There is this interesting phenomonon recently of legislators discussing what I call "negative freedoms". They're essentially subverting the word "freedom" to mean something it never has in the past, and as a result, they get wide backing.
For example, the passing of the PATRIOT act was shrouded in claims of "Freedom from terror".
That's not a "freedom" as you might describe it according to the constitution. It actually results in a net LOSS of "freedom" as we normally consider it.
When passing the Sex offender registry laws, I heard the mantra of "freedom from fear of your neighbors". That's not freedom! Besides, it didn't do a lot in that regard. It may have done the opposite, in fact!!
The politicians have suberted that word... nay... the politicians may actually NOT UNDERSTAND the word, or at best, simply use it as a convienant pawn in their ploy to make the general populace think they are "doing something useful" to justify their existance.
The commentary about 1984 being unrealistically negative in its approach is a very salient discussion, because it leads down the path of discussing the many other ways you michg achieve the same sort of control.
The two points in 1984 that I did find more realistic are the aspects of the government in the story using positive feedback.
The changing of the names of departments, like "ministry of truth" and the "ministry of peace" echoes very true in the modern era. The department of war, slowly transofrms to the department of "homeland security". If the department of war was digging through your purse every time you stepped food in certain public buildings, people would probably react negatively. But since it's "homeland security"... ahhh, no problem.
Additionally, the mantra of the government being the sold arbiter of "order from chaos" compels people to fear a life without the party. They assume that life would degrade to inhuman conditions without that rigid control, in much the same way people do today. But in reality, that order they create is an illusion that covers up a loss of individual freedoms.
After all, the world is full of "dangerous peederfiles" and "terrorists, oh no!" and only the gubment can stop them (or so, people seem to think), giving them a carte blanche to do whatever they wish. Never mind that building code enforcement would save more lives than eliminating terrorism and your child is 8 times more likely to die after being struck by lightening than murdered by a known sex offender.
The problem is with our culture of "absolute safety".
When it becomes a government mandate to make sure that no depressed teenager is EVER pushed over the edge by a snarky online comment....
when it becomes the government's mandate to make sure that no child EVER witnesses something they haven't been taught about already at school....
etc etc
That's the current issue. The problem is that most people feel that this SERVES them. It makes them safer, so they like it and ask for more.
In that sense, the government is ABSOLUTELY serving the people. I may disagree. You may disagree. Legal scholars may disagree, but Joe Sixpack says "them peederfiles are stealing children, how come the gubment won't fix it?"
There lies the problem. It's a problem of social indoctrination and realistic expectations, not (in this case) necessarily one of overstepping the public's mandate.
the only mandate they're perhaps ignoring is the one to represent ALL the people. The government actually represents the wealthiest 20% for the most part. Usually those are much more likely to be soccer moms and investment bankers than they are to be lower-middle class fans of hentai or "dreaded peederfiles", so those groups are under-represented.
However, the GP stated inaccurate facts in order to claim theories that have obvious personal relevance.
If researchers had to answer to every quack who thought they had a clue, they would never get any research done, which, confoundingly, often makes the quacks think they're correct.:-)
However, in terms of the media focus I think it's gone a bit beyond the "drooling pervert" model and has put more view on the "sophisticated immoral abuse of a position-of-power" types.
That is true to some extent. I would suggest that there is an order of magnitude more of these that are never caught. You think the "teacher sleeps with student" thing is as rare as the media portrays it? I would wager only 1 in 20 of these cases are ever discovered. I would wager that in any given school district, there is one going on right now. That's tens of thousands across the country.
I would like to point out that there is an issue of hugely divergent sentencing for this crime.
A woman who rapes a 12 year old boy by "allowing herself to be seduced" (big air quotes) will often get months, sometimes only probation. But a man who does the same with a boy or a girl will often get 25 years.
However, it's a bit of a red herring to claim the 'ZOMG, they get short sentences' since the punishment as it is applied for sexual assault is already higher in most states, than it is for manslaughter or reckless endangerment, both of which cost lives (or nearly do).
The other disturbing fact about sexual assault is that many states have very broadly defined laws. In some states, cupping the breast of a 14 year old girl who is trying to climb on top of you is punished under EXACTLY the same statute as violent and bloody anal rape of a 3 year old. In some states, they use the age 12 or 11 as the defining line for "first degree" rape, but that's not much more illustrative.
Imagine, "fondling" a 12 year old who is grinning and says "I like this, keep doing it" is quite a different thing than the aforementioned 3 year old who is screaming and crying "daddy stop" the whole time (*shudder*), despite the fact that they're both illegal, they may warrant a different approach to justice.
All I'm saying is that it's difficult to look at statistical relevance of sentencing guidelines with that kind of gross dichotomy in descriptions so prevalent.
Keep in mind, too, that the media will report both as "child rape" because by a legal definition, both are exactly that. But they are then often too squeamish (or misinformed) to spell out any more details, leading the READER to think of both of them as nearly identical situations, when clearly they're not.
Just to benefit your psyche, I've spoken to at least a dozen individuals who express exactly what you say (and at the same ages, for the most part).
Those who are abused much younger (say 6 or 8) have much more negative impressions of it, in my experience, but by 12, you're capable of digesting it, even if it's unwanted, and moving on.
Let me express my heartfelt condolence to you, but also my most sincere appreciation for your strength and determination.
You're not alone in what you experienced. While I work to dispel the common myth of the "destroyed victim", I also have empathy for your experience and wish you well.
If you would like to communicate further, let me know. I'd be interested in talking with you.
The guys you interacted with, did you get the impression that they felt their sexual contact with kids was justified?
Did you feel like they were cognitively engaged, or defensive in this assertion?
Did you see remorse in them, or simply defiance?
In my interviews, I see a large number of pedophiles who believe that sexual contact with kids is "sometimes" acceptable, but most come to the conclusion that "in today's society" it is not OK to do, regardless of the absolute moral implications.
I'm interested to see how much of that comes through to your experience in the people you have talked to.
I presume you're in the US, correct?
I'd be interested in talking more, if you're willing.
What an interesting statement. The smart ones never get caught...
I've done some postgraduate research on the topic and my experience is exactly the same.
But you do realize that most people judge all pedophiles on the standard of those that are in prison? Low impulse control, poor self-esteem, etc and I've never actually seen that from population samples.
During population sample surveys (our numbers are probably a bit biased due to sampling biases) we find almost 5% of respondents admit to certain pedophilic feelings, but only about 0.5% have ever been incarcerated for it (that's about 10% for the math-challenged). We don't ask if they've ever committed a crime because of the ethics of how to deal with the answers that say "yes", but we find that they're not much more likely than average to have been abused themselves, nor to have any other fundamental psychosocial adjustment problems.
I'm floored that you came to this conclusion. Most people just tick off the "drooling pervert" as the norm and assume the other 90% who have never been caught must also be this.... but my experience tends to lead me to believe that this isn't the case.
Look at the high profile child abduction, child rape, and child murder cases in recent years. ALMOST ALL of the perpetrators had been convicted of similar crimes in the past, and freed. Garrido was on the sex offender's list, after being freed by the state. He shouldn't have been freed until he had served 50 years real time for his crime!
LOL. Circular reference alert!
You do realize that these cases are "high profile" BECAUSE they involve repeat offenders.
Sex offender recidivism is actually much lower than most people think and over 90% of new sex crimes are committed by people who have never been in prison.
This is a bit like saying "airplanes are dangerous, because ALMOST ALL of the airplanes I see on the evening news are crashing!!!!"
Allowing the victim to dictate the sentencing of a perpetrator is a fundamental issue that runs contrary to every aspect of modern western justice.
There are discussions of this ranging back to Socrates and Plato, Voltaire, Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.
They all agree that this is not a suitable punishment. In the animal kingdom, it is not uncommon for instinct to dictate that an animal who has set foot on your "turf" should be viscerally executed with your bare hands. Obviously this is an extreme example, but it lays the foundation for the deleterious effect that this argument would have on the justice system as a whole.
Additionally, the concept of "absolute safety" in society is another significant negative force on personal liberty during the last several decades. The concept that everyone has a "right" to complete safety at all times that trumps various other long-held freedoms is a serious issue that can't be dismissed.
Just like little Polly's father is very angry at the crime, the perpetrator likely has a family who is equally as disturbed at his incarceration. While you can easily dehumanize him by calling him a "monster" or whatever other phrase suits your emotional decorum, you are making an enormous ontological jump to convince yourself that your view is justified.
We have a justice system that dictates punishment, partially for punitive and partially for rehabilitative purposes. Currently, the system in the United States hands out nearly 4-times the prison sentence for this crime as any other western democracy and, yet, we still have the highest rates of all of these victimizing crimes.
Perhaps we should stop to think about what it is in the vengeful attitude with which we approach justice that causes our society to have such high rates of violence and victimization and look abroad. Sweden has one of the lowest rates of child sexual assault in the world. They also adopt a very permissive attitude regarding teen sex and homosexuality and have relatively short sentences, focused on rehabilitation (which appears to be very successful for them). There is no sex offender registry. In fact, a private group set one up last year, and there was a massive public protest in opposition to it. Police forced the owner to take the site down immediately as it violates Swedish privacy laws.
It's interesting to look at countries that adopt a different posture about these issues and try to educate ourselves. Perhaps we might wonder why we have such high rates of violence and why we have such high rates of victimization and then peer at our reactions to those things and question if they are, indeed, legitimate or useful and not simply our slobbering animal instinct lashing out at things we don't understand, or decide are "gross".
I have a neat statistic for you. In light of 60-90% recidivism in the criminal population, sex offender recidivism in 15 year studies is under 20%. Several 5-12 year studies done by the USDOJ and several states (Alaska and Oregon) have put it as low as 8% after 5 years and 12% after 12 years.
There is no empirical evidence to suggest that sex offenders have higher than average recidivism rates. In fact, most evidence points precisely to the contrary, which is why my research leans toward the concept of "visceral indignation" as the primary motivation in pursuing such harsh punishment against sex offenders.
In my university research on this topic I interviewed a defense attorney who successfully sued an organization in Colorado that "interviewed" sex abuse victims after one of his clients who he felt was truly innocent was convicted by a shady video-taped testimony (that he was not allowed to cross-examine, by law)
Through the suit, he got evidence of several dozen instances where the place would stop the tape they were using and re-start the interview with a fresh tape (this was supposed to be trial-worthy evidence), in order to "get a better confession" or "make sure the jury didn't see the child lie on camera". He also obtained video of an interrogator telling the child what the "right" answer was in order to "make sure this all over faster".
Of course, there is no press about it, but it was very interesting to talk to him about. To the best of his knowledge, they held an internal investigation and deemed "no harm done" and continued right on doing their work. Now he gets hit with "conflict of interest" charges by the prosecution in every case, because he sued the "expert witness" that is retained by the state for this topic.
It's all very tactical (like a game) to them, but I find it a bit horrifying.
While your anecdotal clinical sampling is interesting, I've worked extensively on this topic doing research papers at a university and I would suggest that your wife's experiences are not uncommon, but are not representative of the population in any way.
We find that when normalizing for family history and for psychological problems BEFORE taking into account sexual abuse, the effect is much diminished.
That is to say... kids with serious psychological problems, especially those from very bad homes, ESPECIALLY those with impulse control problems are likely (one might even say "almost guaranteed") to be molested.
However, out of the greater sample of "kids who are molested", the result that you describe is actually very rare... In fact, it's barely statistically significant.
Your anecdote does pull at the heart strings, though, which I'm sure was the intended purpose.
The actual normalized effect (as measured by adult self-reporting as well as adult MMPI inventories) of child sexual abuse has the same magnitude (thought a greater standard deviation) than physical abuse in more than a dozen modern variable-controlled studies.
If your argument is based purely on "harmfulness" than going after a kid repeatedly (and vengefully) with a belt should warrant exactly the same sentence, regardless of the physical outcome (no broken bones, no blood, etc), the mental outcome is well documented and recognized by researchers.
I have a feeling this sort of "death penalty" reaction is strongly tinged by the "eww gross" factor.
By the way, long-term effects (as measured by MMPI inventories) of adult rape victims show that there is a very similar outcome, despite your claim to the contrary (which was based on.... what exactly?).
Slashdot Mirror
There is this interesting phenomonon recently of legislators discussing what I call "negative freedoms". They're essentially subverting the word "freedom" to mean something it never has in the past, and as a result, they get wide backing.
For example, the passing of the PATRIOT act was shrouded in claims of "Freedom from terror".
That's not a "freedom" as you might describe it according to the constitution. It actually results in a net LOSS of "freedom" as we normally consider it.
When passing the Sex offender registry laws, I heard the mantra of "freedom from fear of your neighbors". That's not freedom! Besides, it didn't do a lot in that regard. It may have done the opposite, in fact!!
The politicians have suberted that word... nay... the politicians may actually NOT UNDERSTAND the word, or at best, simply use it as a convienant pawn in their ploy to make the general populace think they are "doing something useful" to justify their existance.
Meh.
Agreed.
The commentary about 1984 being unrealistically negative in its approach is a very salient discussion, because it leads down the path of discussing the many other ways you michg achieve the same sort of control.
The two points in 1984 that I did find more realistic are the aspects of the government in the story using positive feedback.
The changing of the names of departments, like "ministry of truth" and the "ministry of peace" echoes very true in the modern era. The department of war, slowly transofrms to the department of "homeland security". If the department of war was digging through your purse every time you stepped food in certain public buildings, people would probably react negatively. But since it's "homeland security"... ahhh, no problem.
Additionally, the mantra of the government being the sold arbiter of "order from chaos" compels people to fear a life without the party. They assume that life would degrade to inhuman conditions without that rigid control, in much the same way people do today. But in reality, that order they create is an illusion that covers up a loss of individual freedoms.
After all, the world is full of "dangerous peederfiles" and "terrorists, oh no!" and only the gubment can stop them (or so, people seem to think), giving them a carte blanche to do whatever they wish. Never mind that building code enforcement would save more lives than eliminating terrorism and your child is 8 times more likely to die after being struck by lightening than murdered by a known sex offender.
Scary, if you ask me.
The problem is with our culture of "absolute safety".
When it becomes a government mandate to make sure that no depressed teenager is EVER pushed over the edge by a snarky online comment....
when it becomes the government's mandate to make sure that no child EVER witnesses something they haven't been taught about already at school....
etc etc
That's the current issue. The problem is that most people feel that this SERVES them. It makes them safer, so they like it and ask for more.
In that sense, the government is ABSOLUTELY serving the people. I may disagree. You may disagree. Legal scholars may disagree, but Joe Sixpack says "them peederfiles are stealing children, how come the gubment won't fix it?"
There lies the problem. It's a problem of social indoctrination and realistic expectations, not (in this case) necessarily one of overstepping the public's mandate.
the only mandate they're perhaps ignoring is the one to represent ALL the people. The government actually represents the wealthiest 20% for the most part. Usually those are much more likely to be soccer moms and investment bankers than they are to be lower-middle class fans of hentai or "dreaded peederfiles", so those groups are under-represented.
Hah, you haven't read it, have you?
Russel's Teapot..... :-)
It would have been highly unusual if she was over the age of about 15, though, at least for the time.
There are lots of studies on this.
Here is just one of them.
Holland, etc al. 2009
http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2009/articles/1439.pdf
Female average sentence 11.60 years
Male average sentence 28.05 years
And if the victim and perpetrators are both male, the mean sentence is over 45 years. (this usually includes very long probationary periods ~20 years)
The mean sentence for first degree murder is currently around 34 years.
Your sarcasm is misplaced and disingenuous.
"Real" scientists welcome factual challenges.
However, the GP stated inaccurate facts in order to claim theories that have obvious personal relevance.
If researchers had to answer to every quack who thought they had a clue, they would never get any research done, which, confoundingly, often makes the quacks think they're correct. :-)
Except that statistically, this person is far more likely to be violent.
If you take the group of "has scars on face" and the group "doesn't have scars on face", the correlation is going to be noticeable.
Remember, this whole discussion is about a correlation, not an isolated incident.
However, in terms of the media focus I think it's gone a bit beyond the "drooling pervert" model and has put more view on the "sophisticated immoral abuse of a position-of-power" types.
That is true to some extent. I would suggest that there is an order of magnitude more of these that are never caught. You think the "teacher sleeps with student" thing is as rare as the media portrays it? I would wager only 1 in 20 of these cases are ever discovered. I would wager that in any given school district, there is one going on right now. That's tens of thousands across the country.
I would like to point out that there is an issue of hugely divergent sentencing for this crime.
A woman who rapes a 12 year old boy by "allowing herself to be seduced" (big air quotes) will often get months, sometimes only probation. But a man who does the same with a boy or a girl will often get 25 years.
However, it's a bit of a red herring to claim the 'ZOMG, they get short sentences' since the punishment as it is applied for sexual assault is already higher in most states, than it is for manslaughter or reckless endangerment, both of which cost lives (or nearly do).
The other disturbing fact about sexual assault is that many states have very broadly defined laws. In some states, cupping the breast of a 14 year old girl who is trying to climb on top of you is punished under EXACTLY the same statute as violent and bloody anal rape of a 3 year old. In some states, they use the age 12 or 11 as the defining line for "first degree" rape, but that's not much more illustrative.
Imagine, "fondling" a 12 year old who is grinning and says "I like this, keep doing it" is quite a different thing than the aforementioned 3 year old who is screaming and crying "daddy stop" the whole time (*shudder*), despite the fact that they're both illegal, they may warrant a different approach to justice.
All I'm saying is that it's difficult to look at statistical relevance of sentencing guidelines with that kind of gross dichotomy in descriptions so prevalent.
Keep in mind, too, that the media will report both as "child rape" because by a legal definition, both are exactly that. But they are then often too squeamish (or misinformed) to spell out any more details, leading the READER to think of both of them as nearly identical situations, when clearly they're not.
Just to benefit your psyche, I've spoken to at least a dozen individuals who express exactly what you say (and at the same ages, for the most part).
Those who are abused much younger (say 6 or 8) have much more negative impressions of it, in my experience, but by 12, you're capable of digesting it, even if it's unwanted, and moving on.
Let me express my heartfelt condolence to you, but also my most sincere appreciation for your strength and determination.
You're not alone in what you experienced. While I work to dispel the common myth of the "destroyed victim", I also have empathy for your experience and wish you well.
If you would like to communicate further, let me know. I'd be interested in talking with you.
I'm curious about your opinion.
The guys you interacted with, did you get the impression that they felt their sexual contact with kids was justified?
Did you feel like they were cognitively engaged, or defensive in this assertion?
Did you see remorse in them, or simply defiance?
In my interviews, I see a large number of pedophiles who believe that sexual contact with kids is "sometimes" acceptable, but most come to the conclusion that "in today's society" it is not OK to do, regardless of the absolute moral implications.
I'm interested to see how much of that comes through to your experience in the people you have talked to.
I presume you're in the US, correct?
I'd be interested in talking more, if you're willing.
What an interesting statement. The smart ones never get caught...
I've done some postgraduate research on the topic and my experience is exactly the same.
But you do realize that most people judge all pedophiles on the standard of those that are in prison? Low impulse control, poor self-esteem, etc and I've never actually seen that from population samples.
During population sample surveys (our numbers are probably a bit biased due to sampling biases) we find almost 5% of respondents admit to certain pedophilic feelings, but only about 0.5% have ever been incarcerated for it (that's about 10% for the math-challenged). We don't ask if they've ever committed a crime because of the ethics of how to deal with the answers that say "yes", but we find that they're not much more likely than average to have been abused themselves, nor to have any other fundamental psychosocial adjustment problems.
I'm floored that you came to this conclusion. Most people just tick off the "drooling pervert" as the norm and assume the other 90% who have never been caught must also be this.... but my experience tends to lead me to believe that this isn't the case.
Your insight is refreshing.
Look at the high profile child abduction, child rape, and child murder cases in recent years. ALMOST ALL of the perpetrators had been convicted of similar crimes in the past, and freed. Garrido was on the sex offender's list, after being freed by the state. He shouldn't have been freed until he had served 50 years real time for his crime!
LOL. Circular reference alert!
You do realize that these cases are "high profile" BECAUSE they involve repeat offenders.
Sex offender recidivism is actually much lower than most people think and over 90% of new sex crimes are committed by people who have never been in prison.
This is a bit like saying "airplanes are dangerous, because ALMOST ALL of the airplanes I see on the evening news are crashing!!!!"
Sheesh.
Allowing the victim to dictate the sentencing of a perpetrator is a fundamental issue that runs contrary to every aspect of modern western justice.
There are discussions of this ranging back to Socrates and Plato, Voltaire, Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.
They all agree that this is not a suitable punishment. In the animal kingdom, it is not uncommon for instinct to dictate that an animal who has set foot on your "turf" should be viscerally executed with your bare hands. Obviously this is an extreme example, but it lays the foundation for the deleterious effect that this argument would have on the justice system as a whole.
Additionally, the concept of "absolute safety" in society is another significant negative force on personal liberty during the last several decades. The concept that everyone has a "right" to complete safety at all times that trumps various other long-held freedoms is a serious issue that can't be dismissed.
Just like little Polly's father is very angry at the crime, the perpetrator likely has a family who is equally as disturbed at his incarceration. While you can easily dehumanize him by calling him a "monster" or whatever other phrase suits your emotional decorum, you are making an enormous ontological jump to convince yourself that your view is justified.
We have a justice system that dictates punishment, partially for punitive and partially for rehabilitative purposes. Currently, the system in the United States hands out nearly 4-times the prison sentence for this crime as any other western democracy and, yet, we still have the highest rates of all of these victimizing crimes.
Perhaps we should stop to think about what it is in the vengeful attitude with which we approach justice that causes our society to have such high rates of violence and victimization and look abroad. Sweden has one of the lowest rates of child sexual assault in the world. They also adopt a very permissive attitude regarding teen sex and homosexuality and have relatively short sentences, focused on rehabilitation (which appears to be very successful for them). There is no sex offender registry. In fact, a private group set one up last year, and there was a massive public protest in opposition to it. Police forced the owner to take the site down immediately as it violates Swedish privacy laws.
It's interesting to look at countries that adopt a different posture about these issues and try to educate ourselves. Perhaps we might wonder why we have such high rates of violence and why we have such high rates of victimization and then peer at our reactions to those things and question if they are, indeed, legitimate or useful and not simply our slobbering animal instinct lashing out at things we don't understand, or decide are "gross".
I have a neat statistic for you. In light of 60-90% recidivism in the criminal population, sex offender recidivism in 15 year studies is under 20%. Several 5-12 year studies done by the USDOJ and several states (Alaska and Oregon) have put it as low as 8% after 5 years and 12% after 12 years.
There is no empirical evidence to suggest that sex offenders have higher than average recidivism rates. In fact, most evidence points precisely to the contrary, which is why my research leans toward the concept of "visceral indignation" as the primary motivation in pursuing such harsh punishment against sex offenders.
In my university research on this topic I interviewed a defense attorney who successfully sued an organization in Colorado that "interviewed" sex abuse victims after one of his clients who he felt was truly innocent was convicted by a shady video-taped testimony (that he was not allowed to cross-examine, by law)
Through the suit, he got evidence of several dozen instances where the place would stop the tape they were using and re-start the interview with a fresh tape (this was supposed to be trial-worthy evidence), in order to "get a better confession" or "make sure the jury didn't see the child lie on camera". He also obtained video of an interrogator telling the child what the "right" answer was in order to "make sure this all over faster".
Of course, there is no press about it, but it was very interesting to talk to him about. To the best of his knowledge, they held an internal investigation and deemed "no harm done" and continued right on doing their work. Now he gets hit with "conflict of interest" charges by the prosecution in every case, because he sued the "expert witness" that is retained by the state for this topic.
It's all very tactical (like a game) to them, but I find it a bit horrifying.
While your anecdotal clinical sampling is interesting, I've worked extensively on this topic doing research papers at a university and I would suggest that your wife's experiences are not uncommon, but are not representative of the population in any way.
We find that when normalizing for family history and for psychological problems BEFORE taking into account sexual abuse, the effect is much diminished.
That is to say... kids with serious psychological problems, especially those from very bad homes, ESPECIALLY those with impulse control problems are likely (one might even say "almost guaranteed") to be molested.
However, out of the greater sample of "kids who are molested", the result that you describe is actually very rare... In fact, it's barely statistically significant.
Your anecdote does pull at the heart strings, though, which I'm sure was the intended purpose.
The actual normalized effect (as measured by adult self-reporting as well as adult MMPI inventories) of child sexual abuse has the same magnitude (thought a greater standard deviation) than physical abuse in more than a dozen modern variable-controlled studies.
If your argument is based purely on "harmfulness" than going after a kid repeatedly (and vengefully) with a belt should warrant exactly the same sentence, regardless of the physical outcome (no broken bones, no blood, etc), the mental outcome is well documented and recognized by researchers.
I have a feeling this sort of "death penalty" reaction is strongly tinged by the "eww gross" factor.
By the way, long-term effects (as measured by MMPI inventories) of adult rape victims show that there is a very similar outcome, despite your claim to the contrary (which was based on.... what exactly?).