i'm not defending this guy, as he is clearly a predator, but this letter exemplifies what i've come to dislike about feminism. women's rights/needs aren't MORE important than that of children, men, the planet, the family, or anything else. they are AS important, and in some instances, (dare i say it?) less important. she actually admits that she has more sympathy for the rape of grown women than for a small, helpless child--maybe if we weren't talking about a male child she'd sing a different tune. despicable.

I think you are misinterpreting the letter writer. In the sentence just before she talks about how there is a clear need to rate sexual offenders, with the more violent and repeat offenders getting a higher rating. Then she says that raping a child is no worse than raping an adult woman. I dont' think she was talking about the offender's childhood molestation, but rather about the common perception that attacking a child is somehow worse. There are valid reasons for thinking a crime against a child is worse (more vulnerable victim, more undeveloped psyche, less chance of getting caught etc.) but I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with the writers opinion either.

Maybe the writer is saying that she has more sympathy for two women, who probably have never harmed other people at any points in their lives, than a man who chose to deal with his past abuse by brutalizing two complete strangers. If that is what the letter writer was getting at, then I completely agree.

Exactly,
It's possible to have more sympathy for the adult innocent victims than for someone who was abused and then turned around and inflicted that on somebody else. That's a far cry from thinking sexual assault of a child is somehow not as bad as sexually assaulting an adult. And while I happen to think assaulting a child is worse (for the reasons I mentioned before), that's far from clear to me. If that means I'm somehow giving feminism a bad name, I think feminism will somehow survive the black mark.