificant - injuries on her body. That's still a different thing to premeditated violence. I rather doubt he thought much beyond more or less a reflexive or instinctive reaction to anger and frustration - there's not one of us who doesn't do the same on much, much smaller scale. This is why we have a system of degrees of murder - the more thought and planning involved the more callous the crime is perceived to be. And when you add in what comes perilously close to almost gleeful wallowing in fantasies of what you'd do if only you could lay hands on him...
His reported behaviour seems really very odd indeed - armchair psycholohy of course but he has psychopath written all over him from what is reported in the articles. Barely seems to have any real grasp on quite how extreme his actions were and little to no signs of understanding of the effect and consequences of those actions at all. There really doesn't seem to be any feeling of any form about any of it - can't even be bothered to get off the phone whilst there's a two year old girl broken in a heap on the floor. It's as close to an emotional reaction as I can spot amongst the rest of his behaviour and attitude (what was reported anyway - and for once I can't really see that there's any real reason to be lying or covering up all the great work he did for charity or whatever). A bit irritated cos a paramedic suggested he perhaps has more important things going on than chatting on the phone. The reported extracts from his supposed confession are very telling - you or I wouldn't be able to write that cos there is a difference between that person and most other people. Nothing to do with inherent "evil" though.
To me that is not "evil" that's somebody who just didn't come out right for some unfortunate mixture of genetics and fucked up childhood I'd hazard a guess at. Psychopathy is not something you can opt in to or out of - the structure of the brain is different and the bits that prevent the rest of us from behaving much the same just aren't there and functioning. That doesn't mean he shouldn't have received the life sentence cos not having any real understanding of how others feel doesn't mean you are not fully aware of what other people feel about things like booting toddlers across rooms. In a sense I would say he - and those like him - are victims of a kind too. They were dealt a shitty hand they - usually for a number of reasons - never had any chance of being able to do anything about. It's not like you can go to classes or counselling to grow vital areas of the brain you happened to be born without is it? Yes, the majority of people in that unfortunate situation will probably just end up being bankers or politicians and the like, but a certain number willl have the nurture side of the equation shit on them from a great height too - and when they would be in the "innocent children" category too.
Obviously I don't know this particular person's history but I don't think anybody has never noticed that when that particular form of brain... will call it difference... although also seems to be plenty damaging in that other psychopathy-friendly career choice of being more or less just as ruthless only in a situation where it's largely considered acceptahle and something to be proud of... but that aside, whether difference or damage when it combines with just a really shitty hand in general (childhood abuses of whichever form) there is a clear link to being at higher risk of growing up to do something like this. At what point did they get to choose that particular type of birth defect? Did they ask for it to be compounded by the type of childhood it seems this poor girl had to endure for her brief time here? It's not "evil" it's tragic - for all concerned.
The feeling most notably absent in any of these posts so far is compassion. Compassion for the girl, her family and all who knew her of course... and I also believe there should be some compassion for people who commit such horrific acts when there's precious little doubt about there being a bit missing if you were able to see inside their skull - which we can of course with CAT scans and the like and when you do that to psychopathic people (actual psychopaths not the more generic use of the term obviously) there really is a bit missing. It's not an excuse by any means, but it's certainly a part of the reason.
The reason we say children can't be fully held to blame for things they may get away with but no adult would is that it takes a fairly long time to really understand concepts of right and wrong in any meaningful sense. I'm not saying that people like this man who (perhaps... although I'd be gobsmacked if it wasn't the case) got hit with that double nature/nurture whammy don't know right from wrong cos they do, but it's one thing to know because you've been told and quite another to have never had the fundamental equipment to really feel it - to not really feel much of anything aside from irritation at somebody intterrupting your post-toddler kicking chatting on the phone. In such cases I'd suggest that person may have enough understanding to know what is and what is not considered acceptable behaviour, but they'll never know why and it's the why that's the real point. Responsible for their actions yes, but with no way of knowing how others actually feel as a consequence of those actions - not beyond an incredibly shallow amd superficial level of being able to see people's reactions but unable to empathise. We can though and seems to me rather perverse if we decide that certain groups of people don't deserve a little somewhere down the line because they are genuinenly incapable of imagining themseleves in another's shoes, I think it worth bearing in mind it's pure luck that we are we and he is he. We couild all be capable of such acts only we probably do have those mental brakes and we can empathise with others and we probably weren't horribly brutalised through our formative years. I wonder if there's really such a great difference between us otherwise.
i understand you were just angry.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
