I don't love kids. I hate their predators. It's a burning hatred I feel to this day. - Andrew Vachss

There's a very specific formula for creating a monster. It starts with chronic, unrelenting abuse. There's got to be societal notification and then passing on. The child eventually believes that what's being done is societally sanctioned. And after a while, empathy – which we have to learn, we're not born with it – cracks and dies. He feels only his own pain. There's your predatory sociopath." That's why Vachss posed for a recent publicity photo cradling his pit bull puppy. "You know what pit bulls are capable of, right?" he asks, referring to the animal's notorious killer reputation. "But they're also capable of being the most wonderful, sweet pets in the world, depending on how you raise them. That's all our children."

Our reasons for critiquing the [child protection] system [are] pointless. To analyze the system and point out what's wrong with it, without the power to alter it, is masturbatory. The whole concept behind analysis is the concept behind consciousness–raising. Which is, if I show you that something is terrible, you will do something about it. That's not reality. Reality is, it's about power. It's not about education, and knowledge is not power.

It's an extremely profitable thing to be 'concerned' about drugs. You don't just have treatment programs, you have law enforcement programs, you have entire industries that could not function but for drugs. Including the prison industry. I think America has gone psychotic ... there are human beings—even as we speak—dying, in the kind of shrieking, tormenting pain you couldn't inflict on a P.O.W., because America doesn't want them to be drug addicts.