Punishment must be strict and inevitable. But simply imprisoning a person and releasing them after a few years is not enough. Treatment, risk assessment, and supervision after the sentence are necessary.
There are victims, who are incomprehensibly many. 1 in 5 children in Europe experience some form of sexual violence during their lifetime. In Lithuania last year, 422 children were officially recorded – more than one every day. 4 out of 5 sexual offenders are not random strangers, but people who should be authorities to them.
It should be separately emphasized what level of perversion it is to try to justify a clergyman who committed a crime against a child – a person preaching about the importance of spiritual purity, who, having stepped down from the pulpit, primarily destroys the pure soul of the child with his own insignificance. As a believer, I cannot understand how some people can appeal to forgiveness. This is not forgiveness, but indifference – both towards the victim and the entire religious community.
As a father of 3 children, I would dare to risk guessing that most parents would agree – there are not too many measures in such areas, rather too few.
A register of sexual offenders – not only concerning children but also adults – should be an undisputed matter. A national database with the obligation to provide a certificate when employed in any job, providing any services to children, vulnerable people, victims who have already experienced violence – is a completely straightforward requirement to implement.
Equally straightforward to implement, even by automated means, is informing local police departments about, for example, such an offender moving to one or another region. As well as providing a separate protocol for periodic, preventive monitoring of such offenders. Do they resist the temptation to deliberately go to children’s playgrounds, schools, kindergartens, youth gathering places?
Attempts to artificially create opposition regarding medical castration measures seem stranger to me. Apart from the perversion manifested in seeking humanism at the expense of children’s welfare from child rapists, it also contradicts basic logic. Medical castration is a punishment only if the pedophile is a conscious criminal – like a thief. If the pedophile is a patient, as many say, then curbing his uncontrollable impulses is primarily help for the patient. In South Korea, where such practice is applied, statistics show that medical castration combined with psychotherapy reduces the risk of repeat offenses about 8 times.
We should also separately talk about cases where sexual exploitation continues for years. In such cases, the public interest requires not only identifying the criminals but also a large-scale investigation into who, how, and why it was not uncovered for many years.
I think Lithuania cannot afford to argue about which measure is the most effective, because even the whole package will not fully stop crimes. However:
Individual risk assessment +
medical treatment +
psychotherapy +
offender registry and clear monitoring protocols = is probably the least we can do about it.
And most importantly – let us not forget the victims, because punishment for criminals often leaves not even a scratch, on the contrary, it is on the long path of the victim’s healing, which usually does not end throughout life. Considering this, even with the current deficit of mental health services, victims of sexual violence should receive these services free of charge. For life.
Because a frequent victim will carry guilt or shame inside for life, often both. But these people should never have any reason to feel either guilt or shame, because they disappointed no one – society disappointed them, because it was not their job to create a safe space for themselves, especially when it comes to children.
Read more Žalgiris players took on firefighter duties: ‘I’m glad they let me try out the hose’
