August 17, 2006

I had to post this, just for the headline if for no other reason. But the Times-Picayune article is worth reading.

A child rapist who volunteered more than a year ago to undergo surgical castration must have the procedure done by Oct. 3 or his case will proceed to trial, a judge ordered last week.

He has not changed his mind about his punishment, according to Rick Wood, a spokesman for the St. Tammany Parish district attorney. "The delays have got nothing to do with the defendant's willingness to follow through," he said.

"He is ready to proceed, but they (prison and judicial officials) have not been able to get it worked out medically."

[...]Criminal justice experts say surgical castration is an extremely rare punishment, a drastic move that indicates not only guilt but remorse as well.

The recent developments on the JonBenet Ramsay case provide an excellent opportunity to consider child molesters and prevention. I've actually been working on this post for over a week, and I keep rewriting it. The topic is difficult, and information on child sex abuse is hard to decipher and consolidate. Our knee jerk reaction to these cases tends to be "kill them, in the most painful way possible." I understand the righteous outrage people feel when they look at John Couey, when they hear his callous remarks about how he killed Jessica Lunsford, and when they consider how his family facilitated the crime. John Karr, accused of killing JonBenet Ramsey, was 31 or 32 years old at the time the 6 year old was murdered. I just saw video of him admitting he was "with her" when she died, and that it was an accident. He "loves" her. What's odd is that his ex-wife says she was with him, in Alabama, at the time of the murder. Whether he is guilty of the Ramsey murder, he's already guilty of possessing child pornography and has "an extensive criminal record for sexual assaults" and has a warrant out for his arrest.

We feel a justifiable, visceral disgust for people who steal a child's innocence by rape or sexual abuse. It doesn't feel like justice to just lock them up. We want revenge, especially when they don't show remorse.

Have your children ever played at a neighbor's home, where the kid your child is playing with has an older sibling? For the vast majority of parents who answered yes to that question, consider the following situation. I have a friend who has a son*. I'll call him X. My friend is divorced, she and her ex are both remarried and both have children with their new spouse. X was molested at age six by a neighbor's twelve year old son. My friend didn't know this, because X never told her. 73.8% of sexual abuse is committed by a friend or neighbor. She learned of it when X, then twelve, was visiting his father and discovered to be abusing (fondling) his five year old half brother. His father, who lives in another state, sent X home and got his other son into counseling.

Imagine learning that about your son. Imagine getting that news, curling up in the fetal position because you are overwhelmed with grief for what your child suffered, and you never knew. You failed to protect your child. You failed. And now another child has been injured. You wonder how is this not your fault? You should have known. Imagine telling your husband. Imagine realizing that your younger children are potentially in danger from their older brother. They got social services and the court system involved. By this, I mean his own family reported his crime.

Close supervision and traditional counseling didn't help, and my friend learned that X, now thirteen, was fondling his younger sister. They were having a terrible time potty training her and this turned out to be the reason why. X is now living in a state facility for juvenile sexual abusers who have themselves been abused. (They live out west - as far as I know Louisiana doesn't have anything like this.) Closer supervision, counseling for a variety of issues including impulse control and anger management, are now part of X's daily routine, and will continue to be until he is an adult. He's now part of the juvenile justice system, and his whole life revolves around dealing with his crimes against his younger siblings and making sure that he never does this again. X's mother and stepfather are in counseling, X's father and stepmother are in counseling, along with the younger siblings.

Characteristics of juvenile sex offenders: · Juvenile sex offenders are typically between the ages of 13 and 17. · They are generally male. · 30-60% exhibit learning disabilities and academic dysfunction. · Up to 80% have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. · Many have difficulties with impulse control and judgment. · 20-50% have histories of physical abuse. · 40-80% have histories of sexual abuse.

The program X is in is comprehensive, and there is a lot of hope that he will go on to live a normal life and not victimize other children. Untreated juvenile sex offenders commit an average 380 additional sex crimes over the course of their lives. But comprehensive treatment for sex offenders makes a substantial difference:


Stop It Now has some interesting posts by sex abusers.

For those who sexually abuse, hope means balancing help and treatment with accountability for our crimes and restitution in some form for the harm we've caused to other people.

Accountability and restitution are not just part of justice for the victim and protection for future victims, they're part of the cure. What is critical to remember is that sex crimes against children are not committed by one monolithic group. Conventional wisdom is that molesters were themselves molested, and that's what is behind their actions - but while true some of the time, it's not predominant. Of adult sex offenders, only 30% have been sexually abused. Pornography, especially child pornography, is frequently a factor. Then too, experts believe that most of these crimes go unreported, so it's obviously difficult to tell what's going on. The statistics are confusing and sometimes seem contradictory - which is why, in a sound-bite world, this topic gets little coverage.

The particular issue of juvenile sex offenders, who have such a short time "in the system" because of how the juvenile criminal justice system works, needs to be addressed. The most effective treatment results are for juvenile offenders, and treating them is preferable economically to locking them up, and certainly preferable from the standpoint that there will be a lot less human wreckage in their path later. Parents for Megan's Law had some excellent suggestions, which I'll summarize and add to here:
- Make them register, just like adult offenders. While juveniles enjoy greater privacy rights than most criminals, when that privacy puts others at risk, they should lose it.
- When they turn 18, they should undergo an evaluation to prove why they should not be added to the adult sex offender registry. The default position should be to add them, and proof of successful treatment should give them the right to not be listed.
- Treat the entire family.
- People who purposely shelter sex offenders, juvenile or not, should have to suffer some serious penalty for their actions. On the flip side, some PR for the programs that work, and pushing the fact that treatment can help stop recidivism, would help people understand that there are better alternatives.

The boy who molested X will go unpunished for what he did. His family moved away long before the truth about X came out, and the police have had no luck in finding them. Given how easy it is to find someone in an age when your Social Security number is tied to many other identifying bits of data about you, and they can't be found living under their own names, it's natural to conclude they're deliberately hiding because they know what their son did to X and presumably other children. There's no reason to believe their son will stop. His family, like John Couey's, enables him to continue.

Although it is painful for my friend and her family to deal with this on a daily basis, she knows they did the right thing. She loves all her children, and continues to try to do what's best for all of them. She knows that what they're doing now protects scores of children she will never meet. She writes X daily, speaks to him on the phone several times a week, and the family has group therapy regularly, in addition to the several sessions per day that X attends as part of the program he's in. Nobody wants a John Couey in the family, and addressing the problem early and realistically is the best possible chance of preventing it from happening.

*Some details changed to protect privacy.

A few sources:
The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers
Stop It Now!
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
National Institute of Corrections - Myths and Facts about Sex Offenders

Posted by Laura Curtis at August 17, 2006 01:54 PM

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