Shooting by MAP Kills Four, Injures Others

[BLueRibbon]

In May, I published an essay about how the persecution of MAPs will unfortunately but inevitably lead to violence.

Today, I was informed that a person previously accused of rape of a minor has shot up a party, killing four people and injuring three others.

If victim testimony is to be taken at face value, it sounds like the man's actions were genuinely non-consensual, and he deserved to be prosecuted for his actions. But what if he'd been able to safely access mental health support, confide in family and friends, access PIM for personal usage, or lawfully engage in consensual AMSC? Might the outcome have been different?

[Fragment]

We can never truly say what would've happened in the counter-factual. One of the things that really frustrates me about AMSC hysteria is that I get skeptical of the news and end up wanting to excuse behavior that I shouldn't be excusing. The news story says "raped a 13 year old girl", but I doubt if it was really rape or just statutory. I feel sympathy, without knowing the real dynamic between offender and victim. Unlike antis who assume the worst, I find myself assuming the best and trying to make excuses for offenders. Clearer, more honest language in news stories would allow me to actually hate the rapists and abusers.

That said, even rapists and abusers often have (unjustified) reasons for what they do. So even if this was a clear cut case of abuse, proper intervention and mental health care that didn't stigmatize him because of the age of the girl may well have avoided him becoming a murderer. (Or maybe not, some people just truly are treatment resistant).

[WandersGlade]

Did he self-identify as a MAP? I don't know if statutory rapists in general should be considered MAPs. For example, a gay person could have heterosexual sex and vice versa. I'm not sure if the term MAP is appropriate unless there is a persistently expressed interest in minors, or a person identifies as such.

I agree with you, Fragment. It's hard to know what to think when news outlets use the same inflammatory language for sexual abuse as for statutory rape, and real child erotica for lolicon/shotacon.
Like Luc Besson and Jimmy Saville are nowhere near comparable, yet they'd get lumped together.

[BLueRibbon]

We don't know for sure that he identifies as an MAP, but a 5 year age gap of 18-13 hints at him being one and being affected by all the challenges that MAPs face.

[Rin]

The fact that they say that a teenage boy is a man already denotes the double standard with which sex offenders are judged; it is not for nothing that many of the people of that age are the most likely to develop mental issues due to social pressure.

I don't know if what he did was really sexual assault, given how mainstream media tends to be quite ambiguous in these cases.