Rapists destroy lives. With brutal violence, with cruelty, and with a complete disregard for any humanity present in their victims. They kill the person that was there before their attack. While not commonly physically lethal, rape scars the mind, it damages natural social responses, and can, and has, harmed people so completely that they literally killed themselves rather than live the rest of their lives "damaged". While there are people who refuse to be broken, people strong enough to come through such a terrible ordeal still strong and vital, that is not an excuse for the crime or the criminal. Murder is often sudden and violent, where rape is deliberate and often takes more time. Closer to torture than murder, and in many cases equally, if not more damaging.

Rape is still one of the most vile crimes in human knowing. It is also one of the most ignored. For millennia we have overlooked women as second class citizens, or worse, property. Many of laws regarding rape are throwbacks to time periods when women could not vote, own land, or be seen as the equals of any man, especially their husbands/masters.

Still, the death penalty? Normally I would argue against the death penalty, after all it has been shown time and again that it does not work as a deterrent. So if it is not preventing crime, then it is merely an act of vengeance; and vengeance has no place in justice. But in rape, even more so than in murder, it is about neither vengeance nor deterrence. With Rapists the rate of repeat crimes is massive. Sexual predators commit the same crimes over, and over, and over again. Some have admitted to successfully abusing over a hundred innocent people in the course of a decade or two. In the case of rapists and child molests the death penalty does not prevent OTHER rapists from committing future crimes, it prevents the ones on trial from committing them.

If stopping a child rapist for good, by following through on the death penalty can save the other 20 or 30 people that person would have abused; then it is worth it.

However, I do not agree that the death penalty should apply to a first time conviction without biological evidence. If there is physical proof showing the crime and the accused are solidly linked, then absolutely. Otherwise, in cases without solid evidence, the death penalty should not be on the table unless it is a second or even third offense.

This is not a normal crime people. This is a vile act only recently being acknowledged for being the crime women have known it to be all along. It can be prevented. Unfortunately in the present that prevention will be had through extreme measures. With work, it can be prevented in the future through better education and better understanding.