On Avoiding DILP

So, basically, my villain is very, very screwed up mentally. He actually has a fairly depressing, explanatory Freudian Excuse - his mother hates him, and has made no secret of this, and has made his life as miserable as possible as a result, and his father is in denial over this. However, while I do want the Freudian Excuse to explain his actions, I don't want them to justify his actions - I still want the reader to be disgusted with the character. The actions in question are multiple murders of animals and children as part of a variety of Ambiguously Satanic rituals. He is thirteen when he begins these actions, and dies himself at fourteen. (He is later resurrected as The Antichrist, basically, but this can't really be considered his fault - it's a Damaged Soul issue.)

I note that, on the other hand, I don't want his mother to come off as sympathetic, either - I want it to be clear that his evil actions were a reaction to his mother's treatment, and not the other way around. On this issue, and the one described in the first paragraph, do any of you have any advice?

You can't really control audience reactions, so this can be quite difficult to avoid. Try to avoid making him a Woobie} or describing him as particuarly attractive. (this doesn't always work, however)

There are a lot of people with bad childhoods (worse than this guy's) who don't become violent sociopath. Try to imply that his parents set him off in that direction but it's his own fault that he is the way he is. You could also have a character who has a similar (or worse) backstory, who turned out to be a good person to show that the villains evilness is only partially his parents fault.

Well sorry but, you can't actually control that. Even the villains who seem like just plain awful people looking at their behavior and motivations have a camp who makes excuses for them and makes them out be misunderstood while making the heroes evil for working against them

If your work has enough fans/readers it will happen. it can be a bit disappointing and disturbing especially if you get the "cult of [villain]" sort.

Make him butt ugly.

(I'm being partially serious and partially sarcastic with this suggestion. Seriously though, attractiveness is a heavy factory into the granting of leather garments.)

This. No matter how vile a villain seems to be, sometimes it doesn't matter if they are attractive. In all seriousness there is no avoiding the dreaded Draco in Leather Pants.

And then at least one reader deems the villain Ugly Cute. :p