The Sex Offender as Scapegoat: Vigilante Violence and a Faith Community Response

Hugh Kirkegaard & Wayne Northey, Emory University

Excerpt: "René Girard argues that the founding moment of culture is in fact violence, which then scapegoats in order to bring social cohesion. A "scapegoat mechanism" as described earlier arises to siphon the violence away from the community, thereby creating peace for a time within the society. In religious cultures, this kind of violence invariably took the form of myths, rituals, and prohibitions legitimizing the violence against the victim or victims. In the secular West, the ultimate non-religious instance of the same dynamic is the Holocaust."

The Sex Offender as Scapegoat: Vigilante Violence and a Faith Community Response