NewChapter and FinallyAwake seem to hit the nail on the head. Having had a father who had an addictive personality (alcohol was his self-medicating tonic of choice, so I very much understand from a childhood with an alcoholic dad what NewChapter is talking about) and a family member who had a problem with a medication taken for restless leg syndrome, FinallyAwake's mention of "compulsion" seems to sum up the problem in full.
The desire to do something, the temptation to do something, and the compulsion to do something are all separate. There's a big difference between all of these things, but when mixed together they can create a highly destructive situation.
To illustrate: It's generally not considered immoral or wrong to drink alcohol or even to get drunk by many, but it is considered wrong to get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle when under the influence of alcohol. The first is generally not considered a criminal act, but the second is in many lands. Drinking alcohol and driving are not related or connected in any manner. But the two situations should never be mixed because they can and have had deadly consequences.
Now getting from A (drinking) to B (driving while under the influence) isn't what I'm actually focusing on. And the combination of these isn't what those who consider themselves recovering alcoholics generally concentrate all their efforts on preventing. It's the preventing the situation altogether by avoiding the temptations that can lead to point A, namely drinking alcohol.
Temptation itself isn't immoral, even in religious circles. A person can be "tempted" to eat something delicious and nutritious. Nothing's wrong with that. But if the temptation leads to something harmful, such as eating a food that can cause a problem for a diabetic, then the temptation takes on a whole different dimension.
Still temptation and desire don't mean a thing in themselves. We live with such a push and pull situation daily, regarding things we consider helpful or not, good or bad, safe or dangerous, etc. But add compulsion to the mix and we might as well forget about restraint and self-control.
My family member who was taking a medication (ropinerole) for restless leg syndrome (or RLS) had to discontinue the drug. Why? Ropinerole was actually formulated to aid persons with Parkinson's syndrome. It's very effective because it "fools" the brain into thinking it has efficient levels of dopamine, the neurotransmitter essential to physical and emotional functioning which is at low to practically non-existent levels in the brain of a person with Parkinson's.
The problem for people with RLS when they take ropinerole is that they do not have the brain of a person with Parkinson's syndrome, a brain that produces little or no dopamine. Besides allowing for smooth motor skill functioning, dopamine is central to emotion, especially the pleasure and positive (known as "reward" in medical terms) response.
Adding ropinerole to the brain of a person with Parkinson's can create some problems with compulsion control--a lot of which can be controlled by either dosage or the addition of other medications used to treat the disease. Adding ropinerole to the brain of a person with RLS but otherwise completely healthy can cause great problems. In our case it meant dealing with a family member who could not get off the computer and could (and would) spend their hard-earned money on website shopping sprees in a matter of minutes. Others taking the drug for RLS (it is generally not prescribed for this "condition," due to this problem and controversy surrounded the drug and the promotion of RLS as a "typical" condition) had compulsions dealing with gambling and sex. But once the drug was stopped, so did the compulsive actions. We don't have to worry about anyone in the family shopping on the Internet, traveling to Las Vegas or living out a fulfilling sex life.
We're talking more than a mere desire to do something acceptable like shopping, having sex, and even having some fun at a casino. These molesters have a desire for something totally unacceptable. Placing them in any situation that be tempting for them is bad enough, but what makes the difference between the molester, the drug addict, the alcoholic and others is that they have to either stop themselves or be prevented by others from being in a situation that will only get worse once compulsion takes over. It takes a problem with compulsion to do these things and be an addict or a molester of children.
This doesn't excuse the addict or molester either. As many recovering alcoholics can attest a person who knows they have a problem with desire, temptation and compulsion can prevent themselves from being in a situation that can turn ugly once compulsion takes over. Recovering alcoholics don't trust themselves to be in certain situations or around certain people. Why not? Because once compulsion takes over, the ability to reason and stop oneself are not available.
We learned this from our family's experience with ropinerole (yes, one person was taking it but the compulsion problems affected all of us). Once the reward impulses in the brain get activated, they are programmed to continue whatever actions the person was doing to activate the reward impulses in the first place until the process of reward reception is satisfied or completed. During this time the abilities to reason and stop are basically deactivated. This is why drug addicts will risk life, limb, family and anything else to get their fix. They can't help themselves because these parts of the brain aren't active during the process.
While the situation is very different for a person with Parkinson's syndrome, ropinerole is obviously not the best thing for an otherwise healthy person to take. Because of the risks involved it just didn't make sense to give it to someone in our family for something as comparatively simple as RLS. It was easier to find other ways of treatment and to do away with the element that caused the compulsive behavior.
You have to do the same for the problem with child molesters. You have keep them away from the "drug," so to speak. It's more than an issue of "can I forgive and then trust them to be in the same situation again?" Just because a person sues the maker of ropinerole (and some have) for advertising it to be used for RLS (which it wasn't designed for in the first place) and then gets a settlement from the company doesn't change the fact that you can't give the average person ropinerole without having problems with compulsion. Forgiving and then popping those pills will cause the problems to start all over again.
This is not a matter of trust or forgiveness. It's about what you can't let happen again. Ropinerole doesn't change its chemical makeup because you suddenly decide to trust it. It will have the same effect every time. Sure, it may not cause a person with Parkinson's to have the same problems with compulsion control, but that's because they don't have normal levels of dopamine in their brains to begin with (ropinerole acts as an agonist on dopamine created by the brain or introduced via L-DOPA). We're not talking about dealing with people with lower-than-normal levels of dopamine here.
And we are not talking about your average person here either. We're talking about child molesters--adults who prey on children in a sexual manner and repeat the offense despite the consequences. Granting them "forgiveness" and then turning around and trusting them to be with children again is illogical. The abuse will happen again. The molester is not likely to gain the control that no human has in the face of the compulsion process. So it all boils down to what we can't allow to happen again.
The elders in every congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses around the world are not allowed to go left or right of the direction given them by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses in the matter of handling cases involving child molesters. To direct otherwise would be considered heresy, as would to go against the Governing Body be considered rebellion and apostasy by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The direction from the Governing Body may even be considered worse than what happened in the Roman Catholic Church because it was not policy or doctrine of the Catholic Church to shuffle offending priests from congregation to congregation.* On the other hand it is the policy of the religion of the Governing Body to follow the directions provided to them of "forgiving" molesters and letting them back out to "serve" the congregations they prey upon. And it is a matter of allegiance to religious doctrine that this policy be followed by the body of elders, for rejecting such direction is considered to be rejecting the one and only 'mouthpiece of God,' namely the Governing Body.
*--In fact many in the Catholic Church are angry that doctrine was not followed and feel it is not being followed again when the Church uses the funds provided by the lay people--those who neither participated in or approve of and were even victimized directly by the scandal itself--to pay the deserving damages to the victims (shouldn't the criminal members of the clergy be forced to provide restitution to lay persons who have had their parishes closed due to bankruptcy, which essentially makes the Church-at-large second-hand victims of these criminals?). Of course many of us may have our own personal views of Catholicism which might not be considered as holding that religion and its doctrine in the highest esteem, but I can't help but steam over the fact that even in this way those stomach-turning pedophiles in that religion get to go scot-free when they should at least be made to pay back the money the lay persons had to dish out for complaints they raised about their own children who were victimized in the first place. The real "Church" is made up of those people, many of which were the actual victims of these crimes, and this is essentially making the victims pay themselves. I sure hope someone not only stops this from happening, but doesn't allow the Governing Body and other reprehensible parties in the Jehovah's Witnesses to get off as easily when they have to give deserving restitution to the victims. In my opinion--which I try to stay away from giving, but what the hell--I think they should be put in some place with the criminal clergy members and all of them be made to work it all off to give the money back to their people since they used their donations to give the deserving victims what they needed (and which cannot really be cared for merely funds). Until then, all of those bast**ds are also thieves who stole from the "collection plate." They need to pay for this as well.--But enough of standing on my soapbox....
