Recently, someone was convicted of a statutory crime. I won't name their name, even though the case is public, because certain elements involve sobriety group discussion.
The statutory crime, on the victim's side, involved a person engaged in the sexual work industry, in a country where it's legal, but as with certain counties in Nevada here in the US, with age standards that she did not meet. The case went to trial; it's obviously not the US, but it is an "Anglosphere" country as far as legal system.
The convicted person met the victim via a hookups-type website; the profile was created by a person pimping her. After multiple connections, the victim told the convicted person about the situation.
At that point, he cut out the middleman and had direct contact with her for paid sex multiple times. He also, both before and after cutting out the middleman, gave the victim meth and other drugs.
He was recently convicted and is appealing, I believe both the conviction itself and the sentence, which is of more than two years in prison.
Here's where things hit the fan.
First, just as secular sobriety believes you don't need a higher power to get sober/clean, so I see that you don't need a higher power to avoid criminality even before you're sober. I did drive under the influence more than once. I could have chosen not to, either by delaying the onset or amount of drinking, or by getting sober. I didn't. It might have been harder, had I not been "ready," but I could have.
Beyond that, as I have thought about Graham Platner, Maine's disgraced ex-Senate candidate, even PTSD does not automatically make you a monster. It may, like the old Latin proverb, "In vino veritas," help reveal the truth about who you are, in a minor way, which addiction itself will in a larger one.
Back to the issue at hand.
The convicted person testified that, AFTER dodging the middleman, he knew that the victim was under the statutory age, but claimed that he still thought she was older than she actually was.
There's a WTF element to that. Were you thinking that claiming you thought she was one year older than she actually was would be exculpatory?
This also ties in with how the convicted person framed it in sobriety support. Here, I am going to have to write very broadly.
The convicted person presented himself as remorseful. Was he fully so, or was that partially, even if not totally, performative remorse? The convicted person did ask for support letters, which could mean performative remorse for the legal system but stretching outside of it.
I do not recall the convicted person admitting they kept "records" of the encounters. You can read between any lines you want on "records" and I am not saying anything more. I am also not going through a trove of old emails to either prove myself right or prove myself wrong on my memory. Beyond that, with hindsight, I think that would come too close to violation of group anonymity.
Also, per various stories about the case, I don't know what personal demons the convicted person had, but, along the lines of Platner and PTSD, being sexually abused as a child doesn't automatically make you an abuser. And, I doubt the convicted person had that in their background; if they had, they would have become an addict far earlier than they actually did, I would expect.
Anyway, I am not cynical, but I am more skeptical than other people might be as to his remorse being entirely genuine and not in part performative.
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