Do you believe that sex offenders can be rehabilitated?

Asked by nayeight (3353) December 25th, 2009 from iPhone

An 11 year old girl went missing a few days ago in the town I live in and they just found her body today. The man who they suspect did it was her guardian’s ex-boyfriend and was registered as a high risk sex offender. I don’t really know the girl and while it is very tragic that it happened, I was getting a little sick of reading tons of facebook statuses regarding the matter. Most of the statuses were about how sad it was, or that the individual was praying for the girl and her family, or that she was now an angel up in heaven celebrating xmas with jesus, blah blah blah blah. Then, I came across a couple posts that were a little disturbing. Most of them were suggesting the man suspected of killing her should be stoned, castrated, strung up, burned alive….really crazy stuff. Now I’m all about people getting what they deserve but that’s a little ridculous. Anywho… someone was talking about how the system failed this child because “everyone knows that sex offenders can’t be rehabilitated”. I always thought that there was some hope that some of them could be. What are your thoughts? How do you feel about the laws towards this matter in effect today or the system? Do you think they can be rehabilitated? Why or why not?