DutchNews.nl - Eight years for murdering paedophile

A 24-year-old man has been jailed for eight years and sentenced to compulsory psychiatric prison for killing a convicted paedophile.

Paul Schaap (52) was found dead at his home near Utrecht on February 4. He had been targeted by anti-paedophile campaigners and named on a number of websites.

For full understanding, lets describe what was Paul's convictions back in the time?

By Shine | September 29, 2009 4:35 PM

"killing a convicted paedophile."

This cryptic report prompted a quick online search of definitions of "paedophile/pedophile/pedophilia", such as a casual reader might conduct.

All definitions referred to abnormal attraction to "children", but only Britannia's qualified that term with the adjective "prepubescent".

Since many countries now legally describe anyone under the age of 16 as a "child", does this make director Roman Polanski, who three decades ago pleaded guilty to intercourse with a 13-year-old, a "convicted pedophile"?

The commonly indiscriminate usage of the term "pedophile" lumps the victims of a psychological/psychosexual disorder (Wikipedia/Britannia) together with a wide gamut of criminal offenders from mere possessors of "child pornography" (the harmfulness of which is unproven and disputed), to statutory "rapists", through perpetrators of "inappropriate touching" and violent rapists of children.

Such media usage brands all of the above, including completely innocent victims of this disorder, as dangerously violent predators of young children.

Is it any wonder, then, that "pedophiles" are murdered? The courts should seek to prevent the indiscriminate and inflammatory use of this term in the mass media if they really wish to avert such vigilante attacks.

By otropogo | September 29, 2009 6:27 PM