THE HYSTERIA SURROUNDING SEXUAL OFFENDING

THE HYSTERIA SURROUNDING SEXUAL OFFENDING
by
Chas. Anderson
PO Box
Mauston, Wi 53948

No one is advocating that sexual offending is anything but a bad outcome for the victim,offender,community,or state budget quandary. What to do? How to respond to this scourge of sexual misconduct-­evident since the dawn of human existence?

Different societies have responded in different ways. Some have accommodated the "rights" of men to dominate and control all sexual relationships. Some have "looked the other way." Up until the ascend­ancy of "Female Lib" in the U.S., the latter policy reigned. Of course,rapists were arrested upon complaint and the assailant given seven years in prison to "cool his heels." Not too much thought was given how he would act upon release.

Child sexual abuse is a more complicated problem. Many diverse scenarios can occur—from pedophile behavior--to incestual conduct-­to consensual teen sex below the age of consent. Until recently, girls in Texas and So. Carolina could marry with permission as young as age 13-14. Mexican society gives approval to a girl at age 15 when she announces her availability at a Quincanilla celebration.
OK, when does hysteria enter the picture and what can a society's realistic response be? Of course, there are societies within society such as the Mormon fundamentalists in UT and AZ and the Irish "Travellers" in SC and elsewhere. Those two groups seem to condone underage sexuality--with older men. Teen boys are viewed with suspect,hormones notwithstanding.

The overall view of this society seemed to change sometime in the last quarter of the 20th century when various feminists proclaimed: "We aren't going to take this anymore." Note: the proponents of this blog and this writer are not proposing tolerance of sexual offending. We are looking for solutions to the problem.
Currently: arrest, incarceration, and continued close scrutiny seem to be the path chosen. Let's examine these tactics. When an acc­used person is arrested, the criminal justice system is invoked to determine guilt or innocence. In some sexual assaults, it becomes the word of the accuser against the denials of the accused. If there is forensic evidence, the case can become a "slam dunk." But wait a minute: if DNA evidence links the accused offender to the reporting victim, the argument can be made that it was consensual. What if the sex gets too rough and one party wants to back off?
The situation becomes even more sensitive when a child is involved. Children can be coerced into sexual activity but they can also be coerced into false allegations. Probably no DNA evidence exists when an alleged "touching" occurs. It is even possible to make accusa­tions via vindictiveness, blackmail, or jealousy. Any clergyman, teacher, or coach can be ruined by an allegation, proven or other­wise. Some of those in prison are innocent.

From the mid-1980's onward, hysteria was particularly acute in the daycare industry. Virginia McMartin and her son were subjected to the most expensive court process in California history (before O.J.) before being acquitted. Others were not as fortunate. Violet Amirault and her son Gerald were convicted in MA and served significant prison time. Her conviction was eventually overturned. Gerald served for 20 years, never having admitted guilt which would have allowed for par­ole. Kelly Michaels served 7 1/2 years in a Maplewood, NJ day care con­viction, fuelled by wild allegations of young children--subjected to coerced, repetitive interrogations. Janet Reno in Miami had a 14 yr.old Dutch citizen, BobbyF,detained for two years before abandoning the accusations.
In Jordan, MN, a hapless child molester was uncovered and con­victed but in the process fifty other people were arrested. In Edenton, NC, the entire staff of a day care center was sent to pri­son and later released on appeal, one by one.
Who is complicit in these legal debacles? Judges allow "hear­say" evidence, prosecutors are over-zealous police "rush to judge," and (unprofessional) therapists are assigned to interrogate child­ren under the guise of "treatment." In Wenatchee, WA, a police det­ective with a 14 year old foster child, cajoled her into making wild accusations which resulted in the arrest of a church pastor and half of the people attending the church. Tales of "Satanic" ritual abuse took on a life of their own and hysteria reigned. People were then convicted based on the skill levels of their attorneys and many had to wait for years in prison before successful appeals ordered by the state Supreme Court. Only then were they released from prison.
Granted, these are worst case scenarios at one end of the legal spectrum regarding child sexual abuse. At the other end we have recent cases in St. Louis and California where a (repeat) offender snatched a youngster off a road and held them captive for years. The most rec­ent one (CA) involved a released sex offender who could easily have been retained in prison after being sentenced to fifty years in a previous case. He was released after only eleven years and continued his destructive behavior with help from an enabling wife. When called to report to his parole agent, he brazenly brought along the two girls he had fathered with his captive. After police had been to his house several times over the years, he seemed to think he was untouch­able.
Many factors contributed to this egregious behavior by a demented individual. How was he raised with such utter disregard for human rights and the sanctity of children? Why was he released by the state parole board? What was his P.O. thinking when it was reported that he owned a car similar to the one described in the original kidnapping? Anger at this point in time surely fuels the hysteria which accompan­ies such cases.
A Wisconsin offender, David Spanbauer, was also known to be driv­ing a car identified as cruising the area near Waupaca where a 12 year old girl was accosted and murdered. He was not a child molester but an indiscriminate rapist. Our next notorious sex offender was Jeff Dahmer who preyed on young men in the Milwaukee area. He was on probation (never to prison) when he killed his last victim, a 14 yr. old who had fled his apartment naked but returned by the police. He was assassinated in prison when guards looked the other way. When Gerald Turner was released on statutory parole after 19 years of a 38 year sentence for 2nd degree homicide in the death of a young girl in Fond du Lac. He went to live quietly on the east side of Milwaukee. Even though he was employed and no complaints were registered about his behavior, an alarm was raised when it became known that his res­idence was within one city block of a Lutheran elementary school. Judge Ralph Adam Fine alleged that his parole time had been improp­erly calculated. When that ploy failed, State Sen. Alberta Darling proposed to follow a new Washington state initiative called "civil detention" as an antidote to Turner's "underserved" freedom. Alas, his indictment under §980 failed at trial in Dane Co. Turner has since been kept "under wraps" at a secure halfway house in Madison. The Dept. of Corrections has attempted to revoke him several times.
Civil detention for (soon to be released) sex offenders sound like a good idea? Maybe--if you feel that the cost: $358 per day for 365 days (no furloughs like the axe murderers at Mendota get) equals $130,670 per year is a good use of state budget funds. Maximum security prison is much cheaper--at perhaps $28,000 per prisoner so let's sentence ALL sex offenders to...let's say...100 years- as an Appleton man got for several counts of sexual ass­ault after touching a 14 year old boy's chest area.
Will this make our children safer? The facts are that most child victims already know their offender. Only about 10% of assaults are by strangers. The rape category may be somewhat higher. This may not keep our children safe from brutal,physical attack by a step-parent or live-in boyfriend who have no biological ties to a cranky youngster. The resultant damage (from being splattered on a wall or violently shaken) may be a lifetime of disability. How to protect a child from Fetal Alcohol syndrome or a crack-addicted mother?
Furthermore, your (older)child may be at risk from the local neigh­borhood drug dealer,recently released from prison or not. These peo­ple are not on any "registry" or watch list. They may indeed be intent on reestablishing their "turf." Violence and mayhem may then result. In the rural areas, meth labs,operated by the very parents of child­ren we're trying to protect, present an extreme danger of explosion, neglect, and addiction.
Don't forget your ubiquitous drunk drivers as we see are time and again responsible for tragedies on our roads: two high school friends killed by a drunk driver who ran a red light in Green Bay; a school principle, her fetus, and her 11 year old daughter killed by a prom­inent citizen in Waukesha Co. He had several previous convictions but had never gone to prison.
I'm betting that the recidivism rates for drug offenders are much higher than for sex offenders--despite what the media or legislature tries to portray. All three categories contain "serial" practitioners who offend time and again.
If spending time in jail after a conviction, many are required to attend treatment programs: AODA, AA, and SOTP. I only have stat­istics for our target group, the highly scrutinized sex offenders. After being released from prison, sex offenders reoffend (sexually) at a rate which diminishes with age. Brian Abbott, Ph.D. of Sunnyvale, CA provides a report which complies various studies of this topic in the past ten years. He concludes (pg- 9 of his 2006 document): "A body of literature shows that sexual offenders over the age of 50 recidivate at a significantly lower rate." He cites Hanson (2002) record­ing that extra-family child molesters reoffend at a 18% rate between age 40-50 but dropped to 11% after 50. In 2005 Hanson did another study from his office as Sol. Gen, (in Canada) and found the rate (after age 50) to be 4.75%. Barbaree and Langdon--with a sample size of over 7000 offenders--found the rate to be 3.3 to 3.82%.
Now: another shocker in view of the hysterical statistics often presented: that reoffense rates (Hanson/ again)drop from 11% at age 50 and to 5% at age 60 and to 2% by age 70. These decreases seemed to be "across the board" for all sex offenders, rapists and molesters alike. Wollert (2006) reviewed Hanson's work and also found a consistent decline of reoffense with age.

CONCLUSION
Maybe a certain amount of hysteria about this topic is a good thing. It keeps us vigilant about a serious problem in today's society. But remember: the entomology of the word comes from "history" and so "hyst­eria" is then a perversion of such. Have we not learned anything from the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Whiskey Rebellion, Japanese Internment during WWII, race riots in Tulsa, OK and Spring­field, IL, the KKK, the Trail of Tears? Such hysteria is well documented. I experienced the terror of urban riots in Chicago after the assassina­tion of Dr. MLK, Jr. in 1968. Mass hysteria in the form of irrational anger and despair resulted in destruction and death.
Upon further review, conclusion could be reached that hysteria, which is a common human element,is not in any way constructive.


RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS
It wouldn't do any good to muse about this topic if I couldn't pro­pose realistic solutions. One is easier than the other so I'll start with the easy one: release each and every prisoner in the U.S. at age 65. Why? First of all, the death penalty has too many flaws. When an imper­fect system is used to execute people, it becomes an abomination.Life without parole is equally disastrous.
Keeping old men in prison until they die is nothing more than a subsidised health care program for elderly offenders. Save the funds for health care for people who have not committed felonies. Or, we could adopt the European model of justice which does not depend on high int­ensity lawyers or juries who can practice statutory "nullification." They use a three judge panel and lawyers for the state and defense engage in "truth seeking," not a win-loss outcome. Resultant senten­ces are reasonable and do not place an undue burden on a fiscal budget. In Wisconsin, we spend more on incarceration than on the UW budget. There are more college age Black males in prison than in school.
So if you want to be tough on sex offenders (and not drug offenders) sentence a 21 year old rapist to 44 years in prison and release him at age 65. Prison inmates are notoriously in bad health: many are over­weight, obese, and sedentary. The image of the buff, muscular workout artist pumping "iron" in prison is a myth. Perhaps 5-10% of guys fit this stereotype. Smoking and coffee are mainstays unless prohibited.
I don't feel this "get tough" mentality should be applied to women, especially mothers of children under twelve. Put them on house arrest as long as there is another adult in the household.
Many sex offenders have established work histories and can qualify for Social Security benefits. Let the federal government provide them support after 65. They get none of these benefits while incarcerated.
And now for the tougher solution: It seems to me that there is a constant supply of sex offenders in our society. You send one to prison and two or three enter the arena of sexual misconduct. In Wisconsin, a ten year old boy was convicted of inappropriate sexual contact with a young girl and placed on the sex offender registry. The case was over­turned when it was determined that he was prepubescent, unable to have sexual conduct.
The schizophrenic attitude that America has toward sex surely feeds the constant supply of illegal sexual activity. Teenagers who overtly or covertly express sexual feelings are made to feel "criminal," subject to arrest and humiliation when they respond to the overwhelming message the media and pop culture portray: sex is cool; sex is fun. Witness the risqué photos being transmitted unabashedly by cell phone to their peers. When a young person takes on this self image as criminal in one segment of their behavior, why bother to maintain any integrity? Or man--as they reach adulthood at 18 and realize much is at stake, they
learn to be very secretive in their relationships, particularly if their partner is under 18. Once that barrier is crossed, a sex off­ender, in the eyes of many, including the criminal justice system, is created. That becomes the point of "no return."
This doesn't necessarily explain the attraction toward children by older people, often intergenerational, other than our society's preoccu­pation with youth, beauty, athletics, and the dream of "never growing up." How many alluring child stars have been discarded when the veneer of youth was gone?
Shall we return to the Victorian era when any display of public affection was strongly proscribed? Trouble is: there was probably as much sexual misconduct then as today. So many rules to break.
Nor can we morph as a society into "anything goes." America does not prepare its youngsters to enter adulthood unless they have specific star qualities such as Freddie Adeu/ soccer pro at 14. How much money did MacCauley Culkin earn by that age?
Teens have more sexual education than at any point in history and yet are intent on reaching "third base" as soon as possible. A boy who has "scored" in junior high is held in high esteem. Not so for girls. Some teen girls will seek to get pregnant to "snare" a commit­ment from the boy or escape a dysfunctional family setting.
I say: offer a college scholarship to any girl who can prove her virginity at age 17. If boys want to qualify, require a successful polygraph examination. Let them go to second or third base without reprobation. I realize the "moral police" will not support any such plan and will insist on abstinence but that is unrealistic.
Furthermore, outlaw the employment of youngsters under 16 in the movie industry, on TV, or for that matter--on farms. Newspaper delivery, nope. Cookie salesgirls no way. End all exploitation of children. If children have special status in our society, let's enforce that un-equivocally.
We have two more sexual problems to deal with; pedophilia and rape. Pedophilia--termed an "unnatural" attraction to kids--not only prepubescent--has been sanctioned in many societies over history. The people in our society who violate this norm are facing severe sanctions. Mary Kay LeTourneau, a Seattle area teacher, and married mother of four, was discovered having sexual relations with her (former) student who had just turned 13. She was sentenced to7 ½ years probation but went to prison when she became pregnant a second time with the boy. When rel­eased, the boy had "come of age" and they married and started raising their two girls together. The boy's mother had assisted until then, a typical family arrangement in America. My point is that such inter-generational contact does not have to be considered a doomsday scenario.
While pedophilia, male or female, is quite rare, the person so afflicted will not easily abandon the orientation. The only solution is to eliminate all sexual attraction for the offender via... castrat­ion, a brutal but effective alternative. Rape is about (violent) power and control but pedophilia is about sexual attraction. There are humane ways to achieve castration: cut the nerve to the organ or chem­ical injections to lower testosterone levels dramatically. However, a 65 year old man is normally lowered to 225 ppm (an 18 year old is norm­ally at 1400) and so my premise to release all prisoners at 65 carr­ies forensic weight.
In order to reduce the incidence of rape, our society will require a painful change--now hindered by centuries of male dominance-with religious support from Christians, Muslims, Jewish, and Hindu tenets" by affording females equal human rights in all respects. Yes, we have made strides in that area and will never eliminate the need to incarc­erate some individuals but releasing them on their 65th birthday should no longer be viewed as 'soft on crime." Most are no longer a menace to society.
As far as policies to deal with repeat offenders: drug dealers, drunk drivers, armed robbers, burglars, arsonists, and domestic abuse perpetrators, lock them up also until age 65--at least on the second offense. No hysteria there, huh?
Remember: policy and laws should not be determined by worst case scenarios. Seek middle ground and justice shall be achieved.

PEACE,
Chas. A.
P.S. What about white collar criminals over 65 like Madoff? OK, drop him off in the middle of Gates of the Arctic Nat. Pk in Alaska with a case of dog food. He can use the parachute for a tent.