I dove into an unfortunate rabbit hole last night about dark redditor confessions. I don’t think anyone knows if it’s genuine or not but someone claimed to be a child therapist and PDF file.

He even went as far as saying he committed acts with some of his “clients”. I personally don’t care how many kids he helped out mentally because that kind of abuse, especially in that position is insane. So it got me wondering, do people think the good he’s done could ever outweigh the bad?

  • darthelmet@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 days ago

    It depends. Consider the inputs and outputs of this judgement:

    Inputs:

    • How bad was the act itself?
    • What were the intentions behind the act? A mistake? A crime of passion? Or a deliberate act of greed or malice?
    • Was this just a one time thing you don’t think is indicative of their future behavior or is it a part of a pattern of behavior?

    Outputs:

    • What are the stakes of this judgement? Are we trying to punish this person or at least prevent them from doing the thing again? Or is this just for our own moral or social understanding?
    • Can the person be rehabilitated or is it a waste of time trying to give them the benefit of the doubt?

    Just as an example I think about sometimes: Sometimes you will get some older politician running for office. They have done and said some horrific things in the past. You point to that as a reason they shouldn’t be elected again. Someone comes out of the woodwork (I’m sure entirely organically /s) and says something like “can’t people change? Don’t they deserve a second chance?” And sure. People can change. And if that politician wants to go work at a McDonalds or something I’m not going to go out of my way to cancel them, but when we have millions of people who could be elected, most of whom, didn’t, idk, support segregation, why does this guy in particular deserve another chance to be in a position of power when he’s already used it in a bad way? In terms of your example, maybe if the sex offender is remorseful and goes to therapy for the issue, they could go reintegrate into society… just maybe not in a job that involves directly working with children right? That sounds reasonable? We can acknowledge the steps they took to reform themselves but also recognize that they lost the right to be trusted at certain kinds of things?

    There are some crimes though that are so bad that they can never be forgiven. I don’t think the oil execs who deliberately lobbied to effectively cause the end of the world so they could keep profiting off of it for decades should be forgiven. I don’t think there is a punishment severe enough to serve justice for such a crime. No amount of work they could do to try to fix the problem could undo the damage which they have already caused. There is no actual means of redemption.