Paedophiles!

This weekend paedophiles have been on my mind because of two reasons:
Firstly at the end of last week in an area very close to where I live, a 14 yr old boy was raped by a group of men. This boy is the brother of my sisters friend and it was quite startling to have such a savage act happen so close to home.

The second reason is because this weekend I went to see The Woodsman . This film tells the story of a convicted paedophile who is released from prison after 12 yrs. The film humanises his story and it has caused quite a stir. People are outraged that a film could sympathise with a paedophile. I really enjoyed this film and thought it hit upon a topic nobody likes to speak about.

This film caused a tremendous amount of debate between me and a friend of mine. My friend thinks that a paedophile is born a paedophile while I disagree with this. I think that people are inherently good but some event, or a series of events cause them to do bad things. I'm not condoning what they do but I think that there needs to be more study of these people, instead they are just locked away and are just pawned off as bad people. Would it not be beneficial to understand why people do this and try to help solve the problem.

This has being a big problem in Ireland for a long time now and only in the ten years have people even started to be convicted of it. We're condemning something before even understanding it. Its down to peoples attachment to children and how they feel for them. Its a big taboo subject and one we need to learn more about.