Sutcliffe launches legal challenge against 'die in jail' ruling.

[Robert]

Fisherman, I take issue with some of your comments but this is a highly-charged area and I think I will drop it for now.

[Natalie Severn]

Thankyou Fisherman,
Having slept on this and re-read your words ,I think I could see your reasoning more clearly and I think the matter was one simply of a misunderstanding.
It is can be difficult to talk about an event from your childhood that was so horrific that it silenced even your conscious mind for years on end and that only surfaced in nightmares and suppressed fears .However,talking about it certainly helps to bring it into open air a little so that the injury can begin or continue to heal and where you do not feel so inwardly isolated from the broader community that makes decisions about how to treat such offenders,and where you are once again powerless .
It was a great comfort to me ,therefore, to read another poster here,who shared his similar childhood trauma , being willing to talk about the devastation a similar experience had on his life and I must say ,Fisherman , it means a lot when people try to understand our story,and I believe it is to your great credit that this is what you have tried to do today and I thankyou for your honesty .
In my case, the story didnt end with the atrocity itself because to make matters worse I went on to "identify" a wholly innocent man,standing with his girl friend at the local busstop where I was accompanied by my father. .Fortunately little harm was done : my father approached him I think quite carefully, and the man whose girl friend we discovered lived at the back of us , was easily able to provide himself with an alibi, but even as a child I felt " to blame" for this too!
Anyway,enough said.
thanks,
Norma

[The Good Michael]

We Scandinavians are ALWAYS pragmatic, Claire. There are absolutely NO exceptions to that rule!

...and I had a terrific weekend, thanks!

The best,
Fisherman

Plaguematic, maybe. I seem to remember something about Rattus Norwegicus

[Fisherman]

Natalie Severn writes:

"there are in fact two responses here that are being dealt with simultaneously and that may have confused matters ---the one by the individual who needs to survive the injury and heal from it and that of the law which needs to punish the perpetrator on behalf of both the individual and the wider community"

The category Iīm after, Natalie, is actually the one inbetween these two - those who speak for taking matters into their own hands, the people who find the law insufficient and slow and in need of somebody stepping in and taking care of matters on their own. Among those ranks, there will be couplings to the inner desires of many members of society, including those who - quite legitimately - need to fight demons installed in them by self-experienced abuse. Itīs like a huge, badly stained piece of cloth, with innumerable interwowen threads, if you see what I mean.
Obviously, if somebody can find healing in a process of "fighting back" mentally and gaining control over their fears, then such a thing must be allowed for. And a further conclusion, drawn from that fact, would be that we owe it to all those who have suffered such abuse - and to all of the ones who have not, but who are reasonably potential victims of the self same thing, meaning the rest of us - to see to it that Peter Sutcliffe is never allowed back into the open society again.

On your point of there not being any need to counterpose the two approaches you speak of, I fully agree, and I will once again say that I am sorry that I did not from the outset fully follow your reasoning in that department!

The best,
Fisherman

[Natalie Severn]

I can see what you are saying Fisherman.Yes-there are in fact two responses here that are being dealt with simultaneously and that may have confused matters ---the one by the individual who needs to survive the injury and heal from it and that of the law which needs to punish the perpetrator on behalf of both the individual and the wider community.The two approaches may differ considerably ,one being taken that corresponds with current medical knowledge the other mainly with regards to the best approach for the legal system and society in general .They do not need to be counterposed because their functions are quite different.
Norma

[Fisherman]

We Scandinavians are ALWAYS pragmatic, Claire. There are absolutely NO exceptions to that rule!

...and I had a terrific weekend, thanks!

The best,
Fisherman

[claire]

Exactly what was required for my tired and disenchanted brain right now, Fisherman...some Scandinavian pragmatism and straightforwardness Hope you had a good weekend.
cx

[Fisherman]

Hmm, Claire - I can buy that. Point taken.

Natalie - maybe I did not get disentangled in time to realize your reasoning. Sorry about that. I am very, very tired of the mob mentality that often surrounds the tragedies that serial killings are, and I guess I let that carry me away somewhat.

The best,
Fisherman

[claire]

To be fair, Fisherman, I think that these are tangled issues and it is sometimes very hard for us to disentangle what we feel we want to do, and what we actually *want*, or need, to do, and still be able to live with ourselves in part of a wider community. I think as the conversation on here progressed, Nats effectively separated those two, and provided an explanation for having conflated them (God knows it's easier just to say, I wish he was dead, than explain your reasons for feeling that way which, in fact, to her utter credit, Natalie did).

Beyond that issue, yeah, agree with everything you said.

[Fisherman]

Hi Natalie!

I did not misread you. The issue of reclaiming oneīs power after having been robbed of it in connection with abuse of some sort is something I do not dispute, but it is not what this thread is about, and it was not what Claires initial post was about either.

I do not think that my stance is in any way detrimental to victims of abuse reading this thread. I think that they, more than most of us, have pondered questions of responsibility and revenge, and I an in no way sure that they would unanimously sentence the likes of Sutcliffe to pain and death. They may well have seen quite enough of it already.

"The big difference is that you do not take the law into your own hands by "acting out" your anger anger and actually drowning that person, for goodness sake."

So, what you meant was that entertaining a fantasy of a tormented and subesquentially killed Sutcliffe was what we need to heal ourselves? Aha. Then you should have said that, Natalie. It did not come out that way on your behalf, just as it did not do so on behalf of some other posters.

The best,
Fisherman

[Natalie Severn]

Fisherman ,with respect,you misread my post---and Claire"s.The point is that in order for a victim of abuse to be able to recover they have to reclaim their power.During the rape or attack or near murder or whatever they were totally powerless.Their powerless causes a wound that needs to be healed and will never heal unless they are helped to regain the power they were without during the attack---but they do this through the use of their imagination.These are psychologically proven medications Fisherman ---there really is no discussion.---please be sensitive to this I implore you for the sake of other victims of abuse who may be reading this thread.The big difference is that you do not take the law into your own hands by "acting out" your anger anger and actually drowning that person, for goodness sake.Nobody is actually recommending such a course of action.
Norma

[Fisherman]

Robert writes:

"You seem to be assuming that Sutcliffe's life is of equal value to those of his victims. I don't agree."

You see, Robert, what I try to refrain from is thinking that I could somehow be a valid judge of whos life is worth more and whose is worth less. Itīs not until you allow yourself this, that you can come up with the idea that you are fit to pass judgement on other people and carry out verdicts.

In a sense, it is of course all very simple; society imposes a set of more or less severe norms and rules on us,and those who manage to live up to those norms and rules are regarded as better citizens than those who do not.
Those who fail very significantly - for example by killing for lust - end up at the bottom place of the list.
It all could not get much simpler than that, could it?

The truth is, though, as Claire writes in her very insightful post, that there are no easy answers about. Things are not all black or all white.

Natalie writes about an ordeal of her own, that has left her scarred to this day. And once again, things seem simple - she was wronged, and therefore she is left with some sort of rightful claim, either to live a happy life after what happened to her, somehow getting payed for the debt her assailant left her with - or to get back at him in some manner.

We need things to be evened out, we need the scales to stop tipping over, we want what we define as justice.
But who is to define and measure the amount of revenge we are to impose upon the perceived wrongdoers and normbreakers? Who are to carry out the punishment?

Robert tells us that Natalie is better cut out to see clearly what punishment Sutcliffe deserves than those who have been spared from evil. The thought behind that would be that it is easy enough to be idealistic as long as you live a protected life. The consequence of this leasurely life would be that it makes those who enjoy it in some sense naive.
I say that it is a damn sight MORE naive to believe that there is such a thing as benefiting from carrying out socially sanctioned violence.

Claire, once again:
"let's not turn ourselves into blood-baying savages who would look to the state to justify our own lust for violent retribution. That doesn't let us off the hook."
Exactly so.

Natalie left a question of mine unanswered. She wrote that she would not mind "them" pulling a sack over Peter Sutcliffes head and throwing him into the river to drown, and I asked who "them" were supposed to be. That question still stands, and not only for Natalie; it stands for anybody who is prepared to crave anybody elses blood in return for a criminal offense, no matter how sick and bad that offense may be.

Those who would be truly prepared to take Peter Sutcliffes life in exchange for his deeds would justify their own actions by saying that the world would be a better place without the likes of Sutcliffe in it. And they would of course be right.
The problem arises when those who speak of a better world start mixing that "better" up with it being a "good" thing to kill Sutcliffe. For the obvious truth is that a truly good world will never arise from a wish to see people have a sack pulled over their heads, and being thrown into the river to drown.

Dave, finally, writes that "state execution is not murder", and that is correct. By definition it is not so. It is, though, planning to take somebodys life and carrying out the plan by killing that somebody. And to do such a thing is what is legally defined as murder.
So no, these are not easy questions, just like Claire points out.

The best,
Fisherman

[Zodiac]

LOL!!!

Thanks Robert,

I love Dud and Pete.

This one always, "gave me fits" as someone used to say!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UT02--Ijdc

Best wishes,

Zodiac.

[protohistorian]

Well done Robert, that is too funny! Dave

[Robert]

Ha! This is it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0igRKYQUfpg