Many people have a touching faith that if only we can bend society around just so, that suddenly there will be no more crime and evil. Maybe one more government program for the children or one more social program might do the job this time. Maybe if we give the dictator one more chance.

There is nothing on the face of the Earth you can do to ensure that no more murderous lunatics will ever appear. I was being sarcastic about the abusive childhood of the rapist. The vast majority of people with rough childhoods turn out to be productive and honest human beings. And there is a long list throughout history of human monsters who had privileged childhoods.

Sometimes, it's just someone who has chosen evil as the path of least resistance. Or because he likes hurting people.

The core belief of the Left is that somehow, if we can marshall enough power and control over people and their behavior, that we can remake them into some vision of perfection. That humanity can be forced into the mold of the angels--regardless of how much blood pours out of the sides of the mold. This view ranges widely from the seemingly reasonable--most social programs--to the psychotic, like Pol Pot's attempts to reconstruct civilization into his agrarian ideal. Your idea that if we can just interfere with people's bad childhoods in just the right way*, they might not grow up to be monsters.

Given the hypothetical situation I proposed, to immediately focus on how I--the victim--might bear the responsibility for this monster attacking me shows exactly what the problem is. Lord knows we saw enough of this kind of behavior from a lot of people after 9-11.

*The politically-correct right way, of course. Let's not hear any of that old crap about stay-at-home parents, moral absolutes, and old-fashioned families. We don't want to sound like that old bat Dr. Laura, do we?