As the evidence emerges, it's appearing that Charles Carl Roberts IV was a deeply repressed pedophile who never told anyone -- not even his wife -- about his evil secret.

The fact that there are such people ought not to surprise anyone, nor should it be a judgment against society. But when someone like Roberts acts out, human emotions are set in high dudgeon, and people have a need to scold others for something with which they had absolutely nothing to do. A good example is Inquirer columnist John Grogan (author of the wonderful Marley and Me). He thinks that this is somehow about guns:

Three schools in one week. My God, who among us has the gall to look those parents in the face and tell them we have adequate gun controls in this country?

The Pennsylvania legislature dithers as defenseless innocents are mowed down once again. The governor rushes to the news conference for good exposure with Election Day bearing down. But nothing changes.

The power of the status quo trumps the power of human heartbreak.

For the Amish, and really for each and every one of us, it's done.

The dream is over.

Yet what can really be done about the existence of evil (especially hidden evil) and of evil people, other than being prepared to deal with them when they appear? As we all know, Nazi Germany was ruled by monsters, but enabled by evil people who appeared to be shockingly normal, even nice. I don't doubt for a minute that there are many thousands of people in this country who would not hesitate to pull the lever releasing cyanide gas into Auschwitz-style gas chambers -- and if someone behind the levers of power made such evil jobs available, they'd line up to take them.

Looking for explanations for human evil by no means excuses it, but some people think it does. The debate surfaced in Dr. Helen's blog, which reports the following comment drawn by her radio interview on the subject:

We have become inured to the idea that such a thing as "pure evil" exists, despite the constant evidence of its existence.

I heard a bit of Dr. Smith's commentary. In my opinion, to try to find a pschological root cause for this man's behavior is to attempt to excuse it.

What could be more evil than terrorizing the children of one of the most innocuous and inoffensive religious sects in existence?

As Dr. Helen points out studying these things might help prevent them:

...psychologists can add to the discussion of why people commit mass murder. After all, who has more access to the minds of killers and criminals than we do? If information is used in the proper way, without a political agenda, mental health professionals can help laypeople to understand and make sense of the worldview of a murderer. Does this excuse it? No. Does it mean that evil does not exist in the world? Not in my opinion. However, psychological data can be useful in preventing the next round of senseless killings, and I, for one, am not willing to say that doing nothing is the best tactic to take in protecting innocent victims from the next atrocity.

Roberts came from a religious background, and I think it's highly likely that he was deeply ashamed of his inner secret. His notes refer to this shame, and unless he was lying, he was angry at God for his plight, and obviously felt unable to tell anyone anything. Ever. For twenty years, the man ran around with this secret, and he doubtless obsessed over it. Short of outright door-to-door confiscation, gun control measures would have been as useless as the mental health system turned out to be.

Even in theory, I'm wondering how might the mental health system have helped this man. He was not only evil, he was ashamed to be evil, and he had nowhere to go.

Would anyone obsessed over having sex with little girls confide that in anyone? I mean, wouldn't there be consequences? It's not as if there's such a thing as anonymous confession available. Crazy and evil as the guy was, he lived in the real world, and he had to know that had he confessed to thoughts about suicide, hatred of God, obsession with little girls, they might not just let him walk out the door.

So you've got an evil, deeply repressed man walking around without options in a world full of options, grief counselors, and conflict management experts.

Forgive my cynicism.

I'm only surprised that anyone's surprised.

AFTERTHOUGHT: One of the reasons that psychological explanations are often seen as synonymous with excuses is because they are offered as excuses. In Slate today, Andrew Rice opines that Congressman Foley is attempting to "McGreevey" himself:

Foley, meanwhile, appeared to be trying to McGreevey himself out of his predicament. A day after going into rehab for alcoholism and unspecified "behavioral problems," he announced, through his lawyer, that he was the victim of sexual abuse by an unnamed clergyman—presumably a priest, since Foley is Roman Catholic—when he was a teenager.

But that doesn't change the fact that there's no excuse for Foley or McGreevey. Nor does it change the fact that explanations are not excuses -- even when they are offered as excuses.

I'm a little worried that these endless cycles of explanations-offered-as-excuses only invite cycles of moral equivalency arguments (and hatred of the psychological profession). If McGreevey is Foley (and the morning after pill is Auschwitz) then surely it's not too much of a stretch to claim there's no moral difference (or surely some "we" type of "connection") between Foley and Charles Carl Roberts IV. I hate the conflation of moral relativism and moral absolutism, but I can't stop it, even though I might attempt to explain it.

However, explaining it does not excuse it.

UPDATE: Speaking of climates, here's a woman who thinks Harry Potter books are responsible for school shootings:

Laura Mallory, a mother of four from the Atlanta suburb of Loganville, told a Georgia Board of Education officer that the books by British author J.K. Rowling, sought to indoctrinate children as Wiccans, or practitioners of religious witchcraft.

Referring to the recent rash of deadly assaults at schools, Mallory said books that promote evil - as she claims the Potter ones do - help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen.

That would not happen if students instead read the Bible, Mallory said.