I found Aileen to be oddly likeable...

Yes, for the sake of argument, let's talk about people.

Anne Frank had a family who loved her dearly and she was lucky enough to be the recipient of some brave, goodhearted people who took her and her family in and hide and protected them from the Nazis. Anne suffered from a horrible fear in the camps, as well as malnutrition and disease, and I'm sure she saw many people around her die. In her short fifteen years, I would think she probably lived in steady fear (and worse) for probably about 5 of those years, when her and her family first found themselves trapped in the Jewish ghetto. That's 5 years out of 15. A third of her life. That is a tragedy. I believe Aileen's perception of life as a very scary, dangerous place probably started when she gained that bit of awareness that usually happens around the age of 2-3 and ended with her execution some 40 years later. In other words, basically her entire life. That is unthinkable and unspeakable and about as close to unforgivable as it gets.

Anne was never completely alone and she always knew she was loved. The closest Aileen ever got to feeling loved was rape. The tenderness boggles the mind, doesn't it? The love that Anne received (coupled with a good education - that girl was very literate, very eloquent when she wrote in her diary), I suspect, contributed largely to her huge, generous spirit. In certain ways, in certain REAL ways, whether you choose to admit it or not, fiatlux-1, Anne Frank was a lucky person. Why? Because she knew love.

Also, and this is not something that probably gets much consideration, but Anne Frank had enough life experience to comprehend and appreciate the differences between love and hate. I don't think Aileen had the first bald hint as to what real love looked like or felt like. So, just exactly how is a person - who has no notion of what love is (and worse) - supposed to act in society?

And don't bring up the notion of Aileen seeing a psychiatrist. This is just too ridiculous. In order for that to have been possible, I really think that somebody who had their head on straight and who saw that Aileen needed help AND somebody who might be able to establish trust with Aileen (very difficult task at best) would have to be the catalyst for Aileen to even consider that there even was that kind of help available. And with all her issues, her befriending this type of person is very unlikely in the extreme. We are not talking about a rational, thoughtful person. She also had an IQ of around 70. She might not have even known what psychology was.

I looked up the other examples you provided. Dennis Jurgens was three years old when he was murdered by his mother. What in the world does this have to do with Aileen Wournos? As far as I know, three year old murderers do not exist. And, besides, how can you know that he might not have turned into a sociopath as an adult? You can't. Aileen didn't kill anybody when she was three years old. Your comparison is not a valid one. (And I am not and never was talking about children who were murdered by their mothers. I think I have been clear on that much.) And it is more than likely that Aileen was being sexually molested by her mother's second husband at a very young age. And fitting the pattern that was Aileen's life, her mother turned her head away and did nothing to stop the abuse. Anne is loved and protected and nurtured by her parents. Aileen's dad is in jail for child molestation and commits suicide and mom, more or less, tells her second husband "sure, go ahead and *beep* her if you want." "Bad time"??? uh-huh, sure. So, anyway, Dennis Jurgens has just been removed from your list.

The Downs children. Yes, I know a little bit about this case. I did see the movie "Small Sacrifices" with Farrah Fawcett as the mother who killed her children. (Although I don't think all her kids died.) Okay. Now, it's time for me to ask you... ARE YOU SERIOUS? So far you have been talking about children who died at the hands of their mothers? What in the world does this have anything to do with Aileen Wournos? Just because I feel a tremendous amount of sympathy and compassion for Aileen does not in any way mean that I am not capable of feeling sorry for people who have been murdered. (Sharon Tate's murder has haunted me for 30 years.) And if you were really trying to make some kind of point, then wouldn't it make better sense to ask me if I felt sympathy for Diane Downs and not her children??? Diane Downs was the murderer, just like Aileen. So, stay focused and be consistent and ask the appropriate questions. If you would have thought through your logic, then THIS would have been the right question to have asked. And if you had asked me if I felt any sympathy for Diane Downs, I would have said no, not a bit.

Okay, next example. Wladyslaw Szpilman was, I believe, a hero who lived to be 88 years old. I think it's a safe bet that most people respect, admire and maybe even feel enormous affection for him. He suffered through the Holocaust and turned a horrible experience around and made something out of it. I have absolutely no problem with him being looked upon as a hero. But, sigh, here we go again. First, Wladyslaw Szpilman had ENORMOUS advantages up to the time of the Holocaust. And he had, I wouldn't doubt, a very healthy ego. He knew who he was. About the only thing that Aileen had to go on were the instincts necessary to survive in the jungle. And I am very sorry that you probably can't understand this, but to Aileen, every old, every new environment she found herself in was a jungle where the name of the game was survival. And if you can think of it this way, Aileen was fighting a real, honest-to-god war against the world, army of one. I am actually surprised she lived as long as she did. And I admire her courage and, yes, that hurting heart that was buried so, so very deeply. Anyway, Wladyslaw Szpilman didn't begin to suffer the effects of Nazism/Holocaust until he was in his mid 20s. A person is already pretty much formed by this time in life. The kind of damage that Aileen and others like her suffered took place before they had enough cognitive awareness to understand what was happening to them. And no real verbal articulation. This is around the time that your world view begins to develop. So, tell me, what do you think Aileen's world view was when she thought the best life had to offer was getting gang-raped for pocket change? (I'm sorry, I just can't get past that one.) Everything that is good in life Aileen was denied. First, by her family. (I do think Aileen was close to her brother, though they did engage in sex on a regular basis. Not exactly a good way to start out.) And then society because she was so different/weird and damaged that they just assumed she not exist. She embarrassed them. Aren't people great?

Every person you mentioned in your examples either a) suffered terribly, but were too young to become a killer like Aileen and/or b) received vast amounts of love to give them some connection to the world.

I don't know if you are mentally skipping over the parts that you can't bear to hear or if your thinking is just really, really backwards. Like I said in my first post, as unthinkably horrifying as the Holocaust was, there had to have been some consolation knowing that you are not alone. I mean isn't that what we're here for? To be there for others? Agree? Disagree? Yes? No? Surely you must understand that when you have people around you who are friendly and warm and loving, it's going to do wonders to the human spirit. And Anne Frank had that in abundance. Aileen got less than zero.

Aileen was a wounded, permanently scarred, bleeding animal who was so out-of-touch with reality and so paranoid that she saw everybody as The Enemy. She only wanted to survive.

Anne Frank had people around her. And a mother who loved her. And a father who loved her. Aileen's mother allowed her husband to sexually abuse her at a young age. Aileen's father committed suicide while in prison after being charged with child molestation. Aileen's grandfather beat her regularly for no reason and then kicked her out of the house after becoming pregnant from being raped and she took refuge in a broken down car in the woods in Michigan winter. Alone. The only time Aileen wasn't alone as a child was when teenage boys sodomized her in exchange for cigarettes. "Bad time"??? lovely, just lovely

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Who are the people who had it worse than Aileen? Are you SERIOUS?! Are you thinking that Ms. Wuornos was the longest, hardest sufferer on this planet??
You need people to name names? Wow.

Of course I am serious. I asked you the question, didn't I. Are YOU serious? And, no I don't think that Aileen Wournos was the worst sufferer on the planet. Didn't say it. Didn't imply it. Don't think it. But this is the Aileen Wournos board. Not the Jesus Christ board. In every post you've written here, you gone out of your way to completely undermine Aileen's appalling experience on this planet as nothing more than a "bad time". That is insensitive and offensive and inappropriate and just a whole lot of other uncharitable things, and I believe that some part of you very knowingly chose the words you did.

If you want to be taken seriously, then you're going to have to come up with at least one example that parallels Aileen's troubled path. For example, a young girl (or boy) who was abused in every way imaginable and who lived long enough only to be thrown into a world where the only survival skills she had been taught were sex and violence and betrayal, had an IQ of about 70 and came from a family history of severe mental illness. Then, said person somehow reached out for help (or somebody reached out to her) or found religion or was in some way able to turn her/his life around and become a part of the human race. You come up with just one example and I will acknowledge your point of view. Because as it stands, the examples you have provided completely miss the mark and are in no way comparable to the life Aileen endured.

Oh, and one last thing. A HUGE part of why I have pity/love Aileen Wournos is not only because she never had a chance in life, but that so many people HATE her with such passion. As a very young girl, her parents ignored/abused (hated) her. As a young adolescent, boys sexually abused (hated) her. As a teenager, her grandfather kicked her out of the house into the freezing winter (hated her). Throughout this time, the citizens of Troy, Michigan knew what was going on and turned the other way because they hated her. And from there, it's all downhill for Ms. Aileen Wournos. And, the hate and astonishing lack of pity/compassion for Aileen is alive and well, some 10+ years after her death.