I consider myself to be one of those gray people — someone who doesn’t see things in black and white. I can argue multiple sides of a problem, see differing points of view, and stand in other people’s shoes. I’ve grown past “He’s a good guy and he’s an evil doer.” In short, I’m an adult.
There is however, one thing for which I have absolutely, positively zero tolerance. I think this opinion of mine could possibly land me in the same category as people who own fifty guns (because it’s their right, god damn it) and who don’t think we should pay any taxes (because who really needs roads or fire departments). So here it goes: I believe that if you sexually assault someone, it proves you are unfit to live in society. Therefore, you must be permanently removed from the society. And I do mean permanently. I don’t think a person who kidnaps someone and rapes them can be rehabilitated. I don’t think pedifiles can ever stop being pedifiles. I don’t think long-term counseling, police surveillance, medication, religious epiphany, hypnosis, meditation, or even chemical or physical castration can stop these people. And I think, as a society, we are pathetic wusses for letting them get away with doing a few years in prison after they destroy another person and then unleashing them with little more than our fingers crossed.
So unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve heard the story of Jaycee Dugard, who was kept as a sex slave for 18 years and gave birth to her captor’s children in a shack when she was 14, without a doctor, while his bitch of a wife, I don’t know, hung out and watched Oprah. I cannot come up with a severe enough punishment for these people. It doesn’t exist. What makes me really crazy is that her captor never should’ve been out on the street in the first place. Again — if you are capable of kidnapping someone from a grocery store parking lot, keeping them in a warehouse for a few hours, and raping them, you are unfit to live with the rest of us.
The problem now is coming up with a sensible solution. My friend says that putting them all on an island is too kind. Perhaps we could look into an island infested with a good deal of bugs and wild animals. Or maybe we could just fence off the entire state of Mississippi. I hear they’re having budget problems.
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.