So the general consensus is that sex offenders are untreatable, without remorse and nothing but a threat that should be locked away?
That certainly tells me that real information about sex offenders in general isn’t reaching most people.
I think sex abuse is a result of the offenders’ decision to place their lust, greed, selfishness and sadism ahead of all moral considerations.
This is true for the vast majority of sex crimes. A very small percentage are committed by people incapable of making a moral decision, and a small percentage are committed by people who cannot see other people as people (i.e. psychopaths). The rest are committed by people who, for a variety of reasons, chose to seek their own pleasure at the expense of others.
It’s a choice, but someone who makes such a choice often is selfish to the end and won’t respond to any treatment.
Studies fail to corroborate this. Even the studies that put recidivism rates as high as 50% agree that at least half of all sex offenders never commit another offense. Most therapists who work with (non-psychopathic) sex offenders will attest that a large percentage of those in treatment make an honest effort to turn their lives around. Those offenders are horrified by their actions and want nothing like it to ever happen again.
Consider also that most studies put recidivism rates around 25-30%, but that number drops significantly if you only look at reoffense rates (and yes, that takes into consideration arrests for reoffense that get plead down to something less). Consider that studies show a marked correlation between reduction of recidivism rates and therapy. (Some studies say a drop from 22% to 15%, others from 14% to 7%, and some even from 11% to 4%.)
The motivation is utterly evil; the methods they use prove it’s extremely premeditated;
A large number of cases that reach the public eye certainly would attest to this, but in actuality this isn’t the case. Now, I’m not claiming sex offenders accidentally fall into their sex crimes. Not in the slightest. But the vast majority of sex offenders take an opportunity that’s presented. There’s a long psychological description for what goes on in an offender’s mind, but here’s the short version:
A person is feeling stress of some sort. He thinks about how he wants to relieve that stress. Then he goes does what he was thinking about. That’s typical of anyone. But here’s where it gets tricky. When someone goes into deviant behavior, the thinking really starts churning. There’s a long dialogue between the emotions (the stress, the desire to relieve the stress) and the mind, the former asking for something, anything, to be done, the latter trying interject reason, especially if the action under consideration is immoral or indecent in some way. Eventually, for the sex crime to occur, the mind has to be talked into believing that a) he’s not doing anything wrong and b) that he’s not actually hurting the person involved.
So yes, you can say there’s premeditation involved, but this isn’t cold, calculated meditation; it’s usually an intense internal debate that ends with the wrong conclusion. Here’s the thing: quite often the crime has to occur rather quickly after the decision to commit the crime has been reached. Why? Because if enough time passes, that whole cognitive-emotive cycle will start up again and the offender could quite easily change his mind.
I won’t disagree that sex crimes are vile and terrible acts, but very people commit such crimes with evil intentions. They don’t want the other person hurt; they just want the stress they are feeling to go away. Now, granted, there are plenty of cases out there where people will deliberately hurt someone else to relieve their own pain, but that’s hardly limited to sex offenders.
On that note, you’ll find overlap all over the place: sex offenses committed because of anger, sex offenses committed because drugs lowered inhibitions, etc. But the vast majority of sex offenses are committed by people who don’t want to hurt someone else. They’re just very convincing in talking themselves into believing they’re not hurting someone else by using them as a sexual object. And there’s the main reason why sex offenders, by and large, can be (and often are) rehabilitated. They do feel remorse, often steaming heaps of remorse. But that guilt can manifest in two ways: it can either become a stressor that leads someone to commit another offense, or it can become motivation to stop. Usually, until an offender is caught, convicted, and sentenced, it ends up being the former. After they’re caught, and they have some stiff consequences staring them in the face the rest of their lives, then, with some help, they’ll make the painful journey towards a healthy life.
See, the thing that worries me is the general attitude that only a vile, depraved, and utterly evil person commits sex crimes. This is a problematic viewpoint, because it does play into the mental game that goes through some sex offenders’ heads. Here’s the mental thinking that I’m talking about:
A) I would like have sex with this 13-year-old
C) Isn’t that a sex crime?
A) But only completely evil psychopaths commit sex crimes.
C) Really? But you’re not an evil person.
A) Exactly. Thus it wouldn’t be a sex crime it would be (love, giving, some great romantic notion that makes it seem like it is something other than the use of a child for sexual gratification).
C) Ah. I guess it’s all right then.
Now, I know you’ll want to object and say, “Just because he thinks he’s not an evil person doesn’t make it so.” But here’s the thing. No one person is define solely through a narrow set of actions. The sex crime is not the whole of the sex offender. It was a choice, not a whole lifestyle (though I’ll agree there are some depraved sick-o’s out there that do make it a lifestyle), and when it is not a whole lifestyle, there is the potential for rehabilitation.
But that’s besides the point. The main point is this. Most sex offenders never actually thought to themselves, “Let’s go out a commit a sex crime!” To a large extent, they do feel that they just fell into the crime. The truth is that there are all kinds of warning signs along the way that were ignored. And it is those warning signs in particular that I wanted to people to think about (brainstorm even) in this thread.
The truth is that most sex offenders are repentant and want to lead a normal, healthy life. And that tells me that we can work to prevent sex crimes from ever occurring by spreading information on what does contribute to sex crimes. Saying that sex crimes are committed only by cold-hearted, calculating, unrepentant psychopaths is both false and damaging. It masks the true underlying causes.
