Tim Malone.id.au

I should start this post with a disclaimer that this is my opinion. I am interpreting what I think was highly likely the case here. I could be wrong, but even if this particular case isn’t an example of what I’m saying, I still believe this is something that needs to be fixed before it does become a problem.

Disclaimer out of the way; an eight year old girl was murdered in a suburban shopping centre in Perth late yesterday afternoon, after having been sexually assaulted. It was what appears to be a random attack, and a witness reported the killer ran from the shopping centre and “was sweaty and almost knocked [the witness] over as she entered the shopping centre”.

A man in his early twenties – who leads a quiet life working in a shop and living with his parents in a suburb of Perth – has no reason to choose an eight year old girl at random, in the 10 minutes whilst she is out of site of her family, and do something like this to her. Although at this stage the attack appears random, my view is that this man has been trying to satisfy sexual desires for a long time in a way that never truly satisfies him.

I believe he has been looking at pornography for quite awhile, trying to fill the void within him that is there because he can’t get a girlfriend. As he realises that there’s only so much porn can do for him, he starts watching girls in the street and in the shopping centre on a daily basis. His sexual drive builds up, and as a spur of the moment thing, something inside him tells him to grab for that girl yesterday afternoon. He is being driven by sex and lacks the power to stop it because he let his activities go too far in the first place.

He grabs for the girl, sexually assaults her, then suddenly realises what he’s done. Out of panic, he kills her and runs – as fast as he can. He is sweating all over because he knows he has just comitted a terrible crime, but doesn’t know why he did it. He goes straight home, not bothering to hide because he knows he’ll be found anyway.

He’s gone too far, and it’s too late.

It hasn’t happened yet for most of them, but for many of the millions of young men in Australia who satisfy sexual desires daily by watching raunchy movies, downloading porn, and casting their eyes over hotties in the streets, shopping centres, clubs and beaches, it’s only going to be a matter of time before the drive inside them forces them to do something they’ll regret. For most it probably won’t be as bad as what has happened here, but it may mean losing a relationship by taking it too far, or even just losing a friend of the opposite sex by trying to see too much.

Young men these days have to stop getting themselves involved in sexual immorailty for the sake of themselves and others. The sad thing is that society doesn’t make it easy for them; yet society grieves when an incident like this takes place. Everywhere we look we see temptations of sexual immorality staring us in the face: almost every TV show or movie (and many advertisements), the way many young women dress, ads everywhere on the Internet that promise to match us with our ideal sexual partners, and even sexually oriented comments made in passing by people who have wide exposure.

The way I see it, every movie director or TV show producer or any other person in control of some form of media who has intentionally put a sexy scene, photo or clip into their production in order to make it acceptable to our society is indirectly responsible for the death of Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu and those who will follow.

Someone has got to do something about this.

References:
ABC News: Girl found murdered in Perth shopping centre
ABC News: Police search for toilet murder suspect
ABC News: Toilet murder shocks Perth community
ABC News: Man charged over shopping centre murder
ABC News: Man faces court over shopping centre murder
News.com.au: Family devastated at death
SMH: Girl’s sex-assault murder: man charged
NineMSN: Girl snatched, killed in shopping centre