Pervert Park

As well made as the film is, it has bad intentions. We are presented with paedophiles telling their own life stories. They dwell massively on their own misfortunes and when compelled to divulge their heinous crimes, portray them as the result of, in 5 individual cases, entrapment, Lolita-esque provocation, one's own incestuous abuse, the stresses of being secretly homosexual, and work stress in general.

It goes without saying that none of these are even slightly mitigating factors. Entrapment might be morally dubious, but when offered to have sex with a young girl by an anonymous chatroom member, a normal person refuses. A normal person would not respond to the perceived "provocation" of a young girl. Being a closeted homosexual does not win any "oppression points" that can be discounted against the rape of young boys. Must I continue?

The real point is that none of these people are shown to have faced their true culpability: they indulge in victimhood narratives, and the filmmakers indulge them too. They still identify with the demons inside them, rather than being willing to cast them out. They attempt to win sympathy and to glom onto a liberal narrative that protects the outcasts.

Those who judge this film "thought provoking" have to tell the rest of society just how much sympathy, built into them by this film, they can have left once the damage these people have done is plainly accounted for. Under the presumption that we should take a philosophical mode of thought on this issue, why don't we ask ourselves what magnitude of evil could then not be forgiven, so long as the perpetrator was sufficiently downtrodden himself?

As some of the other reviews will unintentionally tell you, if you don't already feel sympathetic to registered sex offenders who are shunned by society, this documentary will do little to change any of that.

Sure, flashing children on the street is not the same as molesting your own child for years on end. They don't merit the same reaction from society - that is true.

But this documentary does nothing but present a narrative with which we aren't already familiar. Sex offenders were so often victims of trauma themselves, violence breeds violence, when in Rome, etc., etc. But child abuse is wrong!, etc., etc.

To make matters worse, the offenders didn't seem to care about the victims, they only wanted to protect their own reputation - leading me to ask the wrong questions, the ones the documentary wanted me to avoid. Like, what kind of therapy they were receiving? How can they move along without true regret? What exactly have they learned? The place was only run by other sex offenders, should they even be giving each other therapy?

What I really wanted from this documentary, was a more objective look at what happens to the offender ones they have served their time in prison. I wanted the documentary to tell us how poor - on average - their chances of living a normal life afterwards would be. Maybe compare this to what happens murderers, or drug dealers, etc., to present this as the complex moral issue it truly is.

Sure, we can torment the offenders 'till the day they die, but what good will it do? Is it really that reasonable to prevent these people from becoming contributing members of society? Isn't it a waste of human life, or just plain ressources, to let them be outcasts forever and ever?

I think so. This problem won't be solved by looking away, no problem ever will, no matter how ugly it is. I wish people would talk about pedophilia more often. I wish there were ressources for people who had these wrong thoughts, I wish they were allowed to talk about them - so we could prevent them from taking actions, so we could give them the mental strength to do right.

But the documentary made a bad case for this, focused on the wrong ways to emit sympathy, and a murky way of presenting facts. It didn't provoke the kind of rational thought that would counter the terrifying feeling of knowing, that you are looking at a room full of people who have probably raped someone. Quite a shame, really. This documentary gets 6 stars, primarily because it is one of the only ones of it's kind.

This is an empathetic documentary portrait of a group of convicted sex offenders who live together in a trailer park because laws restricting where they can live after release from prison has made it almost impossible to find shelter. The residents support each other in a society that has spurned them.

We sit in on their group therapy sessions which are a mix of heartbreaking and chilling. It's not easy to watch someone – even someone who seems to feel terrible remorse – relate the story of how he came to rape a 5 year old girl. But it's also powerful and sad to realize that almost to a person, all these men (and a couple of women) were themselves terribly sexually abused as children. And that one of their children whom they abused has now gone on to be convicted of a sex crime as well. The film posits that these people are certainly criminals, but they are also certainly victims as well, and that only through compassionate treatment can the cycle be broken.

It also makes clear that lumping so many offenders with crimes of wildly different seriousness in the same heading of 'registered sex offender', publishing their names and addresses, not allowing them to live or work in huge swaths of the areas they live in is - for many - a highly unfair practice, and actually endanger all the offenders, allowing those out to frighten or harm them easy access.

It's an uncomfortable film to watch – it's hard to find oneself empathetic to people who have done terrible things. But it's also an important questioning of how we treat other human beings, no matter what their past holds.

One flaw - I was frustrated that the film sites statistics that go against what most of us have heard so many times – stating that sex criminals are actually among the least likely to offend again, not the most – but then fails to say where those statistics come from, or why most people have heard the opposite. If you're going to challenge people's fears and conventional wisdom, you need more than an unattributed title card.

People nowadays can rationalize everything. From bizarre religious beliefs, weird sexual practices to outrageous political ideas...

Everything in relative and if one uses the right words and the correct approach everything becomes legit, OK, mainstream, acceptable.

Pervert Park is one more example of this abominable trend. The directors/producers cherry-picked a few sex offenders, transformed them in victims instead of perpetrators...showing that underneath the monster face there is a human being who needs an opportunity, a chance at redemption.

OK. I agree that a few, a small percentage of these guys can improve but what about the majority of them for whom there is no solution?

The only thing I ask myself is whether the directors and producers of this documentary would trust these guys to care for their 5-year daughters...

I don't want to rate this as a '1' for the entertainment factor because it is a very entertaining doc. However, it truly appalls me how someone can wrap their head around the things that these offenders have done, and then have the audacity to justify them. No spoiler--but the woman in the movie--making excuses for what she did by the explanation of the way she was raised....after the acts she committed....please just EXCUSE ME if I'm not intelligent or liberal enough to cry for her. "Grossed out" is a gross understatement.

A lot of this documentary focused on past abuse of the sex offenders, which is generally the case. But please don't expect the public to sympathize with this sort of thing. There are some sacred things left in the world, and there are some taboos to be upheld...thank God. Just ask yourself "your daughter?" "your son?". There is anger towards pedophiles for a reason...they are basically child murderers because that child's life is forever changed and their innocence is no longer intact. No, I do not care how much therapy the rapist has had-- please forgive me.