So while I was sick at the SSSS conference this last weekend, I still managed to make a friend, Dr. Jeffrey Abrasen. Thursday night, before I realized I had strep throat, I went to the opening getting to know you party (much apologies to anyone who managed to catch this from me pre antibiotics) and managed inspite of my introverted personality to be engaged in a conversation with a gentleman from Canada. We chatted for a good portion of the evening, being joined in conversation here and there by others. I find it fascinating that although I was not exactly feeling social, that even when I am being social half the time I don't know how to be, I managed to find the person there whose line of work actually fascinates me the most. In all fairness, I believe he started the conversation, and I have to say, he had me at essentially "I work with the worst of the worst sex offenders."
The topic of sex offenders I find generally leads many people I know to quickly change the subject. I've ascertained that the general population agrees that punishment for sex offenders is best served via a bullet, while media sources inundate the general population with so many horror stories (often the same horror story but with new details) that the general population feels that charged, convicted, and monitored sex offenders constitute a huge threat to the rest of the population. And people don't differentiate sex offenders. For example, a pedophile is actually attracted to children, making children the object of their desire. This differs vastly from say something like a statutory rape charge, where for example an 18 year old gets a blow job from a 15 year old and ends up behind bars because the 15 year old can't legally make the decision to have sexual interactions for another year or so, but doesn't feel they were harmed in their encounter. I bring up the second example because this actually happened to a young man in Georgia. Genarlo Wilson had a sexual encounter with a young woman under the age of consent, and in our ever growing arsenal of technology, someone filmed it. Although the young woman claimed she was not in fact a "victim", the authorities disagreed, and Genarlo, at the time a successful and academically bright young man with a promising future, went to prison for a time. I believe the courts have since overturned Genarlo's sentence. There was a lot of public outcry and eventually Genarlo went free.
The growing panic over sex offenders in this country worries me. People have a tendency to focus on the ones who have been caught, served their sentences, and are trying to reintegrate back into society. In actuality, for most sex offenders, recidivism rates are actually quite low, in fact well under 20%. But this is not what society cares about. In obsessing over the newly released sex offender, everyone seems to forget to pay attention to the ones who have not been caught. In addition, the evaluation system for sex offenders is imperfect to a fault; I once had a parole officer tell me sometimes she has level ones that should be level threes, and level threes that should be level ones. Think about that. In my hometown a few years ago, there was a home located a couple blocks from my work which was currently being rented to 3 level three sex offenders (level three being the most likely to reoffend or being homeless). The neighborhood was in a uproar; no one wanted their child to walk past that house. The owner of the home was harassed, death threats were made. The cops tried to reason with the neighborhood, claiming quite correctly that having all three in one place made it even easier to monitor them. The neighbors would have none of it and eventually the sex offenders were forced to move. I don't know where to, and the inhabitants of the neighborhood probably didn't either, just so long as they were gone. But I wonder, where did they go? Did they find housing? Did they find stability? Considering a lack of stability can play a large part in a person sexually reoffending, this is an important question.
No one wants the known sex offender as a neighbor. Many cities have designed very specific parameters that limit where a sex offender can live; not within so many feet of a school or playground, not within so many feet of a public park, not within so many feet of a school bus stop. . . you get the idea. Some cities have so many regulations on where sex offenders can live that sex offenders have been regulated out of the city entirely. I believe it's in a Florida city where sex offenders have so few choices, most of them are living homeless under a bridge. Not exactly what I would call stability. This also brings me back to the idea that while we are so concerned as a society about the newly released sex offender, we have forgotten about the unknown sex offender living next door or within our families. It is a known fact that most rape and molestation happens between people who already know each other. The highly publicized cases of children being snatched from their bedroom like the Jessica Lundsford case or Elizabeth Smart case are actually quite rare, but our 24 hour news fixation makes it look quite the opposite. Each of the cases we see or hear about via the news is sad and tragic, but they are still not the norm. Because of how sexual offenses are categorized, when a person who sexually offends is let out, there really are no details released. Grabbing a child off the street is vastly different from an 18 year old and a 15 year old doing something they both want to be doing, but our system of sex offender labeling leaves little differentiation, and to the population a newly released sex offender is set free in, the population generally only sees "sex offender" and imagines the worst of the worst.
Another aspect of the sex offender issue that I find increasingly problematic (yes, I said it), is the ways in which this society is labeling what was once considered ok behavior as sexual offenses. I recently blogged about the family in Arizona whose bath time photos granted them an inside look at the scrutiny that we as a society place on eachother when it comes to sexual matters. Having one's children removed from the home and labeled as a sex offender is not an easy thing to live through, and an even harder thing to erase, because there will always be someone who wonders "what if". What if they really did do something to their children? I saw a recent case of a teacher who has been accused of inappropriate sexual contact with her student, and she is fighting it, but her career is rpobably over regardless. In the case of Genarlo Wilson, he almost lost his whole life over sexual activity that both he and his young female friend thought was ok. I was told a few months ago by my niece's physician that he had seen a statistic predicting that within the next decade, 1 in 4 men will be registering as sex offenders. Children as young as kindergarten and preschool are being labeled as sexual harassers because of what was once considered normal child teasing and normal child play. In an ever increasingly sexualized culture, it is not uncommon that the language children use to express their feelings is adult, and in many cases, not entirely understood. One school in Pennsylvania has outlawed any form of touching; gone is holding hands and quick pecks on the cheek between young blooming romances, and hugging is also taboo at this school. I worry about the future generations of boys and men, who are most often the target of these policies. No more college pranks of streaking or mooning, these can now earn you in some places the label of sexual offender. This speaks to larger issues that we have in this country, equating sexual organs with sin, touching with bad, and sex as a whole as dangerous and dirty. There is also a double standard that exists depending upon whether the offender is male or female. Mary Kay Letourneau married the student she slept with twice after she was released from prison, and it was treated like a fairy tale come true. If Mary had been Bary, and the student female, there would have been a riot.
Talking with Dr. Jeffrey Abrasen this weekend was refreshing, not the topic so much as his point of view. Even though he actually does work with the worst of the worst, here is a man who still sees a population that has been deemed as evil throw aways and worthless by society and he tries to help as best he can. He understands that even though the sex offender population he works with may not be quite as subject to treatment, this has not colored his views that treatment is necessary, change can happen, and our system is broken in regards to sex offenders. Our laws have become run by our fears, not necessarily what is best for society as a whole, including the offender. The term "sex offender" brings to mind the most horrible acts of depravity, and yet, each sexual crime is not a blanket case of abuse. In fact, don't be surprised if it is your son who someday becomes a sex offender after a drunken night out with the boys when he pulls his pants down to moon an unsuspecting passerbyer and ends up in jail because his ass has offended someone.
