Pedophilia

[Fireball]

In my country we had a recent event regarding a man that raped and killed a 15 years old girl that showed the incompetence of Romanian police and it's mysoginism. You can find an article about this written by the New York Times (search: romanian pedophile nyt on Google, 2nd link)

Now, a lot of people, including politicians, call for harsher penalties for pedophiles and rapists, but I think that harsher penalties just make us feel better for ourslevs and aren't actually helping the victims or preventing future casualties.

My take on this is to accept future pedophiles and repists in society before they make the crimes(it is obvious that if someone poses a threat to another person and we can't redress that behavior, we have to isolate them) in order to reduce the victims of such behaviors. As an example, you can take the purpatretors of such acts that are enlisted on sexual aggressor lists. This kind of measures don't really affect the number of victims and they apply social pressure on the purpatretors (a negative one), pressure which can lead to recidivism because the purpatretors feel that they can't do anything to redress themselves.

So maybe if we have a positive attitude and try to help them it would reduce the number of victims. I'm talking about prevention, the kind of situation that a friend of your can safely come to you and say, "I feel attracted to children" and you will try to help him.

What do you guys think about this? What is your take on this?

I think you are doing a pretty good job of keeping the topic on track and I suggest spelling out a little further the difference between:
Paedophilia
Hebephilia
Ephebophilia

The case you mention might relate to the latter but actually it could be any of the above since we don't know what's in the mind of the attacker.

Whichever it might be the crime itself was none of the above since none of those are illegal.  Or at least, not illegal in civilised countries... George Orwell taught us that thought-crimes should not be treated as crimes.

The crime is pederasty (and in this case murder).  

The issue is concerning self-control... countering the transition from thoughts to actions.

And it's the same question for many types of crime e.g. rape, but it's also a broader question about control over biological urges e.g. over-eating.

There are workarounds e.g. the burka and there are over-reactions e.g. castrate all males.

Reducing the stigma about being open about one's predilections would help but that requires major cultural change which in this case is impractical (people conflate paedophilia and pederasty all too often, even in this thread).  

A quicker workaround might involve producing a general-purpose Receptor Antagonist drug that anyone can get over-the-counter.  

Probably best not to market it as 'anti-pervert'... best to market it for its empowering, self-control benefits similar to those to help one stop smoking or over-eating.

There's also the deterrent angle.  A few public hangings of pederast-priests might do wonders.

Well, I'll be damned. I never went to lift the cover off the dictionary to tell the difference between pedophile and pederast! Thanks for that, DLJ. Post more, I get new directions in education from you.