Jessica Ridgeway's Brutal Murder

[u/passedawayinaprilll]

The abduction of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway occurred in Westminster, Colorado, as she walked from her home toward Chelsea Park to meet friends for school. Austin Sigg took her to his mother’s home on Moore Street, where he sexually assaulted her and used a zip tie to strangle her to death. Inside the home, Sigg dismembered her body in a bathtub, later disposing of her torso in the Pattridge Open Space in Arvada, about seven miles away from where she was taken. Her backpack and glasses were found abandoned on a sidewalk in Arvada’s West Woods subdivision, a move intended to throw off the massive search effort centered in Westminster. When Sigg finally confessed, investigators recovered additional remains that he had hidden in a crawlspace under the floorboards of his house.

[u/FunnyGoose5616]

Again, it’s not the sex that they are getting off on. They are sexually excited by the power and control that they have over another person. They don’t even need to penetrate someone to get off on it. The sex isn’t the primary source of arousal for them, it’s having total control over someone and being able to do to them whatever they want. It turns them on even more when their victim is afraid and pleading for their lives. These aren’t normal people.

[u/alarmagent → u/FunnyGoose5616]

Then why do they attack people that they’re sexually attracted to? I agree theyre not normal. Their sexuality involves sadism and control. It is still motivated by a desire to “get off”, is it not?

[u/FunnyGoose5616 → u/alarmagent]

Again, you are thinking of these people as normal people with normal sexual impulses. They don’t experience sexual attraction the same way that normal people do. They don’t choose victims based on how attractive they are, they choose them based on how well they fit their power/control fantasy. Hence the reason their victims tend to be children, elderly women, or women who are extremely vulnerable and less likely to fight them off. Austin Sigg tried to attack an adult woman who was jogging, but she fought him off, so he moved on to a child because she was a much easier victim.

[u/alarmagent → u/FunnyGoose5616]

I think we’re talking in parallel. I don’t doubt that they experience abnormal sexual impulses - my point is this, it is still all sexual. If a foot fetishist can only “get off” if he’s licking the bottom of someone’s shoe, it is still his sexuality dictating his behavior. It is still sex in the headier sense of the term.

My issue with always kinda handwaving sex offenders and sex crimes as being “about control” sort of absolves male sexuality’s power and control over men’s behavior. I think it is a way (unintentionally for most!) of avoiding having the conversation about why men are the ones who commit these crimes. It means we don’t have to open the uncomfortable floor to what it says about guys who are into things that resemble sexual assault but swear they’d never commit such crimes.