Oof. It’s strange how it’s commonly recognized that a huge part of the harm caused by molestation, harassment, and outright sexual assault is the lasting damage, and yet that often doesn’t enter the conversation when the subject of “ruining lives” comes up.
In victim/perpetrator psychology, the tendency is for the victim to assign a broad impact on them from the perpetrator for which the perpetrator is responsible, while from the perp’s perspective, they hardly did anything, and what they did wasn’t their fault. Big responsibility vs. small or no responsibility. That’s how punishment for the perp looks to him (and his supporters) like it’s overblown and life-ruining, whereas to the victim, the perp’s actions are (potentially, at least) life-ruining, and nobody else seems to recognize that.
That’s something I took from Roy Baumeister’s book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. It was published in 1999 so it’s pretty dated now, but I think this portrayal of the dynamic is still pretty accurate.