Here’s what I don’t understand about the Stephen Spiese case, the grotesque contradiction at the heart of it all:

Lots of people come forward to defend Spiese at his sentencing, noting too that he has worked extensively with children, whose lives he has enriched. And I don’t doubt that he has done just that.

But one particular line about the type of child porn he collected jumped out at me:

After the student reported Spiese, investigators seized a computer hard drive from a computer Spiese used and found another video, also depicting dozens of children being raped and sexually abused.

At times, the children in the videos are screaming and crying, the prosecutor noted.

How can anyone ostensibly interested in children for anything beyond satisfaction of these desires possibly watch a video of a child being harmed, a child harming and screaming and not get absolutely incensed, or sick to his stomach?

There’s a disconnect there. I’m sure psychiatrists could offer some sort of complex explaination, but I just don’t see how it’s possible to both care for children and derive pleasure from watching their abject suffering.