[Urban Cragou]

Originally Posted by Mystic Mock

Oh my viewpoint is definitely more of a black and white one when it comes to convicted child molesters.

Ironically I can feel some form of sympathy for murderers, as normally they have been dealt a bad hand that can take them down the path that they go down.

Of course it doesn't justify their crimes, but I do hold the belief that anyone can kill if pushed hard enough, so I could still maybe see some humanity left in a murderer that might make me feel a slight sympathy towards them if one of them were to commit suicide, and they had a sympathetic past.

I actually don’t disagree with the bit about murder. I do feel like if a good half of people were confronted with the person who murdered their best friend or raped a family member (to use two examples that would even remotely-warrant such extreme measures) and a gun was concurrently-present (and the assurance that they wouldn’t get sent down guaranteed) the hardened criminal wouldn’t make it out alive. I’m not sure I’d condone the act of murder per se under any circumstances (not that my opinion would hold much weight in the course of justice either way) but in those circumstances I’d definitely be able to sympathise with them if they attempted suicide. But that’s something I’d kind of strive to do anyway. I know my thread title (specifically the word “justified”) kind of implies a black-and-white approach to sympathy (I should’ve picked a better turn-of-phrase, t.b.f.) but I dunno. I’m just a bit cautious about writing off entire groups of people when it comes to suicide considering that paedophilic acts are often the result of mental illness (bipolar mania and also certain types of schizophrenia) and things like that can often result in impulsive attempts at suicide so there’s just stuff like that to think about in the grey area. It’s a bit like people with certain depressive psychoses drowning themselves and their families under the delusional belief that they’d be putting not just themselves but their loved ones as well out of their misery and news stories making them sound like remorseless monsters when really they’re just very, very ill. It just breaks my heart that people with the most severe forms of mental illness aren’t always given the sympathy and support they need if they comment heinous actions (however unjustifiable in and of themselves per se) as a direct result of their illness. In theory I’d love to be able to say people who sexually-abuse children shouldn’t be sympathised with at any costs if they don’t have acute mental health issues at play (and they do make me sick regardless) but I just feel like it’s a tricky call to make in an absolute sense.

(A congrats is in order if you managed to make it through that wall of text.)