A Louisiana man has been sentenced to decades in prison and physical castration after pleading guilty to raping a teenager, according to a news release from the region’s district attorney.
Glenn Sullivan Sr., 54, pled guilty to four counts of second-degree rape on April 17. Authorities began investigating Sullivan in July 2022, when a young woman told the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office that Sullivan had assaulted her multiple times when she was 14. The assaults resulted in pregnancy, and a DNA test confirmed that Sullivan was the father of the child, the district attorney’s office said. Sullivan had also groomed the victim and threatened her and her family to prevent her from coming forward.
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A 2008 Louisiana law says that men convicted of certain rape offenses may be sentenced to chemical castration. They can also elect to be physically castrated. Perrilloux said that Sullivan’s plea requires he be physically castrated. The process will be carried out by the state’s Department of Corrections, according to the law, but cannot be conducted more than a week before a person’s prison sentence ends. This means Sullivan wouldn’t be castrated until a week before the end of his 50-year sentence — when he would be more than 100 years old.
You know, I always used to say they ought to do this. But now, presented with the reality of it, I don’t like it at all.
This is because we can be of two minds about these things. You can have a personal response to heinous acts, but still think the government ought to be better.
If some guy murders the murderer of their kid, I can absolutely 100% understand why, and I could even admit that I might do the same in their position. But I still think that as a society we should not lower ourselves to this standard and I will always be against the death penalty (especially because the system will never be perfect and I will never think it’s worth killing even one innocent person by accident).
It’s why vigilante justice is so easily understood, but it’s still something we, as a society, shouldn’t accept.
Emotional reactions can cloud our minds to these things. But I absolutely agree with you. This is horrendous and barbarous. I can still somewhat understand the “he deserves it for what he did”-response, but I’m absolutely against this on a deeper level.
I don’t think it’s about having “Two minds” about it, for as you describe it doesn’t seem to fit the op, as he admitted that he wanted the state to do it.
Imo, this is about abstraction vs reality. In theory something might sound good, but when you are actually faced with the reality of it, it’s a huge turnoff.
I’m reminded of the reddit story where a guy got into scat porn. It became a fetish so he hired a prostitute to shit in his mouth. On the day of the deed, once the shit hit his mouth, as he described it, he was “just a guy on the floor with shit in his mouth.”
The shit is just hitting the OPs mouth right now.
Exactly right! I think we’re actually agreed on this.
I just meant that OP used to say they ought to do it, which was his ‘emotional’ response to it, which is easier when it’s in abstract. But in reality he doesn’t like it at all when his government actually does it.
I’d never heard about that reddit story, but I think it’s very apt, lol.
It’s also why vigilante justice is far more sympathetic than government camps to torture prisoners.
I believe in bodily autonomy even for the worst people
Yeah I get wanting it, but I don’t want a government that can do it. I also don’t think a reasonable interpretation of the bill of rights allows it. How is removing body parts not cruel and unusual punishment?
The state having the power to do this is horrible. A victim doing this to their attacker with a butter knife on the other hand.
This falls squarely under no cruel and unusual punishment for me. Heinous as the crime was this is just inhuman.
So, first you relativise what counts as cruel and unusual punishment, then you demonize the person. That is the road to atrocities. Why do you want to go there?
Me saying that rape is a heinous crime but saying its still inhuman to castrate a convicted rapist is demonizing them?
Sorry, I misread.
Yeah, chemical castration seems a lot better than the bull band treatment