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Originally posted by scienceandhistorynut:
It should both be illegal, and considered sexual assault. I think that it should be considered a mental condition. No one should be used for someone else's desires after the have been taken from this life.

It is considered a mental condition.

In answer to your question, Ikki, that's a tough one. I'd had to say both should be illegal, but I do have a little sympathy for the guy who preserved his wife. I, of course, can't say for sure, but my guess would be he had a lot more going on than a simple paraphilia.

Yeah, necrophilia of any kind should be outlawed, but in the case Ikki brought up I have to wonder about the concept of consent. In a recent Savage Love (it's an R-rated sex advice column, you've been warned), someone wrote in with an interesting fetish: he liked having sex with people who were asleep. Author Dan Savage's advice was to explore these fantasies with a partner. A lot of outraged readers wrote in to say that a person cannot give consent while sleeping, and thus if this person were to act on his fetish, it would be rape. But Savage's retort was that two people can be in the kind of relationship were consent is implied. He pointed out that if he initiated sexual activity with his sleeping partner in the middle of the night, there would be no rape accusations. As long as things were discussed ahead of time and put into the context of the relationship, they were fine.

Obviously, necrophilia is a whole different and much creepier ball-game, but what I'm driving at is that it's not right to assume the preserved wife wouldn't have been okay with this. I know it's hard to imagine anyone consenting to such a thing, but this woman did, after all, marry this nut job; it's at least plausible. At the very least, it's an entirely different issue than sexual assault.

Oh, for anyone interested in the legality of necrophilia by state...here ya go.

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That aside: Should both, only one, or neither be illegal? Why or why not?

It should both be illegal, and considered sexual assault. I think that it should be considered a mental condition. No one should be used for someone else's desires after the have been taken from this life.

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Either way, it's still disturbing.

That aside: Should both, only one, or neither be illegal? Why or why not?

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Is necrophilia any worse if it's like the case aforementioned, where it was the guys wife, versus a case where they don't know the person?

Either way, it's still disturbing.

So I was thinking:

Is necrophilia any worse if it's like the case aforementioned, where it was the guys wife, versus a case where they don't know the person?

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Necrophilia may be one of the creepier paraphilias, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not even one of the weirder ones. I

If I remember correctly, there was this one guy who's wife died young, and he preserved her corpse or something along those lines, kept her in the house, and had sex with her for more than a couple years.

I should look that story up.

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Originally posted by scienceandhistorynut:
Gross, Gross, what would poses you even to think of this.

It's a paraphilia. We spent a good deal of time on them in my abnormal psych class. None of the psychoanalytic theories as to why people decide to have sex with corpses seemed very satisfying (it was usually ideas like low self-esteem and belief they could never attract a living person, sexual performance anxieties, or desire to overpower and "force" another being to have sex with them). Other psychologists look to conditioning, and believe that at some point in the young necrophiliac's life, a connection between sex and dead bodies is somehow made, but I have a hard time picturing that happening very often. All I know for sure is, human perversion knows no bounds. Necrophilia may be one of the creepier paraphilias, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not even one of the weirder ones. It's certainly one of the more pervasive ones in our society and culture, so it's really little wonder the idea gets in people's heads.

Also, just a random tidbit: If I remember correctly, the majority of active necrophiliacs don't go digging up graves; most prefer sex with very freshly deceased bodies.

But I still say that while it should be a crime, the necrophiliac should not have to pay for digging up old wounds that he did not inflict. I can't think of any other crimes where we take this approach; we always focus on what the criminal did to the victim, and I believe that makes more sense than trying to gauge the victim's loved one's trauma levels and punishing the criminal accordingly.

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Gross, Gross, what would poses you even to think of this.

Who knows. It makes me sick.

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Well, yeah, but it is their fault that they dug up a dead body and raped it..

Exactly.

I gagged when I read this. Gross, Gross, what would poses you even to think of this.

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on the other hand, it's not the necrophiliac's fault you're dead.

Well, yeah, but it is their fault that they dug up a dead body and raped it...

I guess it's just a difference of perspective. I know that desecrating the deceased adds insult to injury, but on the other hand, it's not the necrophiliac's fault you're dead. If I found out my dead little sister's body had been sexually violated, I'd be extremely upset, but I'd also take a lot of comfort in knowing she hadn't really been present for it.

It is true that it does not hurt the victim themselves nearly as much as if they were living - in fact it wouldn't hurt the actual person at all. But it would still hurt and traumatize the people who were left behind. I mean, imagine if your little sister was raped. Although it didn't directly hurt you, you would probably still be upset. And if your little sister was also dead, that would merely double the trauma, because you are now dealing with her sexual abuse as well as her death, which is hard enough on it's own. So it is a slightly different sort of crime, but that doesn't make it any better.

eww just eww, how desperate do you have to be to do such a thing? I mean sweet jesus that is just sickening

I do however agree with fina that it is less of a crime

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Originally posted by invisiblegirl:
Just because the person’s not alive doesn’t make it any less of a crime.

I would argue it does, actually. It is, of course, a despicable, disgusting thing to do, and there's no argument it should be illegal, but to equate it with the trauma a living person goes through when sexually assaulted just seems wrong to me.

I agree with YouthVoice. That is just wrong and disgusting. It’s awful to have to grieve for someone who’s died; that could only make it worse. I think that they should absolutely be charged with sexual assault. Just because the person’s not alive doesn’t make it any less of a crime.

That is the most disgusting, perverted, unforgivable thing I've ever read. How dare they sacrilege such a sacred place for the family? And how can they not get punished accordingly? This seriously makes me so upset. If it was someone I knew, I don't know what I would do. I would go crazy. It's bad enough to have to deal with the loss of a loved one and then on top of that deal with them being disturbed with after death? Unforgivable.

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If the sole purpose of digging her up was to rape her body, than they should have been charged with sexual assault.