I watched the 1998 film “Hap
piness,” which won a lot of acclaim in Europe, but got a cold reception in America. The reason was obvious — the film took up an issue most of us don’t want to talk about — pedophilia.
One of the main characters was a classic good guy psychiatrist with a wife and three children who also harbored a terrible secret — he was sexually aroused by little boys. He acted on his impulses twice and violated two of his son’s friends.
Perhaps the lowest of criminals are pedophiles, who prey on vulnerable children. I’ve seen Facebook postings suggesting all testing and experiments be performed on pedophiles rather than animals and many have commented that convicted child molesters should always be subject to the death penalty in a most disgusting manner.
It’s a crime that has only one defense — that the perpetrator is sick and deranged. Yet even that is weak, and virtually no one wants to allow him or her to walk or live among us ever again.
Even more frightening is that pedophiles too often are people who deliberately take jobs and activities that enable them to get close to children, positions such as priests, coaches, clowns, youth leaders, etc. Besides physically violating the kids, they violate adults’ trust.
But this issue sometimes can cause hysterical reactions, such as the cases in Minnesota a couple of decades ago. With a bogeyman so frightening and ugly, it could be too easy to persecute someone who is not guilty of any wrongdoing.
When I was copy editor at the Ypsilanti Press, I recall the story of Raymond Bailey, a very sick young man who was hunted down for abducting a 12-year-old boy, assaulting him and then killing him so he wouldn’t identify him. It was later learned that Bailey had done the same to a 14-year-old boy a couple of years before.
And he once had been convicted of sexually assaulting a young lad and leaving him for dead. The boy survived, so Bailey couldn’t be charged with murder. But I wondered why he ever was allowed back into society after leaving someone to die.
As far as I know, Bailey remains in prison and he’s lucky to still be alive because prison inmates hav
e no compunction about murdering child killers. Yet as worthless as Bailey seems, he has been useful to authorities since by showing them how child killers operate and providing telltale signs of perpetrators.
I’d like everyone to see the classic 1931 Fritz Lang movie “M,” which made an international star out of Peter Lorre. The plot revolves around Lorre as a pedophile who kills children and is so hated that even criminals want him dead because he’s ruining business for pickpockets, thieves and other low-lifes in Berlin.
Lorre is identified by a street-wise person who lays his chalked hand on the back of his dark coat leaving the “M” mark so he can be spotted easily. The criminals collectively capture him, haul him down to a dungeon and put him on trial.
Lorre, a pathetic creature with those famous sad eyes, knows his fate, and defends himself by maintaining, “You all think you’re better than me. But you commit your crimes because you want to. I commit mine because I have to… I need a doctor, not an executioner.”
Though Lorre was portraying perhaps the lowest human being on earth, he earned many accolades for creating a sympathetic character out of a scumbag. It launched his distinguished acting career.
But the question remains: Though we all agree they should never walk free among us, what should a civilized society do with such sick individuals, none of whom have ever been cured?
