Who to hang

Justice for children and the unwell, alike

Consider: as a law-abiding citizen aspiring for a civilised state, would you be in favour of punishing — executing, even – a schizophrenic?

You aren’t?

Then don’t close your mind to others who are suffering from recognised mental illnesses but who are not riding high on the sympathy vote, such as paedophiles.

My argument, some would incorrectly construe, appears sympathetic to those committing this heinous crime but it is important to consider regardless.

The recent child sexual abuse scandal unearthed in Kasur, choked all of us into admitting that child sexual abuse is real, rampant, undetected and unaddressed in Pakistan. It is unfortunate that we have had to wait for such a brazen awakening before willingly acknowledging just how common child sexual abuse actually is in our society, but I suppose that has been true for most events here.

While making reference to the ungodly act of child sexual abuse itself, it seems not only natural but also necessary to discuss the perpetrators inflicting it. Since the aforementioned Kasur scandal has been brought to the forefront, there has been unchecked use of the term ‘paedophilia.’ A lot of us callously inflict the ‘insult’ but few of us are willing to think of paedophilia as a recognised mental illness. There is no definitive proof that the perpetrators of the Kasur scandal are actually paedophiles, but the outcry to execute the mentally unwell remains an important point worth discussing, regardless.

The inherent loathing harboured by, almost, all toward paedophilia makes it very difficult to have a sensible, let alone a nuanced discussion, on the condition. However, paedophilia is now vastly recognised as a mental illness, (also referred to as paedophilic disorder) which results in the person experiencing recurrent, sexual urges towards children, all the while being deluded into thinking the act natural.

The distinction that needs to be drawn is painful but simple; child sexual abuse is a crime, paedophilia is the mental illness that motivates and then triggers a person to commit said crime. People who are not paedophiles also commit child sexual abuse and in turn, a lot of those medically suffering from the condition manage to exercise restraint and actually refrain from acting on their abnormal desires. That is probably why, instead of including the word ‘paedophile’ in legislation dealing with the sexual abuse of children, almost all jurisdictions prefer to use terms such as ‘rape of a minor,’ ‘seduction of a minor’ etc.

Schizophrenics, like paedophiles, sometimes also act unnaturally towards children but how many of us will dispute the state of their mental ill health? More importantly, how many of us will want them hung for being mentally unstable?

I confess then, my real reason for wanting to highlight the aforementioned difference is to get you to reconsider wanting paedophiles hung. There has been a lot of social media outrage demanding the perpetrators of the Kasur scandal be hung, including Facebook posts and Twitter hashtags to that effect. Without going into the merits of why capital punishment is wrong, does anyone here really believe that punishment by death is the correct sentence, (for anyone), let alone someone who suffers from a recognised mental illness?

Surely all those wanting justice for the affected do not wish to spread injustice in the process. The perpetrators of the Kasur scandal (paedophiles or not) should be punished for their inhumane acts, but not by being executed, and the educated members of our civil society should be the last ones demanding it. We cannot undo what has happened but we can definitely prevent child molestation in the future. Hanging the mentally unwell is not the way to do it.