Of Sorting and Snape

[va32h]

No: HPFGUIDX 175745

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> 
wrote:
>> The awful truth is that people do more harm than they can mend. I 
>was in tears with Kings Cross that mankind's power to injure is so 
>great and our power to heal so pitifully small.  That point would be 
>lost if there had been something Dumbledore or Harry could do. If 
they >wept it would be for their own helplessness, and what good 
would that >do?
> 
> There was, maybe, a time when compassion could have helped Tom
> Riddle but it was when he was a real child; I am sure this reflects
>  JKR's own experiences. I have never talked to a teacher who didn't 
> bewail the fact that the system so often neglects children in need 
> until they are school age. Often enough they are irreversibly 
damaged
> before anyone finds out they need help.

va32h: Oh I have to agree with you there. One of the most powerful 
and horrifying experiences of my life was being a Court Appointed 
Special Advocate for abused and neglected children. 

What people are capable of doing to their children - to any child - 
to any other human being - it's just sickening and heartbreaking and 
*wrong*. There is just something *wrong* with those people, for 
whatever reason, and all the compassion and forgiveness and therapy 
in the world is *not* going to make them stop. And that may be a 
shameful and bad attitude on my part, but I know too many real life 
examples of adults who have abused and tortured again and again, even 
after plenty of state intervention, to believe otherwise.

And many of these abused children are so damaged from the horrors 
inflicted upon them that again, all the love and compassion and 
therapy in the world isn't going to make them whole. It's pretty 
chilling when a social worker tells you that no, there really isn't 
anything that can be done for this child, but to keep them in a 
facility where they are the least likely to hurt themselves or 
others. 

JKR has described Voldemort as a sociopath, and if that flayed baby 
is him, and if he is a sociopath, then there really is nothing to be 
done. You cannot make a person with no conscience feel guilty. 

va32h