A Good, Just Society Would Execute Pedophiles

Think back to the last time you listened to the nightly news and heard a story about an eight year old girl that was missing for two weeks, and then found in a shallow grave with evidence of having been raped. The grave turned out to be in the back yard of a “person of interest” identified within a day of the child’s disappearance. Why? Because he was a registered pedophile.

When you heard that story, did you wish our society had tried harder to help the child rapist-turned-murderer? Or did you wish we were a stronger, less tolerant society?

I believe we would improve our society by executing pedophiles.

My reasoning is simple. I’m not concerned with whether its possible to heal a pedophile and turn him into a model citizen. It isn’t. I’m not concerned with people caught in the system who are accused of being pedophiles because he was eighteen and she was seventeen. I’m not concerned with whether the death penalty deters other would-be pedophiles from committing the act. I’ve read that it doesn’t, but no matter. Lastly, I’m also not concerned with all of the good stuff that a pedophile can add to society, when he’s not busy raping children.

(That bullshit apologism for Joe Paterno really got to me. The man loved his football program more than the sexual innocence of dozens of young boys. He valued a game more than the frail innocence that was being routinely stolen in his hallowed locker-room showers. But his fans want to talk about all he accomplished, as if it’s possible to quarantine the part of Joe Paterno who passed the moral buck and was thereby an accomplice to evil. That’s akin to saying “Charles Manson, sure he’s a murderer, but…” There is no but. He’s Charles Manson. Yes, an act of pure evil wipes away all the good you did. One “oh shit” destroys a thousand “attaboys,” especially when the oh shit is ignoring a child rapist in your midst. It’s okay to judge, really–and if you lose that ability, then what separates you from evil? How do you know?)

I’m not concerned with any of the above arguments against executing pedophiles. Here’s why: did you hear about the little boy who walked along the beach throwing starfish back into the ocean, one by one? An old man called him foolish. “You can never save all of them. You can’t make a difference.”

The little boy picked up a starfish and tossed it into the water. “I made a difference to that one.”

Here’s the point about executing pedophiles. You make a difference to that one. You make it impossible for him to destroy another life.

In my novel Cold Quiet Country, several pedophiles meet a harsh form of justice. Reviewers have spoken about how emotionally charged the story is, and how brutal. None have taken issue with the end, though, and I suspect my readers agree a healthy society doesn’t tolerate pedophiles.

I wrote Cold Quiet Country because my eternal hope is that I can help foment a less tolerant society in this one regard. I don’t believe the appropriate response to a person visiting sexual evil upon a child is to try to heal the evil man. If we were a better society, we would execute him.

Evil doesn’t heal, and a just society rids itself of evil where it is found.