General News Police chief commends dad who rearranged man's face for sexually abusing his son

I am the father of three, and in my imaginings, if something like that were to happen to any of my kids, I can very easily conjure up the kind of rage that this guy felt. In that mindset, I imagine all sorts of ways in which I could seriously hurt another human being.

It is inconceivable that I could ever forgive such a person. However, this is why there is a justice system; where a dispassionate examination of the facts needs to be done and where the cycle of violence from revenge is stopped in its tracks. Moreover, what if I were wrong? What if I hurt or even killed the wrong person?

All you need to do is examine any of the numerous countries where justice is a joke, where people have no faith that justice will be done. It's everyone for himself in that case. This cop's comments shows an extreme disrespect for the law he purports to uphold.

The rabbis of old said that without law, people would eat each other alive...

 

Good for him. The asshole deserved it.

 

Even with law, rapists abuse children.

 

Of course. The law is not there to prevent these tragedies, it is there to ensure that we deal with it justly; that justice be served publicly and properly. It can only serve a moral lesson to those who would perpetrate these outrages in future.

Whatever form justice takes, whether punitive as is our own western tradition or restorative as some are arguing is far better; justice itself is an absolute requirement for peace.

There is no peace in places where justice isn't properly taken care of.

 

As a dad, and a victim of abuse, if I ever caught ANYONE doing this to my boy, I'd need restraining. He doesn't deserve mercy.

Good for the dad, and I hope the boy gets the support he needs to heal the best

 

I am struggling to understand how you feel this way. First, we still live in a society governed by law, and I would argue that our legal structure is far from a precipitous decline. Second, I am puzzled by your assertion that we lose empathy. For whom are we losing empathy? It appears that everyone here has responded in a way that suggests they viscerally understand the gravity of a crime like this. Their response could only come from empathy in the first place. For if none of us understood how the father or the son might have been feeling, we wouldn't come up with a way of saying this behavior was wrong or harmful.

If your argument is that we're losing empathy for perpetrators of violence, I would challenge you to demonstrate how such empathy would be socially functional.

First, I'm not really concerned with our status as human beings in this conversation. The guy sexually abused a kid. The only people whose feelings or status as human beings matter in this conversation are the kid and his father. Those of us who responded the way we have responded out of concern. We did not respond in order to try and impress those around us about our moral certitude.

Second, my question is, what does realizing the guy is a human being gain us in the situation? How does it lead us to a response that is going to heal and transform everybody else? With sexual offenders having the rate of recidivism that they do, I am having difficulty understanding what is emotionally recoverable about this guy that we need to take seriously as a society.

He's an emotional vandal.

 

So are you saying if the father had just restrained the guy until the cops came he would be a bad or average father? That if the father had not reacted violently, or had done only enough to incapacitate the criminal he would somehow have been less empathetic towards his son or deserving of criticism?

 

I think after studying law I always think these things should be left to the justice system, I understand people getting behind the Dad but I don't condone violence. Abuse dealt with by abuse is just a horrible mixture, and although he may deserve it I would rather teach my kids that violence is not an answer to anything, if I had been raped I wouldn't want some violent battery going on downstairs. I don't know, I trust in our system and I don't like taking it into our own hands.

 

I've struggled on how to respond to this, for a number of reasons. I suppose I should start by saying that I think violence in this situation is appropriate. I think the father had the right to defend his son, to stop the rape, to detain the rapist until police arrived through violence if necessary, and to defend himself or his son with violence if the rapist attempted to physically attack or defend himself. So, I think there is a legitimate self-defense argument to be made here.

However, there is also a grey area. When does self-defense cease being about defense and become more about vigilante justice? I can certainly forgive the father for his anger, and even his actions in this case. However, looking at this guys face it's hard not to come to the conclusion that he was beaten within an inch of his life. It's hard for me to believe that this amount of violence was necessary for self-defense, and so I think the line was crossed. That being said, I can also understand the heat of the moment and how anger and passion can get the better of someone. So, I think the police did the right thing in not arresting him. Sadly, as I think he crossed that line I can't actively praise what he did.

There is also something else that bothers me about this case. According to the police the rapist has had sex with the kid multiple times, and the kid appears to have been groomed. So, this wasn't a situation where he was actively resisting, but a situation in which he was actively participating in the sexual act. This is important to me, because this means it could have easily been an eighteen year old female raping him instead.

So, imagine that situation. You have a father who walks in on his eleven year old son having sex with an eighteen year old female. Does he react the same way? Does he beat her within an inch of her life, and does her face end up looking like that?

Let me be clear here, I think in that situation, the father is still justified in violence. He has the right to attack her to defend his son, he has the right to use violence to restrain her, and he has the right to use violence to defend himself or his son should she try to fight back. So, my position is the same regardless of whether or not it's a male or female doing the raping.

What bothers me, and this is really something only the father knows, is how much of that beating did that guy receive because he was a guy? How much of it was because another guy was having sex with his son and turning him into a little faggot? That's something that bothers me, because I can't answer that question. However, I have the gut suspicion that had it been a female in that room instead of a man, she would not end up looking like that. And that bothers me.

Hell, if it had been a woman instead of a man, would the police have arrested the father for beating her within an inch of her life? My hunch is yes.

It bothers me for the obvious reasons, but it also bothers me because his eleven year old son witnessed it. Eleven years old is old enough to know if you're sexually attracted to other guys or not. We don't know how much coercion was involved here. It's quite possible that his son could be gay, and could have even established the sexual relationship himself (for example using the various hook-up apps or something like Craigslist). We do not know. This information is going to come out in a trial. It's possible that the young boy in this situation could be outed, and he has just witnessed his father beat another guy within an inch of his life for having sex with him. As his father was beating him he wasn't silent, what are the chances he was yelling anti-gay slurs, and his son was witnessing all of this? I'm guessing those odds are pretty high. Imagine being a (potentially gay) eleven year old, your father walking in on you having sex, beating the guy having sex with you to within an inch of his life, all the while yelling anti-gay slurs. That's likely what this kid witnessed.

It's easy to look at this situation and say rapist = bad, he had it coming. However, the situation is more complicated than that, and depending on how things go with the trial things could get much worse for the young victim in this case.

 

Raping an 11 year-old, I would as far to say death penalty

 

I'm not sure he should be commended, but I'm not going to condemn the guy for seeing red in that situation.

 

The idea of forbidding violence and leaving the situation strictly to the justice system is strictly applicable in a world were offenders are exclusively passive and will surrender to a home arrest. Maybe I am of the few who has never lived in a household where spare rope, tasers, or handcuffs were readily available.

I do not advocate violence. I was not in this house at the time of the crime. I am not aware of how much retaliation was necessary with dealing with this offender and how much was not; however, this concept of nobility when dealing with situations of rape is ridiculous. Victims are shamed for not being immune to natural psychological responses of panic, aggression, and detachment in times of extreme distress because they should have thought more clearly and merely retaliated with a fraction of their force rather than all of it. Certainly, in the case that any of us in this thread or our children were raped, we would know what is a socially acceptable about of punches to throw in the moment.

Children have been able to accurately identify there sexualities as young as five. Whether the children was homosexual and aware is irrelevant. Children are coerced into sexual activity by members of a sex they don't find attractive on a regular basis. Neurologically, the vast advantage that an eighteen year-old would have over an eleven year-old makes this a heinous crime regardless of how it's sliced. Speculation that this eleven year-old, homosexual or otherwise, was soliciting sex from men on hook-up apps or Craigslist is beyond a stretch and the theory of the father being homophobic does not minimize the actions of the rapist. Why we are attempting to propose theories to minimize his actions is certainly beyond me.

 

I honestly think self-defense, even to the point of killing the attacker (If It's necessary) Is a good thing. The thing is that we should be able to defend ourselves from harm. You can call the cops during an attack; but what can they do? They might not get there in time and the victim will already have been raped or dead. And in some cases they won't even do anything to help. This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I would say I'm more 'conservative' when it comes to this topic; criminals sacrifice their lives and their safety when they choose to harm someone else. An eye for an eye does make the world blind, I do agree, but that doesn't mean we should stand and do nothing for a victim that COULD be saved. People talk so much about criminal rights and criminals being people, but what about the rights of the person they raped/killed?

 

I would argue that a rapist has surrendered his humanity. Unfortunately, that view is not shared by the current legal establishment.

The Supreme Court has ruled against the death penalty for rape, twice. The first case was Coker v. Georgia. The second case, and one the most related here, is Kennedy v. Louisiana. There seems to be considerable sexist inertia on the Court. We've had over thirty years for the Court to see the light, but they failed to. It seems to be a matter of settled law.

 

I'm not sure if that's a response to me or not, though I think I already addressed this point when I said:

Like I said there, I think the father's anger is understandable, and the heat of the moment passions can lead to situations such as this. I'm certainly not making the claim that he should be somehow condemned for not showing restraint. On the contrary, I am saying that the police made the right decision in not arresting him, because if there was a "crime" committed here it was one where passion overtook someone in the act of defending their child against a rapist.

I don't see how you can take from my statement that I am minimizing the act of the rapist. My statement has nothing to do with him, because in the end that part of the ordeal is over and done with. He's going to go to jail for a very long time. My concern is focused on where it should be which is on the victim, and the additional harm he may have sustained as a result of what transpired and the future harm he may yet endure as this continues to play out. That's exactly where our concern should be focused, not on the rapist in question, but rather the victim.

Everyone is so busy slapping the father on the back, telling him good job, and condemning the rapist in question. Meanwhile, no one seems to be stopping to think how this might have played out from the perspective of the victim, and how he might have been additionally harmed in how the situation was handled. Our goal should be to protect him, and to minimize any additional harm and pain he might receive over this ordeal. That's the right and correct thing to do in this situation.

 

Self defence or performing a citizens arrest is certainly one thing, it looks like the father in this case went way beyond that though, instead using unnecessary force.

It is one thing to knock someone out so they do not evade capture, its another to try to break the guy's jaw or strangle him (which appears to have happened from the photos).

It was the father's personal choice to attack him in this manner and it does not surprise me that he did, but don't try to turn this into a self-defence argument, this just wasn't the case in this situation.

 

Why is it that we even have to consider the force unnecessary?

 

I agree with 741852963, interesting name btw, while the father's behavior was justified in a way, i think fighting violence with violence is wrong like a cycle of hatred that never stops, feels odd that people were congratulating this too, feels like just another way for violence to be seen as a viable option, ultimately in some cases i know people can hardly think straight

 

This has been going since the kid was eight so why didn't the kid day to his dad "dad there is this freak that keeps touching me rearrange his face "?

 

I think a better question to ask is what amount of force is considered necessary? My response to that question is as much as is needed to stop the attack, subdue the attacker, and get help. That can include anything from a few mild punches to death, depending on the situation.

If I had to make an educated guess based on these photos, the father in question knocked the guy out, and proceeded to stomp and kick his face and body. It looks as if he had pushed it a even a hair further he might be going on trial for manslaughter.

In my opinion, people are looking at this through the wrong perspective. They're looking at things through the eyes of the father, but the father isn't the victim here. His son is the victim. As a result, his son should be our concern, and we should be looking at things through his eyes.

And if we do that, we have to realize that his eleven year old son witnessed his father beating this guy within an inch of his life. We don't know the circumstances or situation surrounding the boy, but I can't imagine that anything that transpired there was beneficial or helpful to him. In fact, I fear that it may have been further traumatizing. To what extent the trauma exists would be based on the situations surrounding what happened, the overall facts of the case, and how things played out afterward and continue to play out in the future if this goes to trial.