[ThomasC]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Most of the men in these grooming gangs are not mentally ill they're just abusers and rapists. They're not targetting pre-adolescent children, they're targetting teenage girls who have biologically reached the age of sexual maturity, but are nonetheless clearly not adults, are vulnerable, and easily groomed or manipulated which is precisely why we have an age of consent and statutory rape laws.

There's nothing to be gained by conflating statutory rapists and grooming gans like these with paedophilia, it simply is psychologically speaking not paedophilia, and in legal terms there's a clear distinction between child molestation (pre-pubescent children) and statutory rape (post-pubescent but under the age of consent).

That's not to say that one is more severe or worse than the other, that would be a separate debate, in this sense though I think it can inadvertantly DOWNPLAY the crimes of these men by saying that they have a mental illness or deviant compulsion that they can't control, rather than calling what they are; predators who target vulnerable young girls simply because they're more easily manipulated.

So you don't think somebody who rapes someone or abusers someone is mentally ill?

People often don't like to hear it because they let their own personal feelings way too heavily on such circumstances, but we would treat someone who has schizophrenia, for example, but not view them in the same light as a rapist or abuser.

Yes they are also predators and manipulators, but I also think they're mentally ill. Something is not right in their cognition to make them do such things in the first place.