"Evil souls and bad character" really brings me back to my childhood, when my mom used to describe my alcoholic father that way.
I am a recovering alcoholic and I have three active alcoholic brothers, two active alcoholic nieces, and one alcoholic nephew.
I can pick one of two maps to navigate all this shite with: "the evil, we are no good and have bad character" map or the "We/they me and us have a disease" map.
When I try to use the bad character map, everything blows up in my face and I am left with the feeling that my only option is to hate myself and hate them. When I use the stop drinking, you have a disease and you can fix it map, things tend to work out a whole lot better.