Having spoken with a few prosecutors about child sex abuse, the amazing thing isn’t how frequent this stuff is, it’s that for so long it was completely ignored. They told me that when they’re questioning jurors before sex abuse trials, they almost always have at least one potential juror, normally in their 40s or 50s, who says he or she was sexually abused as a child. One prosecutor told me of a time where an entire jury panel was disqualified because the questioning turned into something of a therapy session as six panelists, one by one, said that they had been sexually abused as children and had never told anyone about it. It’s only in the last twenty years that child sex abuse has been prosecuted with any regularity – before that, it was mostly not reported or swept under the rug. One might hope that some of those perpetrators were treated to vigilante justice, but it’s unlikely. But probably not very many. Even today, the percentage child sexual abuse cases that are brought to light is probably very low.

Killing your own son is such a crime, that I couldn’t imagine living with myself afterward. This is probably why I wouldn’t make a good vigilante: I’d have to punish myself later.