***Scroll down for updates***
Because I’m not a pedophile, I don’t understand why people are sexually attracted to children. But being sexually attracted to children isn’t a crime. Acting on that attraction most certainly is.
Some perverted fool named James McHaney, who up until last Friday worked for U.S. senator Maria Cantwell, was arrested and charged with Attempted Child Exploitation. Check this out: He’d arranged to rape a 13-year-old boy, but the “pimp” actually was an FBI informant. The informant in this case had exchanged child porn with McHaney and told the FBI about him. They set up the sting, and he eagerly walked right into it.
(I was acquainted with various informants and cooperating witnesses [CWs] during my brief stint at the U.S. Attorneys Office, and they can be just as sleazy as the targets. I hated being around thugs so much, I thought the stress from it all had given me an ulcer. You’ve got to have a stomach for dealing with informants and CWs. But I digress…)
From the Washington Examiner:
James Michael Mchaney, 28, a scheduler for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., was picked up by federal authorities Friday after allegedly showing up to meet with an acquaintance who Mchaney believed had made arrangements for him to have sex with a boy, according to the documents.
Cantwell’s Chief of Staff Michael Meehan released a statement late Monday, saying Mchaney had “immediately” been fired and the senator’s office was cooperating with the ongoing federal criminal investigation.
“Senator Cantwell has zero tolerance for crimes against children,” Meehan said.
Whenever I read or hear about stories where the pervert actually raped a child (and not just planned to rape a child), I try to view it from the perspective of a fellow fallen human touched by the grace of God. My first reaction should be, “There but for the grace of God…,” and to pray for the individuals in question. But it’s usually, “Death to pedophiles! Throw the pervert under the jail! Lock him in a stockade and let him die of exposure!”
(There is nothing unbiblical about a government executing child rapists, by the way.)
I can see myself, quite clearly, throwing a noose around a child rapist’s neck, tying him to the back of a horse, and dragging him around until he’s dead, or getting downright medieval on his sorry ***. Lynching never sounded so good. You don’t hurt children!
It’s a good thing I live in a civilized society. 
Make no mistake. That is a very un-Christian attitude. My first reaction should be to pray. Pray for the exploited children of the world…the weak and the vulnerable. Pray for the souls of perverts. It’s hard, I tell you. While praying for children comes more naturally, nothing in me wants to pray for a pervert.
It is Christ in me who wants me to pray for the sexual predator. He short-circuits my “Kill him!” charge and ramps up the power to my regenerated, touched-by-grace self. And I can pray.
Indeed. Let all the Christians pray for the perverted, that they may be converted and freed from the same sin that once enslaved us.
Update: Commenter Erica writes:
“As a mother, I understand your outrage. If anyone attempted to even seduce one of my children, let alone rape them, they would not be able to find enough pieces of them to have a trial. However, when I think of the people who do this, I remember that once long ago I paid a doctor to kill my own child — I had an abortion. You have to go pretty low on the food chain to find a female animal that would destroy its own offspring. As I crawl to the foot of the cross to beg forgiveness, I remember that these pedophiles are as lost and blind as I was, and they are already in torment, whether they admit it or not. And our precious Lord grieves over His lost children, and longs to set them free as he did for me.”
Update II (12/5): Just to clarify, it’s not “unChristian” to expect or even desire that someone be punished for his crimes. This post is about praying for the criminal, not excusing him from punishment. Bible readers/believers know the concept of punishment – paying a penalty for wrongdoing – is as biblical as it gets.
