Sexual Abuse and the Sexual Offender

Common Man or Monster?

Barry Maletzky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429919008
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book examines the myths perpetuated by the media and by the public, by providing actual data, with case examples. It demonstrates how sexual offending occurs, who commits these acts, what might cause such crimes, how sexual offenders are assessed, supervised, treated, and prevention methods.

CHAPTER ONE

Judge the act, not the actor

Charles was originally from New England, where he grew up, graduated high school, then became a reasonably successful contractor. He married but had had no children up to that point. Unfortunately, for reasons about which we are unclear, as a teenager Charles became attracted to young boys in the 7–11-year age range. He had been arrested twice for “minor” offenses such as contributing to the delinquency of a minor, yet the potential for molesting boys more forcefully was definitely present. He had not known his victims well but sought them out from around his neighborhood. Charles would then invite the boys to his “private” room where he introduced them to heterosexual pornographic movies. He would then “teach” them to masturbate “the right way”. Because of the notoriety of his crimes, Charles chose to move to the Northwest, where an uncle lived. He gained permission to move from his probation officer (PO) but was required to receive treatment. In taking his history, then verifying it with family members and his PO, we learned an interesting anecdote: Just a year earlier, in between arrests, Charles was busy on a building project when he heard screams from a nearby lake. A middle-aged woman had assumed the frozen lake was safe when she saw children playing on it, so she had donned her skates, but her weight was too heavy for the ice and she broke through. Charles immediately rushed to the scene, dove into the bitingly cold water and rescued the lady, a stranger to him at the time.

Was Charles a hero for rescuing a person from a certain freezing death or a cad, preying on children for his own sexual gratification? Obviously, the situation dictates our response. He was a hero under one circumstance and a villain within the others. In fact, upon learning more about Charles, it was difficult to find anyone who knew him, not just his family but even his PO, who could say a bad word about his personality: “Outgoing, friendly, helpful, great boss to work for, reliable, never missed a session with his treatment provider or his PO or violated the terms of his probation”. Charles’ wife had moved with him to Oregon and, of course, knew about his predilection towards boys, yet she chose to stay with him. She described their sex life as “nothing out of the ordinary” and called Charles a “wonderful husband”, even though she knew they could never have children of their own because of his criminal record. “I watch him like a hawk”, she said, “and I will never let him get into trouble again.”

Admirable as Charles’ personality was, commendable as his perfect attendance at the clinic was, and reassuring as his wife’s watchful eye might be, we still had to treat Charles as a dangerous offender for reasons best explained more fully in Chapter Two. Primarily, his attraction to young boys and the fact he had acted on that tendency in the past (though not forcibly) raised his level of risk. Yet, most people who got to know Charles, both at the clinic and at his new job for a local contractor, described him as a “great guy”. He made friends easily, was honest and not a “con”, and fulfilled none of the criteria for a sociopath. He had committed no crimes other than those against the two boys back east and, fortunately, did reasonably well in treatment.

Is it possible that most sexual offenders are, like Charles, wonderful citizens in their own right yet have just one deviation or anomaly? Not very likely. The story of Phil is not unusual.

Phil’s parents were divorced when he was ten. Although he stayed with his mother thereafter, her drug and alcohol use prompted Children’s Protective Services to place him in a series of foster homes until he left on his own at seventeen. Phil eventually received a GED in prison after committing two consecutive DUI offenses. After release he met and moved in with his girlfriend and her eleven-year old daughter. Although Phil looked for work, his lack of modern-day skills limited him to temporary construction jobs. Low on funds, Phil committed two armed robberies that thrust him back into prison. Because of prison crowding, Phil was released two years later and moved back in with the same girlfriend. Within several months, however, her daughter began to show signs that she was afraid to be alone with Phil. Her mother would hear her crying in bed for no apparent reason at night. She finally dredged the story out of the girl, by now fourteen: Phil had begun touching her breasts and reaching under her panties. He told her it was “normal sexual education” but that her mother, being a woman, could not teach her like a man and that it was “their secret”. The mother did the right thing, immediately evicting Phil and calling the police. Phil spent another two years in prison thereafter before being referred to our clinic.

A true sociopath, Phil hesitated at our treatment suggestions, though eventually he had to follow through as they were part of his parole requirements. Surprisingly, however, the treatment plan for Phil was not as rigorous as that for Charles, though it was by no means lax or easy. One complication, finally overcome after several months, was that Phil denied he had molested the girl. “It was all a misunderstanding—I was just teaching her stuff”. (The stories of denial a treatment provider hears could constitute a book in themselves—see Chapter Six.) Another problem emerged when Phil would miss treatment appointments. After several trips back to jail for these parole violations, he became a more regular customer. The reasons Phil’s treatment plan differed from Charles’, and the justifications for these differences, sprang not from Phil’s admittedly uncooperative personality, but from the nature of the sexual offense itself: He had molested just one person and that girl was well known to him and living with him at the time. As we shall see, these details, seemingly unaffiliated with the sexual crime itself, rendered Phil actually easier to treat in order to reduce the risk that he would reoffend sexually.

Sexual abuse can be defined as any unwanted sexual actions against a person but the law must also include sexual activity with those who cannot consent to it, such as children (legally defined as those under the age of eighteen—arbitrary but some lines must be drawn by the law); those not in full control of their capacities, such as individuals with severe mental disabilities; and those not fully aware of their circumstances, such as those under the influence of drugs or alcohol to such an extent they are not able to provide consent or those who are fully unconscious. Yes, this leaves gray areas: The girl was drunk but did not put up much of a fight; the girl was fifteen but wanted sex with her eighteen-year-old boyfriend (a three-year age difference, in most jurisdictions, is designated as illegal in such cases).

It is the task of the legal system to define sexual abuse and our system of justice has done the best it can. It is now the job of the sexual offender treatment provider to assess the risk a potential offender poses to the community and to reduce or eliminate that risk as best she or he can. We made no pretense of trying to eradicate Phil’s sociopathic tendencies, although part of treatment was directed toward living a more responsible and crime-free life. We also referred him to an alcohol and drug treatment facility. Our job was to focus on reducing or eliminating the risk Phil (or Charles) posed to sexually reoffend. While you will hear and read a great deal about treating the “whole person”, we believed we could most realistically address that specific risk. While certain features of treatment certainly confronted Phil’s antisocial behavior and made attempts to change it, our main focus was a sexual one.

Many therapists would protest that we first must understand what made Phil molest in the first place—was it his dysfunctional upbringing, a poor male father figure, his alcohol abuse? We frankly do not know, although some potential etiologies are proposed in Chapter Four. In fact, the causes of sexual offending may be different in different individuals. Fortunately, we can treat certain conditions without knowing the exact cause—epilepsy and diabetes come immediately to mind. As far as we can tell, early childhood experiences at just the right (or wrong) moment of sexual maturation of the brain (usually between seven and twelve years of age), inborn proclivities, drugs and alcohol, circumstance, and low impulse control could all play some role. A direct genetic connection does not appear to be inherently involved.

In Charles’ case, we can hypothesize that, because most of his playmates were boys and he had a weak father figure, he became attracted to boys, but there is at present no scientific way to prove those suppositions; thus “working through” these issues carries no guarantee of success in reducing risk. In the case of Phil, certainly circumstance was a factor, although alcohol might have contributed to his lack of control. Had he not moved back in with his girlfriend, he would not have molested her daughter. We do not know if he would have molested any other young girls subsequently but, at the age of thirty-nine, he had no other record of doing so. It was likely that, unless he lived with another maturing young girl in the future, something now prohibited as part of his parole, he would not molest again. He was, therefore, deemed less of a sexual risk than Charles, who had molested two boys he did not know well.

We can judge Charles’ act of molesting boys and Phil’s molestation of a young girl as wrong because they created victims. We do not know to what extent these particular victims will suffer through the remainder of their lives because of these acts. Perhaps not at all—many cases of victims moving ahead with their lives are well known. But because many victims do suffer, child molestation is a crime, and rightfully so. But Charles’ acts of friendliness, heroism, and hard work should, in my opinion, not be denied or disaffirmed by his acts of deviant sexuality, just as Phil’s molestation should not be automatically attributed to his sociopathic personality. Most sociopaths do not molest girls and most sexual offenders are not particularly antisocial. The totality of all our behaviors cannot be summed in a single label. Many would call Charles a pervert but that does not define him. Others would (correctly, I believe) call Phil a sociopath, but that does not entirely account for his deviant behavior either, or for the fact that, whenever he could, he worked hard and gave his money to his girlfriend to support her and her daughter.

We are left, perhaps without satisfaction, at not being able to completely define an individual with a single word. Although in psychiatry we try to define patterns of behavior as personality types, and these do have some merit, we must recognize that circumstances often dictate behavior. We call the fellow who suddenly swerves in front of our car a “jerk” without the slightest knowledge about him. We refer to the doctor or judge as “an upright citizen” with even less knowledge about them. Although I personally do not accord the bible much divine authenticity, there are two comments within it that stand out as significant in this regard: “Judgment is mine, sayeth the Lord”, and, as Jesus is supposed to have said upon witnessing the beginning of a stoning, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.

We should not end this chapter without one further comment about Phil’s sexual offense. How many men would have sexual thoughts and cast sexual glances at a fourteen-year-old girl whom they had not raised from infancy and with whom they now lived in relative intimacy? We do not know, though you can imagine an anonymous survey being conducted. One wonders, even under guarantees of anonymity, whether men would admit such lascivious thoughts. My guess (backed up by some research) is that a lot of men, probably a majority, would harbor such sexual thoughts and fantasies, but only a few would act on them. Again, “let he who is without sin …”

CHAPTER TWO

There is more than one type of sexual offender—and it makes a big difference

The “Bible” of psychiatric nomenclature, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), offers diagnostic criteria for a number of paraphilias, defined as “any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners.” This description, I am afraid, might make most of us paraphilics. Thus, the DSM-5 goes on to clarify that a “paraphilic disorder should be diagnosed as one that is causing distress or impairment to the individual or a paraphilic whose satisfaction has entailed personal harm, or risk of harm to others”. In other words, someone is suffering and, in the vast majority of clinical cases we see, it is the target, or victim, of sexual abuse who sustains the harm.

A variety of paraphilias are listed in the DSM-5 but the authors wisely note that sexual behavior is nothing if not idiosyncratic; thus, a mere listing of types of disorders will fail to convey the full panoply of what we witness in real-life situations. Table 1 lists the paraphilias recognized in the DSM-5, with abbreviated criteria.

To be fair, these are abbreviated criteria. Witness the following stories.

Table 1. The paraphilias recognized in the DSM-5

Paraphilia	Key characteristics
Voyeuristic disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense arousal from viewing an unsuspecting person who is in a state of undress
Exhibitionistic disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense arousal from the exposure of one’s genitals to an unsuspecting person
Frotteuristic disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense arousal from touching or rubbing against a non-consenting person
Sexual masochism disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense arousal from the act of being humiliated, beaten, bound or otherwise made to suffer
Sexual sadism disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense arousal from the physical or psychological suffering of another person
Pedophilic disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent intense arousing fantasies, urges or behaviors involving sexual activity with a pre-pubescent child; specify if exclusive or non-exclusive type and specify whether sexually attracted to male or female children, or to both
Fetishistic disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense arousal from either the use of non-living objects or a highly specific focus on non-genital body parts
Transvestic disorder	Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense arousal from cross-dressing

John had always been fascinated by women’s undergarments. He would often caress his wife’s bras or panties and masturbate. John’s wife was aware of this and thought it was, in her words, “cute”. Their sexual life was described by both as quite normal.

Rebecca began her sexual activities in a fairly conventional way but, after reading several sexually explicit novels in which masochistic activities were described, she began to fantasize about being bound and gagged, then forced into sexual activity. She then summoned th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Foreword
• Introduction Dispelling the myths
• Chapter One Judge the act, not the actor
• Chapter Two There is more than one type of sexual offender—and it makes a big difference
• Chapter Three How common is sexual offending?
• Chapter Four The possible origins of sexual offending
• Chapter Five Who sexually offends? Who might? The assessment of the sexual offender
• Chapter Six The examination of the sexual offender
• Chapter Seven Treating the sexual offender: cognitive techniques
• Chapter Eight Treating the sexual offender: experiential techniques
• Chapter Nine Treating the sexual offender: ancillary techniques
• Chapter Ten The frequency, duration, and cost of sexual offender treatment programs
• Chapter Eleven The overall philosophy and rationale of sexual offender treatment programs
• Chapter Twelve Can sexual offenders ever be successfully treated?
• Chapter Thirteen The outliers: unusual offenders, female offenders, youth who offend, clergy, and the like
• Chapter Fourteen Attempting to prevent sexual abuse
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index