is whether such people are inherently evil or whether they are sick. my guest today has spent more than three decades trying to treat some of the most violent offenders here in the uk. dr gwen adshead is a forensic psychiatrist as well as a psychotherapist, and has worked across a range of secure hospitals, prisons and in the community. why does she urge compassion and understanding for those who many brand as being simply evil? dr gwen adshead, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much, zeinab. why did you decide to choose a career where you provide counselling and therapy to people who ve committed acts which many brand as simply being pure evil? well, i first got interested in this career because i was interested in law and ethics. that very interesting question of how should we treat people who ve done terrible things? so i started by assessing those people and giving evidence in court and really beginning to try and understand how people came to commit acts of violence. a
for goodness as well. and tony is somebody. tony is a composite of various men i ve met who committed repeat homicide. and what is striking about them, i think, is that they were often men who had double lives, that they had aspects of their life that were good and positive and ordinary and pro social. but the cruelty and the violence came out in very particular contexts, and then they kind of lost control of it. and many of the men i ve seen in this context were glad to be caught. but i mean, it s a very live debate, you know, to put it simply, you know, are they mad or bad? i mean, that s not a good way of looking at it, but it s a very live debate. i ll tell you what rob whitley, professor of psychiatry at mcgill university, in canada, says. he says, many are too quick to attribute evil acts to mental illness rather than to a complex web of causation, which may include moral turpitude, extreme ideology and social resentments. we can tjust explain these things away by saying, oh
you want a different outcome and you might change the standard. tonight we have the person who made the most important and risky call in this trial, second to the law at play, the second biggest factor was rittenhouse taking the stand in his own defense. counselor mark richards, attorney for kyle rittenhouse, helped make that call. counselor, appreciate you taking the opportunity. good evening. how difficult a call was it? you know, myself and cory obviously went around and around with it. we felt as though we had a witness, a client, who could tell his story. he was articulate, fairly intelligent. he didn t have any damage. he didn t have prior convictions or never been in trouble. he was a police cadet, fire cadet, pro social. we thought he could do it. there was obviously a lot of
counselor, appreciate you taking the opportunity. good evening. how difficult a call was it? you know, myself and cory obviously went around and around with it. we felt as though we had a witness, a client, who could tell his story. he was articulate, fairly intelligent. he didn t have any damage. he didn t have prior convictions or never been in trouble. he was a police cadet, fire cadet, pro social. we thought he could do it. there was obviously a lot of work that went into it. we did a mock jury, and the mock jury were the 12 people denied to hear kyle s story. he scored much worse than the people who did hear his story. and that was subject to cross examination by a trained