by GABRIEL HERSHMAN
Sadists: Those who bait animals in cages often move on to torturing humans. PHOTO/Reuters
The late John Mortimer once said criminals are pillars of the state. The old kind of criminals, I mean, who robbed a bank for the proceeds rather than those who sought to inflict injury on their fellow man. Judges, barristers and lawyers depend on them for their livelihood, after all; they would be jobless without them.
Let’s be honest – we all have a grudging respect for the career criminal who masterminds and then carried out the big heist, the headline-grabbing stunt that wields a fortune. Hence the number of movies glamourising the villains in question.
Yet this kind of criminality seems to have disappeared, replaced by an altogether more savage kind. It is a crime that seeks no profit. The motive instead is blood-lust, pure and simple. In 2011 we are confronted with an altogether different creature, the sadist who likes to torture, humiliate and maim the innocent. His satisfaction comes not from the booty he gets – in most cases there is none – but the squeals of agony, the contorted screams and the drowning-in-sweat terror of the vulnerable.
Recently, the UK press reported on the case of an unemployed man who posted sick comments on social networks about the deaths of teenage girls who had died under tragic circumstances. As if the family had not been through enough – in one case the suicide of their beloved – they had to endure the sick jokes of a depraved loser who was given – wait for it – a jail sentence of just 18 weeks.
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