Counselling Male Sexual Offenders

A Strengths-Focused Approach

Andrew Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351665278
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Counselling Male Sexual Offenders: A Strengths-Focused Approach informs readers how to utilize an easily accessible, integrative, strengths-focused counselling approach with men who pose a sexual risk. There is currently a scarcity of published material which teaches people in a practical way how to conduct one-to-one counselling with different sorts of male sex offenders. However, as the number of internet offenders increases exponentially and more historic abuse cases emerge, understanding and treating the phenomenon of sex offending can play a significant role in preventing sexual crime and reducing harm to victims.

In addition to being a 'how to do book', in Counselling Male Sexual Offenders the author explores at depth the inner processes of counsellors working with this client group. It presents treatment formats and exercises for engaging individuals who deny and minimize harmful sexual behaviour. With illustrative case studies of various types of sex offenders – as well as statements from sex offenders and probation officers themselves – this text provides one of the most comprehensive insights available into the authentic experience of treating this population.

Counselling Male Sexual Offenders will be of value to counsellors and psychotherapists, alongside other practitioners such as psychologists, social workers, probation officers, and support workers.

Chapter 1

Shame, identity, and lifestyle transitions

Introduction

One of the major challenges of counselling people with sexual offending problems is responding helpfully to the high level of shame they often present with; working with people who have offended sexually is to work with shame. This chapter explores some ideas as to why there is such preoccupation with demonizing sex offenders in contemporary society, at least in the UK, and the emotional toll this can exact from counsellors working with this most marginalized of client groups. The costs, benefits, and drawbacks of facilitating individuals to engage at depth with the details of their offending, and with the harm caused to others, will be examined. How offenders can transform their perception of themselves and their place in the world is discussed, as well as the challenges faced by counsellors and clients alike in trying to realize such profound change.

Sexual offending – the ultimate taboo

Anthropologist Douglas (2002 [1966]) states that ‘no other social pressures are potentially so explosive as those which constrain sexual relations’ (p. 194). The instinctive reaction of repellence to such abuse is also compounded by the fear and risk issues which preoccupy contemporary society, at least in the UK and USA, particular with regard to sexual risk to children.

Childhood has been a site of moral panic over the last 30 years in the UK. Child rearing has become increasingly separated from marriage. Families have become more fluid, with couples no longer expecting lifelong commitment from each other. The hope that was previously invested in marriage and the family is now focused more on the child (Parton, 2006). Rather than being secondary to that of the marriage or partnership relationship, the parent–child relationship increasingly takes the position of prime importance. Whilst the emotional stock of the child has arguably increased, so too, at the same time, has the level of perceived threat to children. Childhood has always been a site of fear and fantasy but, more recently, anxiety has increased as traditional concepts of the meaning of childhood have become eroded (Buckingham, 2000). Populist media can be seen as increasingly promoting sexualized images of youth: whether displaying adult women dressed as schoolgirls or portraying ever-younger youth role models, such as pop stars, in a sexual light (Jackson and Scott, 1999). At the same time, anxieties about the sexual targeting of children and young people are shifted onto the figure of the paedophile.

Thompson (1990, 1996) illustrated how the mass, and now 24-hour, media dumb down, using stories of sex, crime, and scandals to appeal to the popular market. The media communicate, in simplistic and sensational ways, what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. Within this paradigm, there is no figure, perhaps, who inhabits the space of the ‘bad’ quite as firmly as the sex offender, becoming perhaps the most salient contemporary ‘Folk Devil’, a term coined by Cohen (1972) in relation to ‘moral panics’ about anti-social gangs.

Living in a postmodern world, with few points of absolute reference, can produce a displacement and projection of anxiety and an increased desire for security (Holloway and Jefferson, 1997). Such insecurity can create a need for seemingly clear-cut certainties, providing the basis for projection of uncomfortable and insecure parts of self onto demonized others (Young, 1999). This projection process can be seen powerfully at work with individuals who commit sexual offences; ‘I may be many things but at least I’m not like that.’

Over the last 25 years, there has been a mass media–fuelled social and political preoccupation with risk (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997; Horlick-Jones, 2002; Giddens, 1992; Parton et al., 1997): a pervading, defensive, late modern preoccupation with preventing the worst and with protection from harm (Parton and O’Byrne, 2000). Contemporary social conditions, at least in the developed world, have created a society in which individuals are significantly less likely to suffer harm than their ancestors. This has created a greater expectation of protection and safety (including safety from sexual crime) and a concomitantly greater public outcry when this is not delivered (Ferguson, 2004).

The emotional challenge for counsellors when working with sexual offending

Sex offending, especially against children, generates instinctive revulsion and is an area of great social concern. As human beings and members of society, counsellors will be impacted by such issues. My research with probation officers points to some of the challenges of working as a change agent in this emotive area, challenges which are also likely to be experienced by counsellors. Negativity can be pronounced when victims are particularly young.

Yeah, some of the victims, they are so vulnerable and young. Obviously some of them are babies and that, you know… . Yeah, it is horrible.

(Probation Officer 11)

Antipathy can also be pronounced when victims are similar ages to workers’ own children.

[T]alking about infant children, that, you know, I find that particularly difficult. I used to find it difficult when the ages of the victims were similar to the ages of my children.

(Probation Officer 16)

Probation Officer 12 also articulated how working with sex offenders made her more aware of potential danger to her own children.

I think on a personal level, I’m a 30-year-old mother of two girls. I’ve got a 10-year-old daughter and a 9-months-old baby… . It makes me more aware of the risk to my own children… . I read a horrific offence on a child my daughter’s age … and when I was pregnant I dropped all other sex offender cases because of the nature of the files, and the content of the files… . There are certain things you have to do to protect myself. Don’t have my children (photographs) all over my desk and stuff.

(Probation Officer 12)

Most of the probation officers I interviewed expressed strong feelings of antipathy to sex offenders that was not felt about other sorts of criminals.

Denial and lack of victim empathy

As noted later denial and minimization of sexual offending are no longer viewed as straightforward risk factors, with regard to the risk of reoffending (Hanson, 1997), as these states are in many cases, although not all, induced by shame and fear of the consequences of being labelled a sex offender, rather than simply by callousness. However, when individuals were seen to be in denial of their crimes, this produced increased negativity in the probation officers interviewed, with officers being worried about being taken in, or groomed, and losing sight of the person’s crimes. Similar issues are likely to pertain to counsellors working with this client group.

Well, I mean some of them obviously deny everything, which is really difficult to work with and you’ve got others who try to manipulate you as well, which I find extremely difficult to work with. So obviously that’s what they’re used to doing, so they do try to manipulate you as well.

(Probation Officer 8)

I think it’s on the detail that people try to wriggle away, or minimize their offending, so I suppose it’s about being able to be dispassionate so you know that any revulsion you might feel, you’ve got to get beyond that.

(Probation Officer 5)

I just thought he was an absolute disgrace because of how he minimized things.

(Probation Officer 12)

I have to be careful that I’m not being groomed.

(Probation Officer 3)

The challenges clients face in engaging with shameful acts

Practitioners working with people who have sexually offended will soon realize that much of the work involves helping clients to overcome shame which usually presents, in part, as denial and minimization. Among my research sample, many of the men I interviewed about their rehabilitation reported that talking about the details of their offending and the harm caused to victims was the most difficult aspect of treatment.

It’s the hardest. It was painful. It was massively painful… . Sometimes I would drive home, and I had to sometimes stop in the lay-by for 20 minutes to collect my thoughts.

(Offender 5)

You sit back and think ‘Phew!’ All of the sudden you go from just being well, ah well, get over it, to being … saying to yourself, ‘you horrible, evil, vindictive bastard!’

(Offender 9)

Offender 8, an ex-psychiatrist, commented in a similar vein:

I think the self-esteem during the actual therapeutic process was still fairly low; the whole sense of devastation, shame, having – you know, particularly for a person from my background and opportunities and kind of professional standing – having acted in this appalling way, was very difficult.

(Offender 8)

However, many offenders said that this most difficult aspect of treatment (engaging with the details of their sexual offending and the harm caused to victims) was also the most valuable.

I was put into a situation on the programme; what it must have been like being in her (the rape victim’s) shoes, and that brought home how much I destroyed somebody’s life and family, and also my family and friends as well. I feel that was the biggest step I made. The biggest thing as well to go through; it was enormous and I feel that that helped me so much.

(Offender 3)

Yes, yes, OK, it (the group work programme) goes deep into offending, and one of the things, the sort of, now I don’t want to use the word ‘turning point,’ but it’s the only thing that comes to mind, but something that really opened the door, opened my mind, was the victim empathy part of the course. When you sat there, and what effect this has, or you have … I had to write a letter (letter of apology to victim taking responsibility for the abuse, that is never sent)… . That is seriously hard to do. But when you sit in the room, there is a group of eight guys there and two facilitators, and you’re talking about the empathy side of it, and I think that really put it home to me, well hang on, the damage I caused here.

(Offender 6)

The goal of developing victim empathy and empathy for others, generally, has been a staple of most treatment programmes (Brown, 2005), even though absence of victim empathy is not cited as a risk factor. Leaving this anomaly aside, a number of criminological theorists have noted that shame can be a barrier to rehabilitation. Roys (1997) found sexual offenders who felt shame tended to have a focus on self rather than on the welfare of others. Hanson (1997) similarly found that encouraging sex offenders to identify with the suffering of victims could provoke a shame reaction, resulting in an increase in self-defensive victim blaming and cognitive distortion. Bumby (2000) also found that shame impedes sex offenders’ emotional recognition and perspective taking with regard to victims. Tangney and Dearing (2002) argue that shame is about identity and results in blame shifting whilst guilt is linked to behaviour more liable to ‘facilitate feelings of other orientated empathy’ (p. 110). Gilbert (1999), however, makes the sobering point that individuals who do not acknowledge that illegal sexual activity is morally wrong, may not be affected by either shame or guilt.

Ahmed et al. (2001), writing with Braithwaite about integrative shaming in relation to drunk driving and bullying, explores how shame management can occur if an institutional space can be made for it. Counselling, I would contend, can become this institutional space, where the therapist can lead the client non-judgementally to the darkest place (engaging with the harm caused by his sexual offending), supported by unconditional regard within the therapeutic relationship, and then out from this darkest place into social reintegration. Goode (2009) argues that support for paedophiles may make it less likely that such individuals will turn to other paedophiles for succour. This is important as involvement in such underground communities will likely consolidate distorted thinking and permission giving beliefs that it is legitimate to have sex with children.

From a social constructionist perspective (Milner and O’Byrne, 2002), the concepts of shame and guilt can be viewed as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Shame, identity, and lifestyle transitions
• 2 Initial stage of the counselling process: the counselling contract
• 3 Goal-setting
• 4 Life story themes
• 5 Life story themes: developing profiles
• 6 Life story themes: counselling victims of abuse who have gone on to sexually offend
• 7 Offence-focused interventions
• 8 Psycho-educational interventions
• 9 Facilitating victim empathy
• 10 Fantasy management
• 11 Applying strengths-focused interventions to safety planning
• Appendices
• Index