Castration Is Not The Answer

The disgusting miscarriage of justice this morning in the Canadian sentencing of the pedophile monster Graham James has sparked a lot of outrage and hurt. He got two years in prison for over a hundred rapes of teen boys, four of whom I know about; not sure how many victims James hurt. I wasn’t strong enough to let this essay see the light of day when it was written. With the comments of cutting James’s balls off being uttered by people who feel as angry and betrayed by Judge Carlson’s hand-slap sentence as I do, I had to post this in response. Personally, I hope James is harmed in prison; but castration doesn’t stop pedophiles from harming children.

WARNING, this essay contains abuse triggers for some survivors.
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In the realm of advocacy fighting for an end to child rape and abuse, and most prevalent in the realm of Twitter, I come across statements of intense emotion from people who are horrified by pedophiles. A report of Jerry Sandusky, under house arrest for 50 counts of pedophilia accusations, spoke of Sandusky wanting to be able to visit his grandchildren. Why anyone would allow this man to see ANY children, ever again, boggles the mind. Yet in this same report, legal folks are arguing about allowing Sandusky to sit on his back porch – when his property happens to face the property of an elementary school. I think that monster needs to have his porch ruled off-limits, but I’m not at all surprised he chose a home next to that school. One response to that report that I saw is a common one, that Sandusky should have had his balls removed years ago. While I can understand and agree with the outrage expressed and the vengeance desired, there is an issue of terrible importance that this whole exchange brings to mind:

Pedophiles, rapists, abusers; these people don’t need testicles or a penis to rape and abuse other people. They can manage just fine with everyday household tools and appliances, or medical equipment.

First off, not all offenders are male. Female offenders can use tools or objects, or their bodies, to rape and abuse. If anybody reading this thinks a woman can’t rape a man or a boy (or another female) you’d be wrong. If you believe a boy can be “initiated into sex” by his “hot” female teacher, and that he should feel proud or lucky, or that he won’t feel any bad affects from the act, you’d be wrong, too. Check out websites and books/articles on rape and child sex abuse for what adult female rape of a teen boy can do to that boy. It’s not pretty, or “lucky”.

Secondly, not all offenders have their genitals anymore. Chemical castration used to be an option for the courts (I’m not sure if this is still the case) and some offenders who claimed they wanted to stop harming others actually asked for this procedure. Studies showed that it wasn’t a perfect solution, either; some offenders had their criminal and horrid urges return over time. Other offenders had vasectomies, volunteered for or not, but not all of those men stopped their crimes. Some offenders have had their genitals removed (by accident or via vigilante revenge) yet those men still commit rape and abuse. How is this possible? Because the urge to harm others is not inside the sex organs – it is inside the mind.

Those who read my journal know that I am a survivor of incest, rape, abuse, and torture. My father trained, conditioned, and taught me from my first memories that I had been born in order to provide him with sex. The first time he raped me I was four years old, but that was not the first time he touched or penetrated my body. What is typically known as “grooming a child” to be a pedophile’s victim was not really necessary in my case. I was in a house with this man, raised to obey him, raised to believe I was his property and had no rights at all. Most of his fascination with torture came along when I was a teen, but as a child, if I didn’t obey or follow instructions/rules to the letter, I was “punished”. Some of these punishments resulted in my worst injuries, a few of which continue to handicap me to this day.

When times got tough, he used his genius wit and social skills to find and gather “clients”, and rented me to other pedophiles. He had a downstairs bedroom off of our living room set aside for this, and scheduled these men for convenient time slots. If they allowed him to watch, they got a discount.

Some of these “clients” I only saw once or a few times, but others became regulars, and my father started referring to them as his “club”. They were prominent and powerful men at the time and he was proud of the fact that he was their leader, because he owned what they all wanted, what he offered to them, without the risk of legal interference. I was trained and owned, so there was no need to abduct boys, no risk of being caught “grooming” their target victims, or acting out on their sick urges. In the privacy of our home, they could pay for exactly which deviant acts they wanted and commit them without fear.

None of these men were anything but horrible rapists and abusers to me, but the worst one was a man who never touched me with anything but his hands and teeth, and the tools and objects he brought with him. It was many “visits” later before I found out why he never raped me the way the others did. He said he needed to piss (they never used child-appropriate language, why would they?) and I almost felt relief because as humiliating as being sat in a tub and used as a lavatory was, it didn’t physically hurt. I was confused when he didn’t order me into the bathroom as a few of the others had done. Then he took down his pants and I was horrified. His genitals were missing. There was a small tube there in folds of skin, like a narrow straw. Now I know the word for “catheter” but I didn’t know anything about that then. He made me use the tube like a straw before bringing out his tools to hurt me. He told me a boy had done that to him, a teen boy. He said if I ever disobeyed, my father would let him do that to me.

This is why I cringe when I see comments like “cut off his balls”. I know the person saying it is simply expressing an outraged reaction to a horrible crime, and I empathize with their horror; but mine goes a lot deeper. I know that cutting off a pedophile’s genitals doesn’t stop them from raping and abusing children. It just makes them use a curling iron or beer bottle instead. Sometimes, it makes them a worse monster than they ever were when they could use their genitals to rape. This urge to harm, to rape, to destroy children – it is inside the pedophile’s diseased mind, not in their pants. Whatever method the judicial system decides to use now, or discovers in the future, to control or stop these monsters – removing or altering their genitals is not the way. It can make them want to destroy a child even more.

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 W.R.R. 2/8/2012
For all survivors of any form of rape or abuse. You are not alone. Speak out. Find your path to healing.

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