Additional thoughts -
I will live with the guilt I promise you that.
Based on this, I suggest you start over with a new account. You should not have to hold on to guilt from past mistakes once you have owned up to them and done what you could to rectify them. A new account would let you put this whole situation behind you, and give the community a way to let you earn back your rep. Then whatever rep you have on your new account, you could safely say you earned, and it would not carry with it the tarnish of what you did with this account.
I don't agree, if this was that easy, people would just give up their bodies for a new one, once they messed up their current one. I think keeping the current account show ones history on the platform. Creating a new one, will not have the history of what he has done. Newer people that follow @jpiper20 won't see his history. People need to learn from ones history. I had no idea who Jpiper20 was till an hour ago. He is new to me. I, being an struggling artist understand how theft can hurt. I have had people do it to me a couple times. It's a bad situation, yet I want to see what the platform creators will do, to put proper tools into this platform that is still in beta. There is more then just stealing artwork going on in this platform. All these issues need to be ironed out. I really don't know the course of action that should be taken, yet I'm sure jpiper20 will do what ever he can to work toward gaining the trust of the steemit community.
It's an interesting analogy :) I don't disagree with your view.