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Can Reformed Child Sex Offenders Help Society?
12/23/2010 5:04:16 PM
Dear Dr. Archer,
Many people consider child abuse to be the unforgivable sin. I am currently building a following on Twitter, working with @StopItNow as an advocate to end child sexual abuse. I am an ex-offender of thirty years, and firmly believe that being part of the solution insures against being part of the problem.
 
I have posted lyrics on Twitter, along with the question, "Can reformed sex offenders help society to end child sexual abuse if given the chance? Isn't it worth a try?
 
I believe many of us could shed some light on the warning signs and on what went wrong in the first place by speaking to educators, social workers and concerned parents. What are your thoughts?
Pete
 
Dear Pete, 
Even though statistics are stacked against the sex offender, anyone can be rehabilitated, even child sex offenders. It has been thirty years since your incident, and it seems that you are not only contrite and remorseful, but that you genuinely seek to save others from making the same mistakes you have made in the past. I commend you for putting yourself out there for the purpose of warning and protecting others. 

One thing I want to see when someone engages in destructive behavior is what they do afterwards. Do they blame others for their actions, or do they take responsibility and change that behavior? Do they only change themselves, or do they try to be an example for others so others do not make the same mistakes? I absolutely believe in redemption, and it appears that you are trying to make a difference. I applaud your efforts, Pete.

I have read your words, and I find them unique. Perhaps pedophiles can change, but statistics so far strongly argue against that fact depending on the severity of the offense. Things that predict a poor rehabilitation are violence when committing the offence as well as the younger the child the less the likelihood of remission.

I have written a Blog arguing that a violent sexual offence of a child should be a mandatory 25 year sentence and answered another Q and A stating that pedophilia is not treatable, but of course there are exception and after 30 years you may indeed be one. However I still believe that in most cases the risk is just too great.

In light of this, I believe your site can be helpful to others while we also practice caution with the person who commits this sort of crime. Re-offending happens all too often, and one child being devastated by this type of senseless act in a relapse is one child too many. So keep that in mind Pete AND keep up the good work.
Dr. Archer
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14 Comments
Mareaux
12/23/2010 9:10:30 PM
1. Why the term "child sex offender" instead of PEDOPHILE, Pete? Trying to twist our minds like you do our legal system?

2. Do you think the child you ruined 30 years ago would trust you anywhere near his/her own children or grandchildren now?

3. Wouldn't society be better served by your complete removal from it? I don't know why the Supreme Court did not rule FOR the death penalty for child rape. You might as well kill the child because you certainly murder the childhood. I wonder how much humanity-saving potential is lost - perhaps that child would have been the one to cure a disease, but is now reduced to working in the stock room at Walmart. i wonder, too, how many victims become perverts themselves because they have been exposed to abnormal sexual activity before they are mature enough to understand it.

4. If you want to give something back, how about the prison system using you and your pervert buddies as a control group for drug testing???

5. Where are educators, social workers and concerned parents going to meet with you for these discussions? Schools, playgrounds and churches? C'mon, Pete. Really?

Three of my closest friends all experienced pedophiles engraciating themselves into their lives as children and are not right even now. One very talented woman wanted to be a ballerina but now hides herself in a modest secretary's uniform at a law firm. Another really smart man cannot hold down a construction job for more than six months at a time - he doesn't trust the men he works around. The third friend, well, she is off-the-chart brilliant but works that third shift job stocking shelves for Walmart because she still can't sleep at night.

Sorry, but no way. NO NO NO.
Stephen Schultz
12/24/2010 5:09:42 PM
The issue of "sex offenders" being able to change their ways has long been a hot topic riddled with strong emotion. While the "recovery" of adult perpetrators has a poor prognosis, this is not true for adolescents who struggle with some of the same compulsions.

Adolescents are still in the formative years of development, which includes physical, mental and emotional characteristics. Most research indicates that the frontal lobe of the brain, the part associated with impulse control, is not fully developed until around age 21 in males.

We are seeing an increase in early sexualization amongst the students that we work with. Television, video games and the internet all offer unlimited access to pornography. While viewing pornography does not "cause" sexual bahvioral problems in teens, every teen that we work with has a serious pornography problem.

For teens, there is hope...there is help. The prognosois is good. If you know of a teen that has a sexual behavioral problem, seek help.

Stehen C. Schultz
Partner
Oxbow Academy
DDA
12/27/2010 12:06:22 AM
I think the vast majority of people feel the way you do, Mareaux. I firmly believe that anyone of us is entitled to a mistake and redemption….but the problem here is that the risks are so high if a relapse occurs. As of now there is no treatment, so this remains a tough situation for society and we should always favor protecting our children. Always.
DDA
12/27/2010 12:07:30 AM
Thank you so much for your thoughts, Stephen. I will agree with you that in my view, with respect to treating deviant behavior, the younger the age that the problem is addressed the better the chance for a good outcome.
MELISSA COFFEY
12/27/2010 12:15:04 AM
I agree seek help ASAP if you see any signs at all before too late I have a son with a mental handicap and i had to watch him very close all 21 yrs of his life. I was the only one in my family that really undersands him, and im from a large family. Most of them would not trust him being around theother family siblings, because they knew he had mental problems, they did not want to deal with it at all so i excepted it and dealt with it the best i could That was very awkward, and hurt alot, but i always tried to make him feel comfortable regardless. His brothers and sisters were able to except it better His youngest sister was 4yrs .old when he hit puberty I Noticed him staring at her in an unusual kind of way so i started talking to him about his feelings and at that time he could express himself somewhat, so i began reminding him that she is his sister and he is to never hurt her in any way. He loved her and showed affection by hugging her BUT AS HE GREW OLDER he wanted to be more affectionate, and i had to make sure they were never left alone. I WAS SO AFRAID something may happen, so I CONTINUED to express to him that he was her ibrother, and he could never hurt his sister. i brought him to psychistrist at the age of 13 yrs age because i knew something was very wrong, and he needed help. I found him in her bedroom looking at her in an awkward way and walking toward as though he wanted her. she didnt know any different she was four years old at that time. He would have done something to her if I wouldnt of been watching over him, but my point is seek help ASAP because just when you think it would never happen it will. He did confess he wanted his sister but he knew it was wrong and something was wrong with himself. i brought him to psychiatrist for help and they put him on medication, and it did help him, he is 21 yrs of age now and he knows that it is wrong even if his mind is of at a elementry level. he has a girlfriend his age and of course that changed everything. He loves children but in a different way. and he continues to mature in his own way. Protect your children inside and outside the home. Dont always think they are unsafe only outside of your home, JUST AS you think that the sex offender is in your neighborhood He may be right in your house. Pray or your Family
DDA
1/4/2011 7:51:52 AM
Your letter is powerful, Melissa, and sends everyone a very important message. Diligence is necessary when it comes to protecting our children, and not only out in public but even in our own homes. Thank you so much for your comments.
James
4/18/2011 5:07:07 PM
I've posted on this site before. I'm a 27 year old pedophile, exclusively attracted to little boys.

Mareaux, I understand why you are angry. I understand why most people are angry at people like me. You are angry because you are afraid for the safety of children. You are angry because you hear the stories of people around you and how the abuse ruined their lives.

But you have to understand that this is and always has been a social problem, one that has existed for almost as long as we have records. It is not going to go away unless society decides to do something about it. To me appears that society, in its quest for justice and vindication of victims, simply wants to sweep the "problem" under the rug. You lock us up not only to keep us away from children, (which actually makes sense if you don't have treatment that works), but for revenge. There is minimal effort to study causes, to detect early warning signs (I'm talking early teens) or to study possible treatments.

Why? Simply because we hurt someone, and you want to hurt us back. My point here is that prison, sex offender lists, the threat of punishment, is not solving the problem - especially for the adolescent (such as I was) who harbors these feelings and can't talk to anyone about them - it is actually making it worse because you are chasing us further and further underground. While putting us in prison keeps us from offending because we have no access to children, it does not keep us from offending once we are released. The only thing that has stopped me has been the watchful hand of the probation system and a team of psychiatric professionals who prescribe medications that virtually eliminate my sex drive.

Even if you were to somehow track down the estimated 4-7% of the population that is sexually attracted to children, and either lock them up or exterminate them, in 20 years you would still have just as many, if not more. The reason is because for the most part, the problem is not self-reciprocating - that is, it doesn't take a pedophile to create a pedophile - there are far too many victims for that to be so. We don't know what causes it. Simply locking us up in prison or killing us off does not solve the problem.

I really think that much of the issue could be alleviated if it didn't have to be a secret. If I could have been up front and honest with everyone around me - especially family, most of the people I molested were relatives. I have had this problem since the onset of my adolescence, around 12 years old. I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I pushed it deeper and deeper inside, where it grew and grew until I finally acted on it. Most of the boys I molested, I did so before I was even 18 years old. I really don't know what you expected me to do - put yourself in my shoes, a hormone driven teenager, except instead of being attracted to girls my age, I was attracted to prepubescent boys.

Can I help society? At this point I really don't know. From what I can tell, society turned its back on me before I even fully understood what I was doing. By the time I did understand, I was already embroiled in a self-perpetuating delusion that what I was doing wasn't wrong.

There are those who want to see Pedophilia removed from the DSM. You can't tell me that someone who is as screwed up as I am is not mentally ill. I may understand that what I am doing is wrong, but I know people with OCD who understand that it's the disorder causing them to be compulsive. They still act on their compulsions, even with this understanding. As did I.

Look - the point that I'm trying to make is that even the threat of punishment doesn't deter the exclusive pedophile who happens to live with his victims (as is the statistic in most sexual abuse cases) . I wasn't thinking about what would happen ten minutes after the act, let alone the two years it took to sentence me to jail - and I confessed. I'm not saying that you shouldn't punish someone. I'm just saying that the threat of punishment doesn't deter; even the threat of a life sentence. It does deter crime by keeping me off the street, but what happens when the prisons are full? They start letting people, nonviolent offenders such as myself, out on good behavior.

Another point - I was never violent. I never physically forced anyone to do anything. Coerced, manipulated, yes. Violent? No. In fact, if the other party started to act like they were uncomfortable, I backed off. However, most of the time, this wasn't the case, and this further fed my delusion that what I was doing wasn't so bad.

I'm sick, and I need help from other people to keep me from acting out again. My thoughts are so cloudy and tangled together that I need ADD meds to think straight. But the meds help a lot. I am thankful for the doctors and therapists that help me.

Really, I don't know what else to say.
Sarah
6/5/2011 2:44:07 PM
I am a University Student from the UK researching for a study I am conducting on Paedophillia. I would just like to thank James for supplying this insight in to your life; it has been extremely helpfull for my understanding of the condition.
I wish you all luck in your lives.
DDA
6/5/2011 6:07:22 PM
Yes, Sarah. It was a brave thing for him to do.
James
6/21/2011 12:43:24 PM
Sarah, I'm very thankful for people like you who actively try to understand. As I've said, I really, really wish that I could have come out and talked about my problems before I dug myself into a hole like I did. It might not have kept me from offending the first time (I was 13 and the boy was 7); but it might have kept me from continuing my behavior, because as ashamed as I was after I did it, I may have felt less intimidated by authority to talk about it and get help. I really wonder how many people would be helped if you could openly tell people that you have this problem without feeling like you are endangering your life or livelihood. If I could have told the people around me, "Look, I have this problem, don't let him sleep in my bedroom". I think that it is good that child abuse is talked about more openly now; but I also think we need to go a step further and encourage people like me to start talking as well. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have consequences - a line does need to be drawn somewhere. I'm saying that it would be much more constructive to approach the issue with logic and understanding rather than sheer emotion and the memories of either our own abuse or the stories of others. Each case should be evaluated individually. There are certainly cases that are much more traumatic than others; and cases where one thing that is very traumatic to one person is not as traumatic to another.

When I was actively offending, even though I was consciously aware that what I was doing was wrong, underneath there was a significant amount of doubt. I know that this is "typical" of most sex offenders. But my reasoning was based on my experience - some don't believe me when I say this - but most of the time, out of the 11 boys I've molested, the other party either was actively involved in their own abuse; even initiating the act or asking for it - although I concede that most of the time this was after I had already awoken those desires and shown them what to do. However, surprisingly to me, 2 of the boys I had contact with initiated things with me when I hadn't done anything and didn't even think that they knew about anything like that. Therefore, even though I knew it was morally wrong, and after I was older, I knew that there was a very good chance I was causing some kind of psychological harm, the reactions of those involved (most are adults now) helped feed the delusion that what I was doing wasn't so bad. I know that there are other factors at work here, that the boys probably didn't actually "want" what I was giving them, that they had other things going on in their lives that compelled them to think that they "wanted" what I did. But as I said, in the heat of the moment, all of that stuff was far from me.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to "justify" my behavior. What I did was wrong. I'm simply trying to illustrate just how confused I was, and how easy it was to slip into delusion, especially when I wanted so badly to deny that what I was doing "wasn't so bad". It was, if anything, a psychological defense mechanism that kept me from slipping into a guilt ridden suicidal depression. The boys that initiated contact with me probably had some other kind of exposure, or were hypersexual for other reasons; I think that one was later diagnosed as being bipolar. I've spoken to some of the boys since we both became adults (most are related to me so we see each other at family gatherings); and one of them has told me that he "forgives" me. I'm really not sure that I believe him.
DDA
6/23/2011 11:33:55 PM
While I'm glad you are not trying to justify your behavior, James, I want you to realize something. According to the American Psychiatric Association, "children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults." Their brains are simply not developed enough to make that type of decision. Most children who experience this will have issues down the road.
James
7/7/2011 3:57:35 PM
Dr. Archer,

I know and understand the APA's position, and I know that the evidence supports what you say, and that most of society shares that view as well. I wasn't trying to say that the boys were giving "consent" in the way that mature adults can give consent to one another.

I was simply trying to illustrate just how confusing it was to me because of their reactions - it was something that I knew was "wrong", but the boys were not behaving as though they were uncomfortable or did not like it. In short, it helped feed my delusion.

I know that it might sound like I'm trying to rationalize what I did; but I am really just trying to explain one of the things that drove me further into my delusion. Please understand that I was a confused, scared teenager; most of these instances happened before I was even of "legal" age; and these 2 particular instances where I said that the boys initiated things with me happened in my early teens; the boys were 5 and 7 years younger than me. I was a hormone driven kid who let his curiosity get the better of him and let his inhibitions slip away. It didn't take long for me to try "experimenting" with other little boys I had access to, and before long I was living a double life, pretending to be a "good guy" on the outside, ashamed of who I really was on the inside. I wanted to talk to someone about it; but at the same time I was so ashamed and afraid of what would happen that I just kept it quiet, and pushed it down deep inside, where it festered and became worse.

As I said before, I know now that those 2 boys in particular probably had something else going on before they had their encounters with me; which was likely because of the way that they came to live with us. I know that the reasons that children engage in sexual activity aren't the same reasons that adults engage in sexual activity. I just turned 28 years old; I have been struggling with this problem now for more than half of my life. I really hope that this book I am writing will help at least some people see things from my perspective; allow them to be in my shoes and know just how difficult it has been to both control myself and to come to terms with what I have done. I've also found means for me to finish my schooling; maybe things will start to set themselves right in the next few years.
Matt
2/11/2012 10:40:14 PM
James I want to thank you for you comments on this page. You put out there a lot of things that have always been on my mind, like how there's all these punishments but no help available to people dealing with the things you said you dealt with. I am glad to thear you are doing better now. All I can suggest is you accept Jesus as your lord and savior. You will find forgiveness and strength you never had. Either way thanks for the comments and God bless you.
DDA
2/14/2012 1:15:43 AM
Thanks for chiming in, Matt.
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