Stiffen penalties for abductors
by Rawly Bransom
editor-in-chief

Almost daily we hear about a child being abducted or murdered.
When I was a child, my parents simply told me not to get in a car with strangers.
I had no fear of someone taking me, or any of the kids, out of the bedroom window. We could play outside for hours without parents watching over our shoulders.
In most cases, the abductor is someone who knows the child. In the rest, someone screams out the word pedophile, but pedophilia accounts for only a small portion of the cases.
Pedophilia, a psychological term, describes an individual who has an uncontrollable attraction to prepubescent children, usually 8-12.
According to psychologists, the condition is not curable and can be only partially controlled.
True pedophiles desire a relationship with the child. They cannot have a relationship with an adult because their emotional development remains at a child’s level.
However, in a few cases, a controversial method of chemically reducing the amount of testosterone has been used, resulting in slowed sexual desires.
Equivalent to a chemical castration, the treatment, many experts say, probably will never be common.
The only way to stop a pedophile is his isolation from children.
In cases where rape is involved, those who commit the crime can rarely be rehabilitated.
Psychologists almost all agree that rape is rarely about sexual gratification. It is about power.
The actual act of sex is not what the rapists desire. So castration, chemical or physical, cannot stop the act. In fact, psychologists say long-term therapy is the only possible treatment, and even then a cure is almost impossible. These individuals will act again if released.
To stop the trend, we need to remove these people from society. They need to be locked up permanently or, in extreme cases, executed.
By releasing pedophiles and rapists, we perpetuate the problem, and we must be accountable for putting our own children at risk.
We worry more about transgressors’ rights than our children’s rights.
We need stricter laws and punishments to take perpetrators out of society. Otherwise, children will pay the price.