Unspeakable Acts

Why Men Sexually Abuse Children

Doug W. Pryor

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN: 9780814766668
• eBook ISBN: 9780814767993
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A holistic sociological approach that explores why offenders sexually abuse children The sexual abuse of children is one of the most morally unsettling and emotionally inflammatory issues in American society today. It has been estimated that roughly one out of every four girls and one in ten boys experience some form of unwanted sexual attention either inside or outside the family before they reach adulthood. How should society deal with the sexual victimization of children? Should known offenders be released back into our communities? If so, where, and with what rights, should they be allowed to live? In Unspeakable Acts, Douglas W. Pryor argues that much of this debate, designed to deal with abusers after they have offended, ignores the important issue of why men cross these forbidden sexual boundaries to molest children in the first place and how the behavior can possibly be prevented before it starts.Incorporating in-depth interviews with more than thirty convicted child molesters, Pryor explores how men become involved with breaking sexual boundaries with children. He looks at how their lives prior to offending contributed to and led up to what they did, the ways that initial interest in sex with children began, the tactics offenders employed to molest their victims over time, how they felt about and reacted to their behavior between offending episodes, and how they were ultimately able to stop. The author expands our understanding of this often reviled, little understood group, leaving us with the uneasy conclusion that the moral wall separating us from what is defined as extreme, sick behavior is not as opaque as we would like to believe.

ONE
Studying Offenders and Their Behavior

R: I was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine. … And it was weird. I was playing around with [my daughter]. I was tickling her. … And I just started tickling her in the wrong places. I thought she liked it. At first … I enjoyed it, but at the same time, I felt real bad about it too. Like, “I can’t believe I’m doing this to my own daughter. What kind of father am I?” But … it was probably a month later or so, I did it again. And I’m not going to lie. I did enjoy it. I felt bad about it [again]. … And then I got scared. I was fearful. I had convinced myself that she likes this. … I said, “Well, if I don’t do it she’s going to tell on me. …” I felt kind of trapped. I didn’t know how to stop. I’d keep telling myself, “I’ll never do that again. …” But I did.

The above example is unsettling. It is meant to introduce the topic of this book: men who have molested children, either their own children or those of relatives, neighbors, or friends. The mere mention of offenders and their acts can stir intense emotions, including anger, contempt, shock, and disgust.¹ I know. I have experienced these and other feelings across the course of the investigation that led to the book you are about to read, and have experienced them particularly strongly because I myself am the father of two young daughters. But however repulsed one might feel about the issue to be addressed here, such feelings do not diminish the importance of trying to understand how and why sexual situations between adults and children occur. My research explores the reality and lives of men who became offenders. I have attempted to listen to and document their stories, to capture in their experiences and their words how involvement in sexual offending unfolded.

One of the most significant problems children as a group face today is the threat of sexual abuse. Data about the number of children who become victims of sex crimes are startling. In eight recent studies, 8 percent to 62 percent of females and 3 percent to 16 percent of males who were surveyed reported having experienced unwanted sex of some type before they reached adulthood.² In two studies of homosexual and bisexual men, the incidence of incest during childhood was 37 percent and 46 percent, and in one of these studies among homosexual women it was 38 percent.³ (For a detailed listing of all ten studies see table 1.) Extrapolating from these findings, researchers have estimated that roughly one in every four girls and one in ten boys are sexually victimized as children.⁴ While the accuracy of any given incidence figure is far from certain, we can still draw the conclusion that the experience of unwanted sex, however broadly or narrowly defined, is a common occurrence.

The sheer number of child victims is only one reason the study of offenders is imperative. Sexual abuse in childhood has been shown to be very traumatic, upsetting, and life altering in its impact. Therapists and researchers have documented major emotional, social, economic, behavioral, and sexual effects. Evidence suggests that the closer the relationship between victim and offender, and the longer and more involved the sexual encounter, the greater the devastation overall.⁵ We know also that in the case of women who are victims, even years after their abuse experiences, many still think about what happened to them and frequently spend time searching for answers or reasons about why they were molested.⁶ In short, the cost in human suffering is too great for us to do anything other than try to figure out why it is that people violate sexual boundaries.

Societal Concern about Sexual Abuse

If nominations were taken for a poll that measured crimes of the decade, child sexual abuse would probably rank at the top of the list. Since the early to mid-1980s and into the 1990s, the mass media have focused nearly unprecedented attention on the topic. Numerous celebrated legal cases involving allegations of child molestation have been reported in the national news—stories involving entertainment figures, day care workers, as well as everyday people.⁷ In many places, announcements about men arrested for child molesting and public warnings about offenders due for release from prison have been broadcast on television and printed in the newspaper.⁸ Popular television and film have been quick to recognize a hot subject, as scores of television talk shows, movie dramas, and television documentaries that depict the horrors of sexual victimization have been produced for public viewing.⁹ A few popular entertainment figures such as Oprah Winfrey and Roseanne have openly confessed in the national spotlight that they were the victims of sexual abuse as children. In addition, grassroots victim support organizations like Society’s League Against Molestation (SLAM), Alliance for the Rights of Children (ARCH), and the Underground Railroad have received widespread media exposure.¹⁰

Perhaps as much or more than any contemporary crime or public health issue, the sexual abuse of children has attracted the interest of researchers from a range of fields: social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, pediatric physicians, and, to a more limited degree, sociologists. Prior to the mid-1970s, there was little scientific literature that focused on child sexual abuse or child molestation. The turning point was the publication of an article in 1975 by Suzanne Sgroi, “The Sexual Molestation of Children: The Last Frontier in Child Abuse.” The author, a medical doctor, issued a declaration of war to stop the secrecy and silence surrounding the behavior.¹¹ Since that time, scientific studies on the topic have proliferated. At least four academic journals have sprung up devoted substantially, if not entirely, to research in the area: Child Abuse and Neglect, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Violence and Victims, and most recently, Child Sexual Abuse.

This increased concern with sexual abuse as a major problem has not gone unnoticed by the criminal justice system. Between 1983 and 1992, the number of Uniform Crime Report arrests for “rape” increased 15.5 percent, and for “other sex offenses” (prostitution excluded) the increase was 24.7 percent. In 1992, approximately 125,000 people were arrested on charges involving these crimes. By the end of 1993, slightly over ninety-seven thousand inmates who were serving sentences in state prisons were convicted sex offenders, constituting about 12.6 percent of the overall prison population. Corollary data suggest that these crimes frequently are perpetrated against children. In 1991, roughly 44 percent of the victims of violent crimes committed by inmates in state prisons whose most serious offense was rape, and 81 percent of victims of inmates whose most serious offense was some other sexual assault were minors.¹²

Coupled with this trend in the criminal justice system, the discovery of childhood sexual victimization has fueled a substantial market in victim and perpetrator mental health care, a market that the mental health industry has been quick to meet. In a voluntary survey conducted during the late 1980s, 553 public and private agencies and independent treatment programs across the United States responded that they currently provided mental health services specifically in the area of sexual abuse.¹³ About three-fifths of these programs concentrated on victims and their families, the other two-fifths reported a combined or exclusive focus on perpetrators. As of 1993, forty-eight states provided some type of treatment programming for incarcerated sex offenders.¹⁴ In recent years, professional organizations such as the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children¹⁵ and various professional conferences at the state and national level on sexual abuse treatment have expanded their reach. What is more, in many bookstores today, numerous self-help books for people who are sexual abuse “survivors” are readily available.¹⁶

Unlike some behaviors that currently are the focus of serious differences in moral opinion, for instance, homosexuality or abortion, child sexual abuse has been unanimously condemned by public figures and scholars alike with resounding moral conviction. The language used to describe sexual abuse and the people who commit it conveys an especially vehement sense of repugnance and outrage. As one local television news anchor from the area where I lived expressed it in an information pamphlet, “The sexual abuse of children is an ugly and terrible crime.” He added that as a society, “we must confront this terrible act.”¹⁷ And at the time this study began, a state senator, from the same state as myself, proposed a legislative bill calling for the voluntary castration of sex offenders. He underscored his reasons: “We’ve got some criminals out there who are real animals. … All rapes and molestations are real bad. This is the worst thing that could happen to a woman or a child.”¹⁸ In the scientific community, it has been emphasized that, because of the age and limited knowledge of children, any instance of sexual contact between an adult and a minor is, by nature, exploitive, nonconsensual, violent, and thus, reprehensible and deplorable.¹⁹ Take as evidence the words of the authors of a book on incest: “Adult-child incest strikes at the very core of civilization.” They refer to “the horror of incest”; they also define such behavior as “one of the most heinous forms of rape.”²⁰

These social currents and reactions, I contend, make the question of why sexual violations against children occur both perplexing and intriguing. On the one hand, they would seem to suggest a cultural shift toward clarification of the moral boundary surrounding such behavior. That is, it should be more apparent than ever that sexual contact with a child is socially unacceptable. The moral line in the sand would appear to be clear. On the other hand, the sheer number of identified victims, incarcerated offenders, and treatment programs leads to the obvious conclusion that many adults violate sexual boundaries with children anyway. What, then, is the meaning of this apparent boundary, and how do people get to the other side of it not once, but repeatedly? How is it that some (apparently) otherwise everyday people become capable of doing the unspeakable? I delve into what many might regard as the dark side of human desire, the most secretive aspects of social being. My findings indicate that the moral wall that separates us from what is routinely defined as extreme behavior may not be as opaque as we would like to think.

Sexual Abuse Research in Context

The data I have collected and report herein represent a small contribution to a significant but mostly ignored aspect of the general field of child sexual abuse research. Over the last twenty years, considerable emphasis has been placed on studying child sexual abuse victims. Three core themes in particular have received major attention: the percentage of people in the general population who have been molested, the social characteristics of victims, and the short- and long-term consequences of unwanted sex.²¹ Questions about offenders and the empirical analysis of why child molesting occurs have received comparatively less scrutiny. The many reasons for this probably include a primary concern among the public in general for people who are the victims of crime; the unwillingness of researchers to study what are regarded as unspeakable acts against children; a lack of easy or immediate access to samples of sexual offenders; and the perception that people who commit sex crimes of any nature would be unwilling to talk openly and honestly about their behavior.

Perhaps more striking than the overall lack of research on molestation offenders is the kind of research that has been conducted on this group. Some studies, for example, consist of surface descriptions of offense situations: who is most likely to engage in such behavior, the types of acts most likely to be committed, the frequency of offending and the number of victims molested, the range of offense tactics most commonly used, and the kinds of fixed motives that most often operate. The conclusion drawn from this kind of research about offenders is that they are nearly always men, generally men from every social grouping, or walk of life. No category of men as such is exempt from suspicion. In addition, offenders are usually portrayed as predatory: they preselect and groom children as targets, coerce and threaten their victims into submission and silence, enjoy exerting power and releasing anger, and progress to more serious behavior over time. Questions about what offenders think and feel in relation to their victims and their behavior are not rigorously addressed. But more, many of these studies are based on descriptive data gathered from sexual abuse survivors, from surveys administered to treatment providers, and from searches of official records.²² Thus, much of what we know about sexual offending is framed from the standpoint of the victim or the audience, not from the perpetrator directly.

Still, there is a growing body of research that looks specifically at offenders and is based on firsthand data. Three groups of studies are most common. “Erection” studies examine the degree of sexual arousal offenders experience, based on measures of penis size, after being exposed to sexual descriptions or nude pictures of children.²³ “Personality attribute” studies involve the use of personality inventories like the MMPI, which are administered to offenders to assess levels of emotional, mental, sexual, or social disturbance; or they include general descriptions of personality problems based on case analyses.²⁴ “Program evaluation” studies concentrate on identifying the various factors that affect whether or not offenders complete treatment, who should be incarcerated, the impact of treatment on the likelihood of reoffending, and the relative success of treatment for instilling feelings such as empathy toward victims or acceptance of personal responsibility.²⁵ Research of this nature, clearly more psychological than sociological in direction, tells us little about how the lives of offenders unfold prior to their crimes, little about what offenders do to their victims when they molest them, and little about how situations of sexual abuse stop. Indeed, it would appear that the context in which sexual violations occur is largely ignored.

This is not to say that offenders and their behavior have not been the focus of serious attempted explanation. Indeed, there are many theories that specifically address why men molest children. These can be grouped into two broad categories. First are personality theories that emphasize the internal makeup of offenders. Offenders have been classified, or generally described, as fixated, regressed, alcoholic, psychopathic, sexually addicted, senile or senescent, narcissistic, sadistic, perverse, psychotic, and passive-dependent.²⁶ Second are social theories about problems and circumstances people encounter in life. It has been suggested that men may molest children because of, among other things, sexual failure with women, cultural objectification and patriarchy, role confusion within families, sexual abuse trauma in childhood, and moral erosion linked to pornography and divorce.²⁷ Reflecting the thinking about offending in general, A. Nicholas Groth has stated that “symptom formation … may involve genetic defects, constitutional vulnerabilities, parental deprivations, pathogenic family patterns, social pathology, and developmental traumas.”²⁸ Central to most theories is the presumption that men who commit sexual abuse have been exposed to some type of pathology in their lives that can be identified and, if not too extreme, may even possibly be treatable. There has been little interest, however, in exploring the more routine interactional processes between men and children through which sexual offending unfolds.

On the whole, mainstream theories about child molesting raise as many questions as they seem to resolve. Most important, there is no consistent understanding as to what the theories are supposed to be explaining or what kind of act is being perpetrated. We still do not know whether sex crimes against children are crimes of physical violence, crimes of sex, or both.²⁹ Are we trying to explain why some people decide to harm or hurt children and use sex as a means to do that, or why some people find children sexually interesting and desirable? In part, this may be because much of the debate about sex crimes has been framed from the point of view of victims, or by people who work with victims and who themselves conduct research. The perspective of the offender is considered less relevant, or not relevant at all.

Equally confusing is the question of what triggers offenders to zero in specifically on children as sexual targets. If a guy is having sexual problems, or if he is narcissistic or psychopathic, why does he turn to this specific form of deviant behavior? Or conversely, if some type of pathology predisposes people to molest children, why then does such a condition suddenly become active?³⁰ To illustrate, while nearly everyone assumes that having been molested as a child is related to becoming an offender as an adult, no one has clearly explained the mechanism by which this occurs.³¹ Men who molest children frequently do not begin offending until well into adulthood.³² Yet the existence of this type of background experience, presumed present in many cases, would seem to predict an earlier and more constant pattern of behavior. And yet it does not. Why not? Still more, why do some offenders commit only a few episodes, while others commit dozens? Or why do some limit their behavior to fondling, while others subject their victims to intercourse?

The premise of the present study therefore is simple—that we will never fully understand why men have sex with children without firsthand research on offenders, especially research that analyzes how offe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Studying Offenders and Their Behavior
• 2 Blurring of Boundaries in Childhood
• 3 Escalating Problems in Adulthood
• 4 Shifting into an Offending Mode
• 5 Approaching and Engaging the Victim
• 6 Snowballing from One Act to Many
• 7 Continuing with Regular Offending
• 8 Exiting Offending and Public Exposure
• 9 Answering the Question Why
• Table 1: Recent Studies Measuring Sexual Abuse
• Appendix A: Topical Interview Guide
• Appendix B: Research Consent Forms
• Appendix C: Statistical Data on Cases
• Appendix D: The Retrospective Interpretation Problem
• Notes
• Suggested Reading
• Index