I was raped at knife-point by a 23 year old man who I had never seen before when I was 15. I only share that to drive the following point home…
Rape victims go through a great deal of emotional turmoil and self-doubt about what they could have done to prevent it. Included in that, for the women who report it and actually get to see justice done, is that they feel immense guilt about their role in sending a man to prison… guilt about how their rapists’ mothers must feel. It is irrational in the extreme, but it is a common issue for victims of rape. The man who raped me was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and I went from wanting him put away for life, to feeling an odd kind of guilt (and in my case, having never known the man and having been ambushed by him and stabbed, there was no rational reason for that guilt). I don’t believe I could have worked through that if the penalty were death. I can’t imagine what emotions I would have had at that point. Make no mistake. I hate that man and always will, and he is the only human being I have ever said that about. In a sick way, the other revenge for me was in knowing that in prison, the rapists are raped back. He got to live through what he did to me, probably repeatedly. I think that punishment was probably far worse than death, and I usually hope it was.
I don’t have kids, so can’t speak of whether I’d ever support the death penalty with them (although I absolutely do support capital punishment for murderers since their victims don’t have to suffer further because of it). I can say I absolutely do not support it for rapists.