The main difference is that evil, psychopathic people know that they are harming others–they understand it intellectually–and not only they don’t care, but enjoy the idea of other people’s suffering, and more when it’s at their hands.

Making a connection from there to sexuality, simply because homosexuals are also born, bemuses me. Heterosexuals are also born, and as long as they don’t rape, abuse, torture, mutilate others, I have no problem with their inborn sexuality.

My uncle is a paraniod schizophrenic. He’s tried to kill me twice. But he’s not in prison, he’s in an institution, because of his mental illness, and that’s fine. He’s not evil. He genuinely thought I was a threat to him, and to his mind he was protecting himself (the voices in his head don’t like me very much when he stops taking his meds).

And I never called the mentally ill evil. But not everyone who does horrible things is mentally ill. In fact, look at rapists, murderers, and child abusers. Most of the time, they are not mentally ill. And yeah, like I freely admit, I’m a rape survivor, and I absolutely believe the man who raped me was evil. My parents are not mentally ill, but it didn’t stop them from beating the shit out of us growing up. It didn’t stop my dad from molesting my sister.

My cousin’s son is not mentally ill. He attacks people because he’s angry and he can. He’s attacked virtually everyone around him, including my counsin when she was pregnant, because he was angry about the new baby. He was trying to cause a miscarriage. And he has been this way since he would walk, so yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say he was born that way. But I never said that the mentally ill were born evil. There is a big difference.

Perhaps you should go back and read my first post again. I wasn’t arguing about whether people are evil or mentally ill, I was arguing about why they are the way they are- were they born this way or were they made this way. I stated very clearly that I believe there are cases of both, and in no way was it an attack on the mentally ill.

Whether serial killers are born that way, or made that way doesn’t matter. It’s right to convict them, because one way or another, they need to be off the streets. It doesn’t matter if they were able to make a choice or not. Although, they *are* killing- they plan it, and they are attempting to hide it, which says they know enough to to know they are doing something that would cause them to be punished by law. … For the safety of society, they have to be stopped.

Since we have the option of institutionalizing the mentally unstable and studying them in what are effectively hospital/jail hybrids, I would say yes, there *is* a difference between someone who has severe untreated schizophrenia and a serial killer or rapist who chooses to hide the evidence of his crimes — which not all of them do, by the way.

There are some crimes like paedophilia or cases of severe sociopathy and/or psychopathy where no amount of medication will make a person stable enough to be fit for general society. Sociopaths and paedophiles and serial rapists are all hardwired to be repeat offenders 95 percent of the time.

However, I’m extremely uncomfortable with calling people mentally ill from birth ‘evil.’

I disagree with part of what you are saying. Whether serial killers are born that way, or made that way doesn’t matter. It’s right to convict them, because one way or another, they need to be off the streets. It doesn’t matter if they were able to make a choice or not. Although, they *are* killing- they plan it, and they are attempting to hide it, which says they know enough to to know they are doing something that would cause them to be punished by law. Therefore, I say lock their asses up, just like any other person who murders (like my cousin’s husband, who although not mentally unstable, did kill his girlfriend). For the safety of society, they have to be stopped.

We’ve had a chipmunk living in our yard for the last couple of years and this past summer he/she attracted a mate. They’d scamper about and raid the birdfeeders and what not.

One day our long time chipmunk started making the “chipping” sound like crazy. A constant sound. We finally tracked it to a tree right beside our house (not a normal perch) and then we saw the reason for the chipping. The mate had been smooshed in the road. His/her mourning went on for a few more days. It was sad to hear.

This kid is just…wow, and has been this way since he was a small child. There is, and always has been, this odd glint in his eyes. He’s a very bright kid, but in all the wrong ways.

We’ve pretty much banned his father from bringing him to our property, but when we know he is coming, we lock up everything like a fortress. And hubby and I each take turns at keeping him in sight at all times. Why? He has a violent streak and if he doesn’t get his way he could do just about anything. His list of destruction elsewhere is long and sordid.

He is twelve now, and we see a long jail sentence in his future, which, horrid to say but, we hope it happens before he commits murder or something as equally awful.

Well, I’m being pretty general with the “punishment/treatment” thing…because I don’t believe people like that should be out in society.

Okay…I see where you’re coming from, and THAT I can agree with.

Now you tell me animals don’t have feelings and emotions. I’ve seen mama cats mourning their babies just as a human mother would and I swear my oldest cat laughs every time my husband farts. (There’s a lot of laughter in our house)

Well, I’m being pretty general with the “punishment/treatment” thing…because I don’t believe people like that should be out in society. They wouldn’t be abusing people or animals if they were locked up. I realize this attitude is extreme – but as the victim of a horrible crime from a repeat offender (who, by the way, is still out and about and no doubt abusing children,) I have pretty harsh views on things like this.

If my abuser had been locked up years before he got hold of me, well, he wouldn’t have gotten hold of me. He caused a lot of damage to a LOT of people.

I know there’s no easy answer for things like this — some people are all for severe punishment, but what happens when the person is out again and maybe worse than before? Others are for rehabilitation, but what if it doesn’t work…and I truly think there are some things that cannot be “cured.”

I think the best we can do is try to raise awareness for the issues we feel passionately about. It’s a scary world out there sometimes!

If those kids had been given proper punishment/treatment after the FIRST incident, the second wouldn’t have happened. But what REALLY gets me?

Unfortunately, Larissa, that’s not really true. If there’s something really wrong upstairs, treatment/punishment won’t necessarily work. I think counseling/meds/whatever will make a difference for some. But not all. I’ve worked with enough (not a lot, but still too many) kids who had something really messed up in their brains to know that treatment/punishment/anything/everything won’t always work.