Articles About Sex Offenders

The Awareness Center is doing our best to keep our organization up and running, unfortunately at this time we not functioning at full capacity due to lack of funds.  If you feel that the information our web page is worthwhile please consider making a donation to our organization. Suggested donation is $1.00 per page that you visit.

Another way you can help is by becoming a paid member of our organization.  Membership includes receiving our daily e-mail newsletter, and the ability to join one of our Special Interest Groups (SIGS).  The cost of membership is $36.00 for one year.

To become a member fill out our membership form and return it with your payment (US Funds Only) to the address below. You can pay your membership dues online by clicking on the donation button above.

The Awareness Center is a non-profit, certified 501 (c) (3) organization.  Our goals include reaching out to Jewish survivors of sexual violence, parents of sexually abused children, family members of alleged and convicted sex offenders, rabbis, cantors and other community leaders. We also serve as a clearinghouse of information, and offer advocacy for those in need and educational seminars. 

Jewish Articles

1. The Awareness Center's Brochure  

2. Heinous Crime  (12/22/1992)

3. Helping bad boys be better (April 28, 2000)

4. Testimony of Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism - In Support of The Prison Rape Reduction Act of 2002   (07/31/2002)

5. Can Sex Offenders Ever Be Cured?  (08/07/2002)

6. When A Family Member Molests: Reality, Conflict, and The Need For Support  (October, 2003)

7. When Melodies, Torah Scholars, and Abuse Collide  (2003)

8. Prison Service: More and more inmates turning to religion  (10/12/2005)

Secular Articles

1. Do Sexually Abused Kids Become Abusers?

2. Experts say pedophilia may never be cured

3. Explaining Pedophilia - What Is Pedophilia?

4. Sex Offender Behaviors

5. "Grooming" or Setting Up Your Victim

6. What is grooming?

7. Lock up sex offenders

8. To Prevent Sexual Abuse, Abusers Step Forward

9. The Making of a Molester

10. US Department of Justice: Sex Offender Management - Recidivism of Sex Offenders (2001)

11. What is DARVO? ("Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.")

12. Who are sex offenders? (06/14/05)

13. Oprah Show - Series on Sex Offenders

    • Kidnapped by a pedophile: the Shasta Groene tragedy; discussion of child predators and how we as a nation can get child predators off the streets  (10/04/2005)

    • Oprah captures child molesters; Oprah viewers help in the arrests of two child molesters  (10/11/2005)

    • The Day I Found Out My husband was a child molester  (01/13/2006)

14. Accord on Bill to Detain Sex Offenders  (03/01/2007)

15. Doubts Rise as States Hold Sex Offenders After Prison (03/04/2007)

16. For Sex Offenders, a Dispute Over Therapy's Benefits (03/06/2007)

Heinous Crime

By H. Ginsberg

The Jerusalem Post - December 22, 1992, Tuesday  SECTION: Opinion

Sir, - I read with horror and rage a small news report on December 7, "Rapist gets 28 months." Judge Aharon Tomashoff handed down a sentence of five years to the rapist of a five-year-old.  The criminal was a relative of the girl for whom he was a babysitter. As usual, the name of the criminal was not printed.  Why is the name of the rapist is never noted in such articles?

To emphasize the travesty of justice, the sympathetic judge took into consideration that the perpetrator of this heinous crime had no prior record and so suspended 32 months of the sentence. So the criminal sits in jail for two years while the child will suffer for the rest of her life.

H. GINSBERG, Kibbutz Misgav Am.

(Top)

Committee on the Judiciary - United States Senate

July 31, 2002

Contact: Alexis Rice or Michael Weiner 202-387-2800

http://www.rac.org/news/073102a.html

Rabbi SapersteinGood afternoon. I am Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and I'm pleased to join you today to speak in support of the Prison Rape Reduction Act of 2002. This important legislation would address a profound violation of human rights whose shameful prevalence has been overlooked in this country for far too long.

First, let me commend Senators Kennedy and Sessions and Representatives Wolf and Scott for their passionate, bipartisan leadership on this issue. We could not ask for congressional champions more dedicated to upholding the basic values of human dignity. Their example should demonstrate to all Americans our shared capacity to transcend religious, ideological, and partisan differences and unite behind a common vision of fundamental decency on issues where core principles are at stake.

The scourge of prison rape is just such an issue: Studies show that nearly 25 percent of the more than two million individuals in federal and state prisons across the country will be the victims of some form of sexual assault or harassment during their period of incarceration. In a typical state prison, one in 10 prisoners will be the victim of a completed rape. Once so brutalized, victims are far more likely to be victims of repeated rape. These are staggering statistics that should by themselves arouse the moral outrage of all people of conscience.

The comprehensive Human Rights Watch report No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons reminds us, however, that these statistics represent traumatic incidents of violent abuse that have been perpetrated upon real people. The report contains information from more than 200 prisoners in 34 states, and notes that in addition to the often "unimaginably vicious and brutal" physical effects of sexual assault, prison rape victims also suffer serious and enduring psychological stress, manifesting itself through "nightmares, deep depression, shame, loss of self-esteem, self-hatred, and considering or attempting suicide. Some of them also describe a marked increase in anger and a tendency toward violence." And tragically, AIDS, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases devastate lives physically and emotionally. Sadly, too many prison officials turn their backs on the problem, or even worse, encourage it as a means of control.

All religious traditions teach that the ultimate judgment of a society depends on how it treats the most vulnerable of its inhabitants. Certainly, incarcerated individuals fit into this category. No matter what crime a person has committed, no one deserves to be brutally raped as a condition of his or her punishment. But for too many people in the American penal system, prison rape is merely par for the course.

We must not allow this terror to continue. The bill at issue today provides a responsible, measured approach to the problem, setting up mechanisms for the study, reporting, and prevention of prison rape. Most importantly, the legislation promises to bring to the forefront a tragic plague that is too often a punch line and too rarely a subject of genuine concern in our civic life.

The Prison Rape Reduction Act would direct the Justice Department to set up three programs to address the problem: one to collect and publish comprehensive information, one to serve as a clearinghouse for the reporting of sexual assaults in prison and to provide training and assistance to prison officials, and one to make grants to state and local programs aimed at preventing and punishing prison rape. Further, the bill would establish a national commission charged with setting standards for averting sexual misconduct in penal facilities and able to play a critical role in educating the American public on this crisis. As one who was honored to serve as the chair of a federal commission established by a unanimous act of Congress, I can testify to the potential of such commissions to be a vitally effective goad to executive and legislative officials and to the public conscience.

These reforms would, for the first time, signal a serious engagement with the problem by the federal government. Such an engagement is vital, because turning our back on prison rape would not only violate the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment, it would also mean betraying our most fundamental moral values, which tell us unequivocally that if we can prevent another person from being viciously attacked, we must.

I'm here today to tell you that we can prevent prison rape; we should prevent prison rape; and we must prevent prison rape.

Because of the profound moral clarity of the issue, a remarkable coalition of conscience has come together in support of this legislation. Jewish, mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and Unitarian groups, civil rights, human rights, and criminal justice reform advocates, health care professionals and youth workers, liberals, conservatives, and everyone in between - we all believe that prison rape is wrong, and that we can, and must, do something about it.

Some of us work together frequently; others less so. For example, it is not so common that Reform Jews and conservative Evangelicals find common ground to work together, but when we do, you can be sure that the issue at stake is one that cuts to the heart of a principle so basic that no reasonable person can stand in the way of its genuine manifestation.

We have joined together in the past on issues of similarly essential principle. Our common concern for the world's poor brought us to the table to advocate international debt relief. Our common disgust at the most foul human rights violations drives our work to prevent international sex trafficking and to end slavery in the Sudan. Our common understanding of the ennobling power of religious belief guides our quest for religious freedom, and to end religious persecution both at home and around the world.

One of the Torah's most radical innovations was to put forward the notion that human beings are created b'tselem elohim - in the image of God. The use of divine terminology to describe the human state serves to raise up humankind, to proclaim the infinite worth and potential of each individual person.

The implications of such a concept are far-reaching and profound, imposing on individuals and societies the obligation never to degrade others, to recognize the potential in all for redemption, and to assist the most vulnerable.

That this includes the prisoner is clearly reflected in the Bible in two separate places, where it pronounces a prohibition on raping those captured in war (imprisonment for criminal activity was not known in the ancient Jewish world), both women (Deuteronomy 21:10-16) and men (Deuteronomy 23:16-17). Intrinsically, rape is regarded as a vile sin - under some circumstances, the Bible holds rape to be a civil wrong that requires payment of damages by the perpetrator as compensation for pain, suffering, shame, and blemish (Deut. 22:28-29); in others, rape is categorized as a capital offense (Deut.22:25).

We must recognize that to allow the epidemic of prison rape to continue unabated is to reject the spirit of the divine that connects us all. Therefore, I urge the members of this committee to join with Senators Kennedy and Sessions in supporting the Prison Rape Reduction Act.

Thank you for your time.

###

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is the Washington office of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), whose 900 congregations across North America encompass 1.5 million Reform Jews, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis(CCAR) whose membership includes over 1800 Reform rabbis.

(Top)

Commonly Asked Questions About Sexual Abuse (Part Two)

By Yechezkel Chezi Goldberg

The Jewish Press - August 7, 2002

http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=1429

With specialized treatment and adequate support groups, a sex offender who accepts full accountability for his or her crime can learn to control his or her abusive behavior. The public holds the myth that sex offenders have the highest recidivism rate of any crime. In reality, the recidivism rate for most sex offenders is quite low, even lower when the abuser gets specialized treatment as part of his or her criminal sentence.

Like many other diseases and dysfunctions (like alcoholism) we cannot expect a cure, but we can expect and demand control of behavior throughout a lifetime. When people who abuse have the support and "tough love" of their friends and families, they are more likely to complete their treatment programs and live productive, abuse-free lives.

Ohel founded just such a program a few years ago in Brooklyn. After being approached by DA Charlie Hynes about secrecy in the Orthodox community, a secrecy that ends up protecting pedophiles from prosecution, Ohel took the initiative and created a program to answer the need. Any pedophile from the community brought before a judge is given the choice of entering the Ohel Support Program for Pedophiles, or going to jail. The last I spoke to David Mandel from Ohel about the program, there were 16 pedophiles who had molested thousands between them before entering the program.

Pedophiles have a disease. Ohel has taken the lead in offering them a way to live and overcome their lust disease. Those who would like more information about the program should contact Ohel directly.

Are All Sexual Abusers The Same? Do They All Pose The Same Risk To Re-Offend?

No, not all abusers are the same. Like any other population, there is a wide range of behavior and a variety of people who sexually abuse children.

It is important to keep in mind what the experts state about sexual abuse. Children who are abused, if they are not promptly treated therapeutically, will often turn around at some point in their lives and become abusers. Some will react this way sooner, and others will suddenly find themselves acting out sexually years later.

This is important for parents to know. ``Molestation`` is not something that goes away. Time itself does not heal victims of sexual abuse. As painful as it is to hear about one`s child being molested, and as much as parents of child sex abuse victims wish that the nightmare would just disappear, it is crucial to face the painful reality of what happened and to seek out competent treatment for any child who has suffered sexual abuse. This is to prevent the child from turning around and becoming an abuser and is to ensure that the perpetrator of the abuse does not roamfreely preying on other children.

There is a positive side to all of this. With specialized treatment and full accountability for their crimes, many abusers can change and never offend again. However, child sexual abuse in any form is a crime and must be dealt with first through the legal system.

There is no escaping the legal ramifications. People who are aware of sexual abuse that is ongoing and fail to report it to the authorities, are compromising themselves legally. If at some time in the future, police do get involved and in their investigations the law finds out that you knew and did not report, you can be held legally responsible.

That being said, ultimately, if a pedophile admits his problem, then we do what we can to help him get help. The goal is to get everyone who wants to change into the best treatment available and help him never to hurt a child again.

Why Do People Sexually Abuse Children?

People abuse children for a sense of power and a sense of pleasure. They may seek children to abuse because they have had a long history of sexual attraction to children, or because they took advantage of an opportunity to abuse a child in their trust. They may have started abusing because they had been abused before, or because they never learned that the behavior is wrong and is a crime.

How Can We Keep Our Children Safe From Sex Offenders?

We need to teach children about safety. We, as adults, also need to learn more about abuse and abusers. This is the first step. Read what you can about sexual abuse. Become wiser. Check out resources in your community. Surf the Internet to quickly gain access to more in-depth knowledge on the topic. Then, once you feel that you understand the basics, you can start to talk to your children about sexual abuse.

Here are some things that you and your family can do to prevent the sexual abuse of a child you know and love.

Adults need to:

• Watch for signs of possible sexual abusiveness in adults, between adults and children, and in children.

• Show by example in your own life, how to say "no" when someone you know and care about does something you do not like.

• Set and respect family boundaries.

• Speak up when you see "warning sign" behaviors.

• Practice talking about difficult topics such as sexual abuse with other adults.

• Teach children the proper names of body parts.

• Teach children the difference between "ok touch" and touch that is "not ok".

• Teach children that secrets about touching are "not ok."

• Set up a family safety plan that is easy to remember.

• Complete a list for yourself of whom to call for advice, information, and help.

Yechezkel Chezi Goldberg is a Jerusalem counselor. In his clinic he deals extensively as a counselor for overseas yeshiva, seminary and university students in Israel. Contact information is 972-2-58-000-41. E-mail address: cheziscorner@yahoo.com. Postal address: 13 Noam Elimelech St., Beitar Illit 99879, Israel.

(Top)

By Dan Williams

The Jerusalem Post - April 28, 2000, Friday, FEATURES; Pg. 5B

Dan Williams spends a day at Sharon Prison's juvenile ward and talks to the boys and their caretakers about rehabilitation

A seat was left vacant at the Seder held in Sharon Prison's juvenile ward last week in memory of 17-year-old D., who had hanged himself in his isolation cell three days earlier.

The ward staff insisted on the gesture, having noticed that their own consternation at D.'s drastic act was not shared by the inmates.

"The boys accepted the suicide with equanimity," says Betty Lahat, warden of Sharon Prison. "They think he was very brave, and he's become something of an admired figure."

D., who was serving a two-year sentence for assault, was put into isolation after almost killing another inmate in a fight.

"The others know that D. always carried everything to the extreme, and now they figure that he just wanted to end it all," Lahat adds.

Though suicides are rare events at the ward, according to its director, Itamar Yefet, at any one time there are about 30 boys on the "danger list." These are closely monitored to make sure they don't harm themselves or others, and anything in their possession that could be used as a weapon is confiscated.

Nonetheless, Lahat says, if an inmate is determined to kill himself, ultimately he will succeed. Besides, she says, the problem exists well beyond the prison walls. Conversations with her own teenage son have convinced her that "boys of this age haven't any value for life."

This truism seems to be borne out by the fact that Israel has no similar facility for girls.

And the hazards of puerile recklessness and rebellion are magnified tenfold at the Sharon Prison's juvenile ward, the country's only facility for under-aged felons. That's why, say both Lahat and Yefet, a special mix of vigilance, strictness, and sensitivity is required at all times.

THERE are approximately 100 boys aged 14 to 17 at the ward, the number varying as arrested juveniles are brought in for lockup pending trial. They are kept in complete isolation from Sharon's 400 adult inmates.

Most of the young convicts are serving three month- to three-year terms for larceny or drug offenses, some four- to seven-year terms for rape, a handful 25 years for murder.

The ward is divided into three cell blocks: Brosh is the most spare, housing new arrivals and inmates who have been punished or isolated from the others for their own protection, while Erez and Gefen are decorated and more comfortable, allowing the inmates to mingle.

The boys bunk two to a cell, but sometimes a third friend will sleep on a mattress on the floor.

Apart from the bars in the windows, the cells, with their music posters, pin-ups, and coffee paraphernalia, recall the accommodation at many Israeli boarding schools.

Most of the boys come from broken homes, Yefet says, where they never learned the importance of trust.

"From the beginning, we match each with a cellmate we feel will not influence him for the worse, and with whom he can develop a rapport," he says.

Often, Yefet adds, a boy will warn the staff if his cellmate is feeling despondent or is at risk of committing suicide because of a fight he had with the others, helping prevent tragedy.

Roll-call, lock-up, and lights-out is at 9 p.m., and at 7 a.m the inmates are woken up for breakfast. The food - standard three-course fare, much like at kibbutzim or army bases - is delivered from the main prison refectory, and the boys are also given snacks throughout the day.

Twice a month, they can buy their own supply of chocolates, chips, and other junk food at a canteen set up especially for them. Chewing gum, however, is off-limits, lest it be used to block up keyholes.

The boys' currency is tokens they earn for good behavior or for doing errands around the compound. They are also awarded for attending matriculation classes given by teachers from the ORT school system, at an enviable ratio of eight pupils to a teacher.

There are further education opportunities in the weight room, in the kitchen, and, as of this month, in the NIS 300,000 computer room.

"To us, one juvenile inmate is like 10 adult prisoners in terms of expense, but there's no other choice," says Yefet. "Look outside, at how much is invested in children; their schooling, clothes, activities. We have to give these kids the same investment so they can return to the world."

"FOR YOUTHS, the whole legal system is different," says Prisons Service spokeswoman Levana Levy-Shay. "From the courts, the social services, to the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry's juvenile department, they separate them from other criminals."

More than 30,000 police files involving juveniles were opened in 1999, up 8 percent from the previous year, completing a decade in which youth crime rose significantly every year. However, Dep.-Cmdr. Suzy Ben-Baruch, head of the Israel Police Juvenile Crime Section, says that the statistics paradoxically reflect the success of enforcement efforts.

"Following all the murders of children by children over the past two years - in Rishon Lezion, Upper Nazareth, and Jerusalem - there was a national outcry, and we increased our staff and operation," she says.

"Because there is more work in the field, more crime is uncovered."

The police's Unit for Preventing Youth Crime has been doubled in size, and the 70 juvenile units nationwide have been beefed up with volunteers, social workers, and special agents who monitor street gangs.

Moreover, six new regional detective units have been opened, and half have already infiltrated some 200 high schools to break up drug rings.

Dr. Malka Alek of Bar-Ilan University's psychology faculty concurs with Ben-Baruch's assessment.

"I think there is more crime," she says, "but there is also greater awareness and concern, and greater willingness to uncover criminal incidents by agencies that feared they would be seen as not so good; for example, schools that feared the bad press of exposing crimes in their midst."

Alek believes the various agencies dealing with troubled youths - the welfare officers, the boarding schools and halfway homes - should coordinate their efforts better. However, at the same time, she notes approvingly that the system uses incarceration in the juvenile ward only as a last resort.

THOSE inmates who turn 18 before serving out their sentence are transferred to a normal penitentiary, sometimes joining the adult inmates of Sharon Prison.

Otherwise, there is no overlap between the two prisoner communities. Even arranging for the boys to use the prison's sports pitch requires elaborate coordination to ensure they don't come into contact with their grown-up counterparts.

This confinement, says Yefet, is a deliberate effort to turn the ward into "a sort of greenhouse," where a new sense of responsibility and pride can be cultivated in the boys before they are returned to normal society.

The exception to this is the Shalhevet program, where an adult convict near the end of his term and who has passed a special training course speaks with the youths, offering himself as a cautionary example of where crime leads. There are also three psychologists on staff to provide counseling.

Given that many of the inmates have never had proper adult attention, they sometimes initially respond to the discipline with reflex rebellion.

According to Yefet, one favored form of inmate protest is carving their arms with pieces of wire. Recently, one boy bit a guard.

Lahat says the staff members have to be unyielding in punishing the boys, but are careful to be encouraging at the same time.

"If you give them a punishment, say isolation for a boy who threw boiling water on another inmate, they don't believe they'll come out of it," she says.

"They can begin to despair. You have to give them reason to be optimistic, tell them they'll get another chance."

The younger the criminal the more chance there is at rehabilitation, says Yefet, adding that once the boys reach their twenties the process gets harder. "At a young age, a boy is impressionable, he finds it hard to make decisions. But if you manage to get through to him, you get through all the way."

"GOD WILLING, my four-year sentence will be cut for good behavior," says Z., a soft-spoken 17-year-old who hopes to begin a career as a graphic designer.

He chats about the computer classes, the once-monthly visits from his siblings, and the tolerable schnitzel sandwiches. But he declines to discuss the reason for his incarceration - rape.

Similarly, 15-year-old S., who got 25 years for molesting and murdering a five-year-old girl, is reluctant to discuss his crime. He prefers to complain about the fact that Lahat, fearing he'll try to escape, has confined him to his cell block until the ward's main quadrangle is covered with fencing.

Lahat and Yefet are careful to treat sexual offenders, and other inmates whose crimes are especially repugnant, with the same decency afforded all the boys. But this does not mean the crime is forgotten.

"As long as he denies committing it, we don't even let him leave for furloughs," Lahat says. "And when he finally admits to it, he starts going though group therapy, run by a specialist in juvenile sex crimes.

"It's a very long-term process."

"Maybe he'll be able to get over his problem," adds Yefet.

"Maybe, thanks to treatment available here in the prison, where, after all, he'll spend six or seven years of his life, he'll develop some sort of mechanism to make sure there won't be another victim who suffers."

Alek claims such optimism is unfounded. "Imprisonment (in the juvenile ward) is completely worthless in terms of rehabilitation and treatment," she says. "The prison sentence is a sort of surrender."

Levy-Shay confirms that there is no reason to believe that Israel's 70 to 75 percent recidivism rate does not equally apply to juvenile convicts.

Nonetheless, the staff at the Sharon Prison juvenile ward remain determined to focus on that quarter-chance of rehabilitation.

"We'll give each inmate all the services available," says Yefet. "I don't see it as an indulgence, or that the institution is too pleasant or nice.

"We want to return him to society, if not completely reformed, then at least somehow improved."

(Top)

By Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondent

Haaretz - Ocxtober 12, 2005

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/634497.html   

Convicted murderer Ami Popper, who is serving a 40-year prison sentence for the murder of seven Arab workers in Rishon Letzion in May 1990, wears a white shirt and a kippah (yarmulke), and his face is framed by a beard. He lives in Wing 8 of the Ma'asiyahu Prison in Ramle, which is occupied entirely by religiously observant prisoners.

Over the past decade, Popper, 36, has "become strengthened," as the phrase goes - he entered prison as an utterly secular person, but under lock and key drew closer to religion. On Tuesday afternoon Popper refused to grant an interview, as usual, but was full of praise for the prison's rabbis who are accompanying him on his path.

Popper is not alone: Some 70 prisoners, many of whom have commited crimes such as rape, indecent assault and murder, occupy the religious wing at Ma'asiyahu. Two other such wings exist in the Ayalon prison in Ramle, and at the Dekel prison in Be'er Sheba. The Prisons Service notes a dramatic 50 percent rise in the number of prisoners who have returned to religion - two years ago some 250 prisoners attended religious study classes at the prisons, while the number has recently climbed to 550, and is expected to climb higher.

The Prisons Service cannot quite put a finger on the reasons behind the prisoners' spiritual awakening. Some officers say the prisoners are an accurate reflection of broader societal trends, while others say that once prisoners begin to pay their debt to society they become aware of the emptiness of their lives, and try to fill them with content.

Others speak of a "herd mentality" whereby prisoners who see their friends "enter the tents of Torah" also want to join in. Rabbi Moshe Toledano, chief rabbi of the Prisons Service, describes the trend as a "spiritual thirst" and says: "I myself find it hard to absorb how dramatically the numbers of religious and newly religious prisoners has risen."

The Prisons Service rejects the explanation that prisoners are attracted because of privileges received in the religious program, including being exempt from wearing the prison uniform. On the contrary, they point to the religious wings' strict codes of conduct: no television, no newspapers, early morning prayer, Sabbath observation, Torah study.

"The prisoners sign their agreement to these conditions, and those who violate them leave the wing," says Toledano. "There are others on the waiting list."

Over the past few days prisoners from Wing 8 at Ma'asiyauh have been erecting a huge Sukkah - the booth built outdoors during the Feast of Tabernacles - in the courtyard adjacent to the prison cells. Still lacking a green canopy and decorations, on this morning it is already full of prisoners studying Talmud and Halakha. S., a 19-year-old from Jerusalem serving a 10-month sentence for property crimes, says his father is a well-known rabbi from the capital, but that despite his family lineage, he "lost the path."

"I was reckless, a pleasure-monger," says S. "This is not my first prison sentence. All told, I have already spent close to three years in prison. Now I feel like I'm getting close to religion again. I've come to the conclusion that for every pleasure I sought I received a slap in the face. Something always happened that made me regret the fun I had. I realized there was no choice but to `become strengthened'."

As part of their return to the fold, prisoners often visit the graves of saints: prisoners from Negev jails go to prostrate themselves on the grave of the Baba Sali in Netivot, while prisoners in the center and the north go to the graves of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai on Mount Meron, or to Amuka, where it is customary for single men and women to ask the saint for a suitable match. In the past few weeks, the residents of the religious wings rise well before dawn for the traditional Selihot prayers. Though they remain groggy-eyed throughout the day, the prisoners don't complain.

Director of Ma'asiyahu Prison, Brigadier General Rami Ovadiah, says that some 50 percent of the prisoners in the religious wing were convicted for sexual crimes, incest or pedophilia. He believes that the religious wings have supreme reformative value: "In many cases new immigrants who had no exposure at all to religion hear the prayers over and over again and ask to join the activity," Ovadiah says. "They feel they can imbue their life with content. Suddenly a door is opened for them."

The Prisons Service statistics reveal that most prisoners who complete their sentences will return at some point because of involvement in other crimes, with the rate of recidivism at 65 percent. However, among religious prisoners recidivism is only 8.5 percent. The Prisons Service also report relative quiet in the religious wings, almost no incidents of violence and few disciplinary problems.

(Top)

Do Sexually Abused Kids Become Abusers?

Study Shows Family Violence, Neglect Are Important Risk Factors

By Salynn Boyles

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/60/67158.htm?lastselectedguid={5FE84E90-BC77-4056-A91C-9531713CA348}

Feb. 6, 2003 -- It is widely believed that boys who are victims of sexual abuse become abusers themselves. Studies of pedophiles suggest this often is the case, but new research shows that the risk may be smaller than previously thought.

Roughly one in 10 male victims of child sex abuse in a U.K. study later went on to abuse children as adults. But the risk was far greater for sexually victimized children who came from severely dysfunctional families. Family history of violence, sexual abuse by a female, maternal neglect, and lack of supervision were all associated with a threefold-increased risk that the abused would become an abuser. The study is reported in the Feb. 8 issue of The Lancet.

"The message here is that sexual victimization alone is not sufficient to suggest a boy is likely to grow up to become a sex offender," study author and psychiatrist Arnon Bentovim tells WebMD. "But our study does show that abused boys who grow up in families where they are exposed to a great deal of violence or neglect are at particular risk."

Bentovim and colleagues from London's Institute of Child Health identified 224 adult male victims of child sexual abuse whose childhood medical and social service records were available for review. They then searched arrest and prosecution records to determine their later criminal activity. Most of the subjects were 20 years old or older when the study was conducted.

Twenty-six of the 224 sex abuse victims (12%) later committed sexual offenses, and in almost all cases their victims were also children. Abused children who came from families where violence was common were more than three times as likely to become abusers as were those who experienced maternal neglect and sexual abuse by females.

One-third of the adult abusers had been cruel to animals as children, compared with just 5% of the child abuse victims who did not grow up to commit sexual crimes. But abusers and nonabusers experienced similar levels of physical abuse as children, and there were few significant differences in the severity or characteristics of the sexual abuse they suffered.

"It is clear that prevention of sexual abuse involves not just treating the victim, but ensuring that the family environment is safe," Bentovim says. "If you leave a child in a family situation where he continues to be subjected to abuse, even if it is not sexual, you are probably wasting your time."

Child health specialist Paul Bouvier, MD, tells WebMD that the real incidence of abused boys becoming pedophiles themselves is probably higher than the U.K. study suggests because it only included sexual predators who had been caught.

In an editorial accompanying the study, Bouvier argues that much can be learned by studying child sexual abuse victims who do not go on to become sexual predators or experience long-lasting trauma.

"It is quite important to know the risks for these children to have a bad outcome," he tells WebMD. "But it is also important to look at those who are resilient and who don't become abusers later in life. What are the characteristics of those who evolve beyond this experience and go on to have a meaningful life?"

(Top)

by Jane Reuter

Summit Daily News - May 8, 2003

http://www.summitdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2003305080103

SUMMIT COUNTY - District Attorney Mark Hurlbert said he sees several child sexual abuse cases in Summit County every year. In most cases, the perpetrator is not a stranger.

"Most of the time it's a parent," he said. But most of the time, because publicity on such cases can further traumatize the victims, the cases are kept out of the limelight. "I see them multiple times a year. In Summit County, I don't think we're quite into the double digits yet."

Hurlbert, like Mountain Counseling Center counselor Chad Spears, said the young victims of sexual abuse suffer from the encounters well into adulthood, sometimes for life. Two Summit County men violated as boys by convicted sex offender Joe Hildyard became addicted to drugs. One of them, Seth Astuto, eventually committed suicide. Sadly, Spears said, those stories don't surprise him.

"Men actually take it worse than women do in a lot of ways, because men are supposed to be tough and deal with things," said Spears, who for years worked with pedophiles before counseling sexual abuse victims. "Especially when it is a male sexually abusing another male, it carries the stigma of sexual abuse and also the trauma of the same-sex occurrence."

In his 15 years of working with victims of sexual abuse, Spears said only about 5 percent of his patients have been men.

Despite the trauma victims endure, many of them return to the perpetrator time and again. Spears admits that appears difficult to understand, but said the offender generally gains control of the victims.

"The adult either convinces them that they're worthless or that they really like it," he said. "They play mind games with them. They sometimes threaten. They tell them they'll hurt somebody they care about, or, if they tell, their parents won't love them. They're very, very manipulative."

Spears said new research suggests pedophiles may suffer from a brain defect.

"There are things that are supposed to be abhorrent to us and child abuse is one of them," he said. "It appears there may just be some kind of wiring in the brain (of a pedophile) that didn't hook up like it was supposed to.

"I don't think you ever cure a pedophile, but you sometimes can try to get them to not do it anymore."

Research shows pedophiles have a high rate of repeat offenses - with study statistics varying between 65 and 80 percent.

Other research suggests offenders have an excess of testosterone, a belief that gives credence to the idea that chemical castration will put an end to the deviant behavior.

A Texas man convicted of child molestation firmly believed that. Larry McQuay, who was paroled in 1996 after serving time for abusing a child, asked Texas authorities to castrate him before he was freed. Without the procedure, McQuay - who admitted to molesting more than 240 children - warned he might reoffend. His request was denied, and McQuay walked free in 1996.

"There's no question they know it's wrong," Spears said. "But you certainly hear a lot of rationalizations."

Hurlbert agreed.

"I've had sex offenders say sex with a 5- or 6-year-old was consensual, that (the kids) wanted it," he said. "They'll say (the children) were curious about things and, "I wanted them to learn it from me and not anybody else.'"

Signs of Possible Abuse

• Explanation of injury to a child not believable

• Repetitive injuries without adequate explanation

• Inconsistent explanations of injury

• Significant and sudden mood change - perhaps more withdrawn, poor concentration or more aggression

• Lack of interest in usual activities

• Decrease in school performance

- From the Kempe Children's Center, a Denver-based agency on prevention and treatment of child abuse

Impact of Child Sexual Abuse

• It is estimated 60 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse live in America today.

• Approximately 31 percent of women in prison state they had been abused as children.

• Approximately 95 percent of teenage prostitutes have been sexually abused.

• Long-term effects of child abuse include fear, anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, inappropriate sexual behavior, poor self esteem, tendency toward substance abuse and difficulty with close relationships.

• Adolescents with a history of sexual abuse are significantly more likely than their counterparts to engage in sexual behavior that puts them at risk for HIV infection.

• Young girls who are forced to have sex are three times more likely to develop psychiatric disorders or abuse alcohol and drugs in adulthood than girls who are not sexually abused.

• Among both adolescent girls and boys, a history of sexual or physical abuse appears to increase the risk of eating disorders.

- From the prevent-abuse-now.com Web site

(Top)

By Martin Downs

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/14/1687_51642.htm?lastselectedguid={5FE84E90-BC77-4056-A91C-9531713CA348}

Recent revelations about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church have put pedophilia in the national spotlight like never before. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- all the loud headlines and lurid accounts of child molestation, many people still don't understand what this mental illness is all about.

The biggest misunderstanding many people have is that pedophilia and homosexuality are one and the same. But to say that all homosexuals are pedophiles, or that all pedophiles are homosexual, is like comparing apples to rat poison. "They certainly are two distinct things," says James Hord, a psychologist in Panama City, Fla., who specializes in treating sexually abused children.

Hord explains that while some pedophiles may prefer boys over girls, or vice versa, it's not so much about gender as it is about age. For homosexuals, Hord says, sexual preference is "simply not linked to the age." If a man, for instance, is attracted to other adult males, he is a homosexual. A man who is sexually attracted to male children is not considered a homosexual: He is a pedophile.

As with all things sexual, however, it's not always so simple. Heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual men and women may become sexually attracted to children even though they're also attracted to adults. When this happens, it's usually because of insecurity or stress in an adult relationship, says Anthony Siracusa, a psychologist in Williamstown, Mass., who specializes in treating abused kids and sexual offenders.

These people, Siracusa says, are called "regressed offenders" because they have literally regressed: They lose the social skills they need to deal with other adults, which makes children more attractive to them. Regressed offenders may "bounce back and forth" between normal sexual relationships and criminal relations with children.

Insecurity, Hord agrees, is at the heart of pedophilia. Typically, pedophiles have trouble relating to people their own age. They need to feel they have power and control in a relationship, which is easy with children. One pedophile, "PwC," attests to this, writing on a pedophilia Web site:

"I'm 21 years old, and a virgin, I've never even kissed a girl. I have no job, and can't keep one. I'm frustrated that I'm a virgin, and it seems very unlikely that I'll ever get the kind of woman I want, and I'm desperate, because I need love. I never have molested a little girl, never! I want to though, I'm truly desperate. I want to hold a little girl in my arms, and tell her I love her, and that I'll keep her safe, and protect her, that appeals to me greatly."

This man is remorseful, but there are plenty of pedophiles who are not. Men and women who molest kids "for sport," as Hord puts it, are the most dangerous. They are also the ones who try to justify their sexual preference, arguing that pedophilia should be "normalized," just like homosexuality has been.

Homosexuality was, in fact, listed as a mental illness in psychiatry's main reference book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, until the third edition came out in 1980. This edition included a category for homosexuals who were troubled by their sexuality and wanted to change it. All mention of homosexuality, however, was purged from the manual by 1987.

"It was well overdue," Siracusa says.

According to a 1994 statement from the American Psychiatric Association, the change came after decades of research showed that "a significant portion of gay and lesbian people were clearly satisfied with their sexual orientation" and showed no signs of mental illness. "It was also found that homosexuals were able to function effectively in society, and those who sought treatment most often did so for reasons other than their homosexuality."

Mental health professionals agree that pedophilia should never be considered normal, because it is truly a disease. None of the things that make homosexuality a normal variation of human sexuality apply to pedophilia.

Sadly, there is no "cure" for the disease. Therapy combined with drugs like SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) works well for many people with other mental illnesses, but it doesn't work for most pedophiles. The best doctors can really hope for is to help keep pedophiles from acting on their urges.

More Than Innocence Lost

The first thing that jumps to mind when we hear about a child having been sexually abused is the "loss of innocence." But that's our reaction, not necessarily the child's.

Although you may shudder to hear it, the fact is that young children may enjoy the experience. It's not until later in life, as they mature sexually, that these kids realize what happened to them was bad, and they begin to have problems.

"All cases result in some harmful effects," Hord says, even though problems may not show up until years or even decades after the abuse happened.

Abused kids are hurt in different ways depending on whether the abuser was a stranger or a beloved figure in the child's life, like a parent. "To treat those two children the same is just nonsense," Hord says. In cases where a parent commits sexual abuse, "We have a very confused child," he says.

Children who are molested by loved ones often feel tremendous guilt for having reported the abuse, which is not typically the case when the offender is a stranger. When abuse happens in the family, "The child is groomed into that circumstance," Siracusa says. As it goes on over time, he or she accepts it as the norm, and it becomes a matter of balance in the family. The child wants to be good and help keep the family running smoothly. Once the child realizes that the sexual relationship is wrong and tells someone about it, "They've now unsettled the balance," Siracusa says.

Often, "The family feels victimized by the child's disclosure," he says. The guilt-ridden child may then take back the statement, denying that anything ever happened. This causes even more problems for everyone involved.

Hord says that when he's dealing with these children in therapy, he tries not to focus on the abuser any more than he has to. It doesn't help the child, he says, to explain that this beloved adult is a criminal, a monster, or a sick person. "I try not to offer any more explanations than the child demands," he says. "The child will develop an answer that makes sense to the child."

In the long run, sexual abuse during childhood can lead to just about any kind of mental problem, including depression, alcohol or drug abuse, and anxiety disorders. Some, but not all abused children go on to become pedophiles themselves. Right away, abused kids may have trouble sleeping and eating. They may revert to thumb sucking and bed wetting. They may act out or withdraw. But to read a list like this can be misleading, Hord says, because all these things might be caused by something else.

According the American Psychological Association, there are clearer signs: Abused children may know more about sex than you have taught them, or they may have an "inappropriate" interest in sex for their age, which may include acting out sexually with others. (Experimenting with masturbation is normal, however.)

If a child tells you that he or she has been sexually abused -- although probably not in those words -- that's the clearest sign of all. Children rarely lie about it.

Keeping Wolves at Bay

Most kids who are molested know the perpetrator, so "don't take candy from strangers" doesn't always apply. You have to tell your kids that no adult should touch them -- or ask to be touched -- in any way that's confusing or scary. Teach children to say, "no," and to tell you immediately if it happens. You should also teach them that no adult should ever ask them to keep a touch or a kiss secret.

The Kidscape Charity for Children's Safety, in London, interviewed 91 pedophiles about their methods for choosing child victims. The researchers found that pedophiles are skilled at charming children into their trust, plying them with gifts, and taking them on fun outings. They "often target single-parent families where mothers might be especially grateful for help with looking after the children." Nearly one-half of the pedophiles the researchers spoke to met the children they molested through babysitting.

You should be suspicious of someone who seems overly interested in your kids, especially if they're always angling to be alone with them.

If you suspect that someone you know may be a pedophile, you can check your state's criminal records. The Safeguarding Our Children organization has a page of links to state sexual offender registries online: www.soc-um.org/register.html.

Despite the fact that most cases of sexual abuse involve an adult the child knows, kids are sometimes assaulted by strangers.

One thing you can tell your kids is never to get close to a car if someone stops and asks for directions, lest they be snatched. It's also important to teach them that they will not be punished for breaking a rule if someone tries to molest them while they're breaking it. According to Kidscape, "One child was walking in a park when told not to and was molested -- she was afraid to tell because she had broken the rule about being in the park."

Some pedophiles troll the Internet, so you should make sure you know what your kids are doing on the computer. Tell them never to meet privately with anyone they have met online and never to give out personal information, like where they live.

Children should also know what to do if they get lost. It's helpful to give them a prepaid calling card to use if this happens: They should memorize their phone number and address. Tell them to call the police if they can't find you or reach you on the phone, and never to accept a ride or wait alone with an adult they don't know. If you're coming to fetch them, tell them to wait in a store or restaurant -- someplace where there are plenty of people around.

(Top)

Council on Sex Offender Treatment - Treatment of Sex Offenders

Texas Department of State Health Services - July 6, 2005

http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/csot/csot_tbehaviors.shtm

Not all sex offenders exhibit all of the following characteristics, and the absence of a particular characteristic does not mean the individual is not a sex offender (English, 1996).

· Secrecy and dishonesty is a major component of sex offending behavior. Sex crimes flourish in silence and deception.

· Sex offenders typically have developed complicated and persistent psychological and social systems constructed to assist them in denying and minimizing the harm they inflict on others, and often they are very accomplished at presenting to others a façade designed to conceal the truth about themselves (English, 1996).

• Cognitive distortions allow the sex offender to justify, rationalize, and minimize the impact of their deviant behavior (i.e. "I was drunk", "We were in love", "She came on to me", "The child wanted it and I did not have the heart to say no").

• Sex offenders use thinking errors to engage in deviant sex. The following are some examples:

• Mr. Good Guy-"I wear a mask or false front". "I give the right answer".

• Poor me-"I am the victim of this unjust system". "Everyone is out to get me". Victim stance-"I am the one hurt".

• "I will convince others that I was more hurt than the victim".

• Power play-"It is my way or the highway". "I will dominate and control others".

• Entitlement- "The world owes me".

• Selfish-"I do not care for others". "I want what I want when I want it".

• Blaming- "I blame others so I can avoid responsibility for my actions".

• Minimizing- "I only fondled the child". "It wasn't intrinsically harmful".

• Hop Over-"I do not answer questions when I know the answer is unpleasant".

• Secretiveness-"I use secrecy to control others and continue being deviant"

• These three thinking errors, in combination, create the criminal triad.

· Sex offenders are highly manipulative and will triangulate/split those around them. The skills used to manipulate victims are employed to manipulate family members, friends, co-workers, supervision officers, treatment providers, and case managers.

· Grooming activities are not solely for potential victims. Offenders will groom parents to obtain access to children. Grooming is well-organized and can be short or long term.

· The longer a sex offender knows an individual the better they are at "zeroing in" their grooming ("I can read people like a book. I know what others need and I am available to help out".)

· The longer a sex offender is on supervision the higher the probability staff will lose their objectivity.

· Sex offenders are generally personable and seek to "befriend" those around them ("My smile is my entrée". "I `m like a salesman but I'm never off work".)

· Sex offenders will continually test boundaries (personal/professional space).

· Sex offenders exploit relationships and social norms to test boundaries.

· Sex offenders seek professions that allow them access to victims.

(Top)

by Ken Singer, LCSW

http://www.nomsv.org/articles/groom.html

Most offenders do not like to think or admit that they planned their offenses. The idea that you set up a situation to sexually assault a child or vulnerable adult may make you feel worse than you may already feel about yourself. However, it is vital that you recognize that the assault started in your mind before it became a reality.

The bad news about accepting that you planned or set up the assault before you carried it out may be that you have to drop the belief that "it just happened". The good news is that if you spend time thinking about assaulting before you actually do so, you have more time to stop yourself.

(A word or two here about the use of "assault", "abuse" and other terms that you may feel uncomfortable about. You may feel that what you did to your victim(s) was not "rape", "abuse", "assault" or some of the other words used in these articles. While you may believe that you were not forceful, physically hurt or threatened your victim, it is important that you not allow yourself to justify, minimize, rationalize or make excuses for what you did to someone else.

You really do not know what the impact of your behavior is on another person, especially in the long run. Offenders have described their behaviors as "loving", "gentle", "for his/her benefit", and other terms which may appear to be true on the surface, but will have detrimental consequences for the victim.

So, even if you don't believe that you "abused", "assaulted", "offended" or other terms, hold off on your need to deny the label for now.)

Setting Up or "Grooming" These terms are often used interchangeably, but they are similar. What they mean is that you had a conscious or underlying thought to become sexual with another person. If you were doing this with someone your own age, it might be called flirting. When you develop a friendship with a child, or engage him/her in physical contact that seems innocent at first, you are setting up that child for later sexual contact, abuse or assault.

Some of the ways that offenders set up their victims include:

• Paying attention to a child who appears emotionally needy

• Talking about sexual issues, showing adult magazines or films, letting the child know s/he can come to you for sexual information or concerns

• "Accidentally" or purposefully exposing yourself (coming out of the bath, wearing shorts that allow a view of the genitals, openly praising nudity as "normal", etc.)

• Giving gifts, money, taking the child places, providing alcohol or drugs

• Telling the child that you need to examine his/her body for some reason

• Physical contact such as wrestling, tickling, pats on the butt, etc.

• Intrusive questions about the child's sexual development, fantasies, masturbation habits, or giving the child more information about sex than is appropriate for the child's age or developmental level

• Bringing yourself down to the child's level of play (becoming the child's "buddy")

• Sharing inappropriate information about yourself or relationship problems, such as marital difficulties

• Not respecting the child's boundaries or privacy. This may be "rules" that bedroom or bathroom doors must be open, reading child's mail or diaries, going through their possessions, etc. It may also be verbal, such as intrusive questions about the child's activities or friends beyond what is appropriate for a parent to do. It may also be done by staring at the child or looking at his/her body in a way that makes him/her uncomfortable

There are other ways offenders "groom" a potential victim. While on the surface, these activities may seem innocent enough, they are often the prelude to a sexual contact with the child.

Since you have either crossed over the line from being a parent or friend of the child to assaulting him/her, (or are struggling to keep this from happening), it is important for you to become honest with yourself and with your therapist. Your honestly can reduce the likelihood of re-offending (or offending in the first place.) But remember, even when being honest, prevention of sexual offending requires a lot of soul-searching and hard work.

(Top)

http://www.netsafe.theoutfitgroup.co.nz/offenders/what_is_grooming.aspx

Grooming is when a person tries to `set up' and `prepare' another person to be the victim of sexual abuse. Although not all sexual-abuse is preceded by grooming, it is a very common and deceitful process, which can be used by strangers or by those known to the victim. The method can take quite a while (even months and years), and can be very subtle and sneaky. Victims of grooming often do not realise that they are being manipulated until after they have been sexually abused, and even then, some victims do not see how the grooming led to their abuse.

In the offline world, groomers use many techniques to prepare their victims, such as;

· giving inappropriate attention to children,

· giving gifts,

· manipulating a child through threats or coercion

· openly or accidentally exposing the victim to nudity and sexual material

· sexualising physical contact, such as inappropriate tickling and wrestling,

· having an inappropriate and intrusive interest into children's physical and sexual development,

· having inappropriate social boundaries (e.g., telling the potential victims about their own personal problems etc).

And other exploitative strategies the groomer can use and adapt to the individual child they have targeted.

What is online grooming?

Online grooming also involves a person trying to set up an abusive situation, however they use cyber-technologies, such as the Internet and mobile phones, to help them do this. Online groomers might find and choose their victims online, or might encourage an offline situation to go online (e.g., asking a child in a shopping centre for their email address, and then beginning to groom them online).

Click on one of the following links for further information about grooming:

• What do online groomers do?

• How do groomers find victims online?

• How is grooming different online?

• Myths and misunderstandings about online grooming.

• How to protect yourself against online grooming.

• How do you know if you are being groomed online?

• How do you know if someone is trying to groom a child online?

• What to do if you suspect that someone is trying to groom you

• What to do if you suspect that someone is trying to groom a child you know

• What to do if you think you might be grooming online

• What to do if you think someone you know might be grooming online

(Top)

By Paula Hook, Denver Post  

Denver Post - November 14, 2002

http://www.denverpost.com

Thursday, November 14, 2002 - A proposal by a local expert to treat perpetrators of sex crimes demands attention from state legislators and city officials - and, more importantly, from every parent and citizen of Colorado.

There are an estimated 3,000 registered sex offenders living in the Denver metro area who are on probation or parole. Experts who spoke recently at the Denver Public Library believe that number may be "the tip of the iceberg." They're urging that the state build a sex-offender research and containment facility to better deal with the problems of keeping such criminals from repeat offenses.

I am a survivor of chronic child sexual abuse. I became traumatized and therefore unable to do my job as an insurance adjuster after learning that three twice-convicted sex offenders had been living on our block for 13 months without anyone in the community knowing it.

I don't understand why we don't put - and keep - sex offenders in prison; or why, in Colorado, 65 percent of them are put on probation; or why, of those incarcerated, 95 percent of them are eventually paroled.

There was no parole officer there at 2:30 a.m. when I found a man peeping in my daughter's bedroom window. We filed a police report but, of course, by the time the police arrived, the offender was long gone. But from then on, I wasn't able to sleep or go to work.

According to a 1999 report published by the Colorado Sex Offender Management Board, our community had a right to know. Prior victims of sex crimes have a right to self-determination, the document says. But we were never informed that sex offenders were moving into our neighborhood.

Though I feel the legislature made a lot of progress last session on this issue, there is a long way to go before we can rest.

All sex offenders on parole are supposed to have no contact with children, but they do - and there are not enough probation officers to keep track of them.

Sex offenders who lived on our block sat in their windows and watched our children, our comings and our goings. It gave mothers the willies. Maybe we need a class-action lawsuit by victims to get the state to listen. Maybe we need to unseat some judges who just don't get it.

The true cost of child sexual abuse is currently being shouldered by the victims and by average citizens in ways they aren't aware of. This true cost shows up in disability payments, insurance premiums, job losses and poor educational performance. The U.S. Department of Justice's report, "Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look," published in 1996, estimates the cost of child sexual abuse to each victim at between $99,000 and $125,000. In 2002 dollars, that would be closer to $125,000 and $150,000. And the report had no way to calculate the costs of chronic victimization.

Sex offenders commit an average of 44 crimes per year, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections, at an estimated cost to victims of $5.5 million per offender, per year. Put 300 sex offenders in a containment facility and you could in theory save the public some $1.65 billion - minus the $10 million per year to build and run it.

And it would be a lot cheaper than a class-action lawsuit by victims. and dealing with massive health problems and legal fees.

In addition, because we know that victims of child sexual abuse are overrepresented among drug and alcohol abusers, prostitutes, those currently incarcerated and those needing excessive health care and psychiatric care, we could expect to save money over the long term on social services.

Currently, Erik Scott O'Connell, who was naked in the bed of a 9-year-old Centennial girl, may get more time in prison for burgling the house than for attempted sexual assault on a child. And he's free on bond.

The proposal for a sex-offender research and containment facility is the only reasonable solution. Protecting children from recidivist sex offenders is far more important than building convention hotels with $200 rooms and golf courses that we can't water.

Sex offenders may have to live somewhere - but that somewhere can't be next door to children whose parents aren't informed. That risks sabotaging children before they ever get a chance.

Paula Hook is the producer of "The Burning Cradle," a video on prevention of child sexual abuse.

(Top)

By LINDA VILLAROSA

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/03/health/psychology/03ABUS.html?pagewanted=2

I am a recovering child sexual abuser," said the lanky 71-year-old man. "For several years in the early 90's, I abused three of my granddaughters." As he spoke, the noisy room was stunned into silence. The man and his wife, from rural Vermont, were speaking in front of a group of about 100 teachers in Burlington.

"After each of the incidents, I felt guilty and hated myself," said the man, who also told of being sexually abused as a boy. "I vowed to stop, but I didn't. My stepdaughter confronting me is what finally stopped me."

The man and his wife, who do not use their real names when addressing groups in the workshops and asked that their names not be used to spare their grandchildren additional pain, are part of an unusual program sponsored by Stop It Now, a sexual abuse prevention group based in Haydenville, Mass. Instead of focusing exclusively on the victims of abuse, these programs also let abusers talk about what they did.The goal is not only to allow abusers to educate the public about sexual abuse, but also to rally adults - friends, family, neighbors, teachers, professionals and the abusers themselves - to act before abuse ever occurs. Never before, say those in the field, has a prevention program directly asked abusers to step forward. And rarely, they say, has a program asked the public at large to confront suspicious behavior in adults.

For the past two decades, nearly all-sexual abuse prevention programs have focused on children, rather than the molesters, experts say. Children, abused at a rate of 500,000 a year in this country, have been taught the difference between good touch and bad touch, instructed to say "no" if they are being violated and encouraged to get help. But the crisis in the Roman Catholic Church again highlights how difficult it is for children to come forward and confront the adults who are harming them.

"This approach marks a huge shift in the field," said Dr. Keith Kaufman, a professor and chairman of the department of psychology at Portland State University in Oregon. Dr. Kaufman is president of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, a nonprofit organization based in Beaverton, Ore., that two years ago began endorsing a prevention model that focuses on offenders."We have had a 20-year history of a singular approach to prevention with a focus on relying on kids to protect themselves from adults," Dr. Kaufman said. "This doesn't even make sense logically. Why do we think it's right to give children the huge responsibility of protecting themselves from sexual offenders?"For the first time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this fall has financed two state-based programs that focus on preventing adults from abusing children. Prevent Child Abuse Georgia, an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization, has just begun a three-year pilot program that will use a public awareness campaign to identify and educate potential sexual offenders.In New England, Massachusetts Citizens for Children has created a school-based curriculum that will include teaching teenagers how to understand and identify inappropriate sexual feelings they have toward younger children.

These projects and others join the work of Stop It Now, which pioneered prevention programs like these in the early 1990's. In 1995, the organization instituted a campaign in Vermont, using print, billboard and public service announcements. For instance, one television public service announcement featured the voice of a mother who had sought treatment for her 10-year-old son after she saw him put his hands down the pants of a 5-year-old girl.Another, using actors to depict a real case, described how a sister confronted her brother, suspecting that he was having sexual feelings toward their young niece. People were encouraged to call the organization's toll-free number for information, treatment referrals or simply to talk.Comparing knowledge before and four years after the campaign, a Vermont telephone survey revealed a 40 percent increase in the number of people who could define sexual abuse, a 10 percent increase in respondents who could identify at least one warning sign and a 6 percent increase in the number who conceded that abusers were likely to live in their neighborhoods.

Since then, Stop It Now has created similar programs in Philadelphia, England and Ireland and will begin a project in seven counties in Minnesota next year.

Stop It Now's approach is modeled after other public health campaigns, like the one created by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "I thought about the shift we have seen in behaviors like drunk driving and smoking," said Fran Henry, the founder and director of Stop It Now.

"People are willing to confront and challenge people from getting behind the wheel, because they've heard the message `friends don't let friends drive drunk,' " Ms. Henry said. "That clicked for me. Why couldn't we use those principles to both understand child sexual abuse and get adults to hold other adults accountable for their inappropriate behavior?"

Ms. Henry, 53, also brought her personal experiences to her work. She was sexually abused by her father from age 12 to 16. "I tried to get my father to stop, but wasn't able to until I was older," she said. "As a young teenager, I could never disclose what was going on if I knew my father would go to jail. My goal is to try and protect kids, by getting adults to take action, so that what happened to me never happens to another child."

Among the most controversial aspects of Stop It Now's work have been the two dozen workshops that spotlight offenders like the Vermont grandfather.

Nick, a 58-year-old cook at a New England university, has taken part in six or seven Stop It Now workshops. He was arrested 13 years ago, after admitting that he had molested three of his daughters and two of their childhood friends. He spent a year in prison and many more in treatment. Nick, who uses only his first name in workshops and agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his surname be withheld, said he spoke to groups because it was his responsibility "to participate in the process that identifies and stops other perpetrators of inappropriate sexual behavior."

"If I can help offenders see that what they are doing is wrong, and that there is a way to change, then I have served as a good example," Nick said.Some find this approach ineffective, taking attention and resources away from those who have been abused and directing it toward those who have preyed on children. Stop It Now has even been accused of being an "amnesty program" for offenders.

Judy Little, executive director of Voices in Action, a nonprofit organization for victims of child sexual abuse outside Cincinnati, says that though offenders have a responsibility to prevent abuse, listening to them is difficult.

"The professional and humanitarian in me believes that if we are ever to stop this cycle, we have to help perpetrators heal and allow those that are healed to take part in prevention," said Ms. Little, who was abused as a child. "But part of me is still hurting inside from the abuse that I suffered, so I don't care what they have to say. I don't want to hear the empty excuses for their behavior."

Results from the Stop It Now telephone survey in Vermont found that only 66 percent of respondents would take direct action if they suspected abuse, and the number dropped to 43 percent if the abuser was someone they knew.

Stop It Now's help lines in Vermont and Philadelphia have taken 2,009 calls since 1995, 352 from people who identified themselves as abusers or someone at risk for abusing. Another 1,299 calls were from adults who knew an abuser or someone at risk for abusing.

Because many state laws require all professionals to report child sexual abuse to the authorities, callers generally do not leave their names. But the professionals can give them referrals and other information anonymously.

It is unclear how many abusers or family members have called to seek treatment, but most experts guess the number is few.  "Stop It Now is pushing the envelope, but it is still naïve to believe that offenders and their families will come forward in droves, given the denial around sexual abuse," said Gail Burns-Smith, executive director of Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services in East Hartford, and chairwoman of the board of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence.

"Offenders have distorted thinking about the crimes they are committing against someone," she continued. "They don't see that they are doing harm to their victims. I'd say that, at best, this approach is only a hopeful solution."

Even Nick doubts that hearing a recovering offender speak would have stopped him from abusing or compelled him to stop. "I'm not sure if hearing someone like myself would have changed my behavior," Nick said.

"On one level I knew what I was doing was absolutely unacceptable. But while I was perpetrating, I disassociated myself. I was in denial."

"Looking back," he added, "it doesn't make sense how my daughters had become sexual objects to me. It was a force I don't fully understand. What I do know is that even as I was offending, I didn't want to be doing what I was doing."

Wayne Bowers of Lansing, Mich., who has twice been convicted of "indecent liberties with a child" for sexually abusing boys on the baseball team he coached, said that perpetrator-prevention might have helped him change.

"While I was offending I was out of control, but I was also sick and tired and looking for help," said Mr. Bowers, 57, who is the director of the Sex Abuse Treatment Alliance, an advocacy and education group.

"I was scared to death and wanted to talk to someone, but I had no idea who," Mr. Bowers said. "If there had been a help line, I would have called it. I served my time, I got treatment and I haven't victimized anyone for 20 years. I have an attraction to adolescent boys, and there isn't any way that I can totally eliminate those feelings. But I've found a way to keep myself in control. There is hope."

(Top)

By DANIEL BERGNER

New York Times - January 23, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/magazine/23PEDO.html

Not long ago, Roy became a type of monster. The transformation took a year and a half, and now, one morning each week, he sits in a room of similar cases. The windowless room is plain, with a blue industrial carpet, a circle of brown cushioned office chairs, a blackboard, a pair of unused conference tables pushed to the rear wall and a faint hum from the air ducts. To reach it from the waiting area -- on the second floor of a probation building in Connecticut -- Roy and the other men walk down a series of corridors and around a series of turns that feel like a path through a maze. The room is wedged in a back corner. ''No one,'' a probation officer said, ''likes to think about what's back there.''

Roy wonders constantly how he wound up in this place, in the circle of 10 or 12 chairs, a circle of child molesters. His story begins on the beach and ends on the Internet. It seems to him that he was, only recently, a normal man, about 40, running a crew of technicians, repairing elaborate, computerized telecommunications equipment for Wall Street trading firms and in his off hours leading a wedding band, singing Frank Sinatra and Barry White at the Plaza. For a hobby, he flew kites -- kites bigger than most living rooms, brilliantly striped, with rippling streamers and ''space socks'' trailing more than a hundred feet behind, kites that could perform ballets when he held the lines. He recalls no history of longing for young girls. He had no criminal record of any kind. But then one summer, on vacation, his second wife pointed out her 11-year-old daughter's body. Roy and his wife were standing on the sand; his stepdaughter and her best friend played several yards in front of them at the edge of the surf. ''Look at those girls,'' Roy remembers his wife saying. ''They're changing already. You can see their bodies changing.''

Roy has a soft, smooth face and an easy, engaging smile. (At his request, I've shielded his identity by using a nickname some of his former band members gave him.) Now in his mid-40's, he's round in the middle and broad in the shoulders; there's something bearish about him, but in a way that's more pandalike and cheerful than threatening. Nearby along the circle sits an elderly man with a graceful wave of white hair combed back from his forehead. There's a well-scrubbed blue-eyed man in his mid-30's, wearing a button-down shirt with a pleasant check of pale blue. Like the rest, they're here by court mandate for group counseling as part of their probation. Most, including Roy, have served time in jail or prison, from a few weeks to several years. The man with the wave of white hair touched the vagina of his grandniece; he kissed her chest and had her hold his penis. This happened repeatedly when the girl was between 7 and 9 years old. As an adult, the man in the checked shirt performed oral sex on his 11-year-old brother and later took his 6-year-old daughter to a motel room along with his brother, who was by then 16. Living out a fantasy he'd had for months, he persuaded them both to undress and urged his brother to have sex with his daughter, only desisting, only waking from the trance of his desire -- ''seconds away from something really, really bad happening,'' he has told me -- when his brother began to cry.

''What possessed me?'' Roy asks in one form or another in the group sessions that I've been observing for close to a year, in conversation with me and, it is clear, alone with himself. It's a question that seems to churn through the thinking of most of the men. The one who longed to watch his brother and daughter, and who is a published poet, has talked to me about feeling like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In group one morning, another convict made reference to ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Heinz.''

How does a man enter the realm of the monstrous? How broad or thin is the border between the normal and that realm? ''Could anybody end up getting into this mess?'' Roy once asked me plaintively.

Focus your awareness on your feet,'' Patrick Liddle, the group's therapist, its leader, instructs the men at the start of many sessions. They sit with their hands on their thighs, their eyes closed, as he teaches them a relaxation technique. ''Now allow your awareness to move up to the center of your chest.'' He speaks in a soothing monotone, the voice he maintains with them always no matter how disquieted their crimes make him feel. Part of his job is to give them methods to keep their lives under control, to keep themselves from molesting again. This technique is one way. ''Center your attention on the steady beating of your heart.'' He wears fashionably tailored suits and shoes polished to a low gloss. The clothes are part of the program. Liddle's boss sets the dress code for his staff, an attempt to confer value on those in treatment, men who could hardly have fallen lower. ''Picture in your mind a large open field covered in deep grass up to your waist.'' Roy and the others sit perfectly still. Their fingers curl gently. Their jaws are slack; their mouths, slightly open. They seem almost to be sleeping, and like sleeping men anywhere, they look almost like children. ''Now slowly open your eyes.''

They return from the field of tall grass to the faces of the other men. Liddle sometimes asks them for introductions, though the faces stay mostly the same. They go around the circle. ''I was convicted of two counts of sexual assault four and three counts of risk of injury to a minor and enticing a minor over the Internet,'' Roy began during a session months ago. He managed not to mumble. Facing up to what he has done, he knows, is a requirement for graduating from treatment. And this might lead, he hopes, to a judge's reducing his term of probation. The treatment theory is basic: to acknowledge both his crime and the anarchy of lust that lies within him is the first step toward his finding self-control. So the ability to confront himself -- and to be candid with Liddle about his sexual yearnings -- is a requirement, too, if he wants to do anything outside the bounds of his probation restrictions: visit his parents over the state line in New York or go to a bowling alley or a movie or a family function, anyplace where he might come in contact with children under 16. Any family gathering he attends must be adults only; he has to leave right away if kids show up. The group leaders and probation officers work in tandem, evaluating how well they can trust the men, and the therapists can be at least as wary as the probation officers. (In Connecticut, counseling is ordered for almost all sex offenders on probation, and the state-financed organization Liddle works for, the Center for the Treatment of Problem Sexual Behavior, handles nearly all of it.) Together, Liddle and Roy's probation officer set the limits on his life.

''I was sentenced,'' Roy continued with his introduction, ''to 20 years suspended after 30 days, with 35 years probation. My offense behaviors I engaged in were touching my wife's daughter and her best friend sexually, touching them through their clothing between their legs, around their waist, moving my hand into the top of their waistband. I also moved my hand under their shorts up to their panty lines. I used games that were called 'Chase' and 'Spider' to manipulate them into feeling safe with me.'' His voice quieted as he hurried on toward the end, toward the part of his story that holds echoes of recent, well-publicized cases -- like that of John Dexter, the headmaster for a quarter-century at the Trevor Day School in Manhattan, until his arrest in 2003 and guilty plea last year -- of apparently ordinary men going online to seek out sexual conversations and often to arrange to have sex with adolescents, with children.

With more detail than he gives in group, Roy has told his story as he and I have sat together at his home and at his job. He is still a supervisor at the telecommunications repair company. In a bland suburban building just off a highway, at worktables in vast, orderly rooms, he and his team lean over high-tech consoles with exposed intricate wiring and microprocessors with multicolored flashing diodes. They fix circuitry or, if he deems it necessary, redesign it. With the permission of Liddle and the probation department, Roy is allowed to work around computers as long as he never goes online outside the watch of a colleague. Everyone at his job is aware of his crime. He has made a point of answering everyone's questions. The company's owner, who has known Roy for five years, testified on his behalf at his sentencing. ''You're talking about a person I know,'' the owner said to me. ''If you told me about a stranger I would write them off, I wouldn't talk to them, I wouldn't see them -- if they did one-tenth of what he did.'' At Roy's job, the element of personal forgiveness goes beyond employment. As I drove with him to work after one of my first sessions with the group, he said that he was engaged to be married again -- to a bookkeeper at the company, a colleague since before his offense.

When Roy has spoken with me about his crime at the well-burnished kitchen table in his small, neatly kept wooden house or in an empty conference room across from the repair stations at work, he starts with the words of his stepdaughter's mother at the beach. No matter how common -- ''Look at my daughter, how pretty she's going to be when she grows up; I'm going to have problems with her when she grows up''- they have a serpentlike quality as he tries to sort out what followed. They were ''the first trigger,'' he has said. Before, he doesn't think he saw his stepdaughter in any erotic way. He had known her and her older brother from the time they were born; he had been with their mother since they were around 4 and 6. (He has no kids of his own.) The children lived with their father, an executive, a man Roy grew up with. But they spent a fair amount of time at the home Roy shared with their mother, and after that vacation at the shore, the games Roy played with his stepdaughter, and frequently with her best friend, grew sexualized -- at some level -- in his mind.

During ''Chase,'' they would turn off most of the lights. Often they plugged in a strobe light from his band equipment or a lamp that cast the shapes of moons on the walls, in blues and yellows and greens. His marriage, at that point, was falling apart. Sometimes his wife was home, having shut herself in their bedroom for the evening. Sometimes she was out on her own. He raced after the girls through the house, through the colored beams. In ''Spider,'' each player had to sit motionless; if you moved at all you got pinched. The touching occurred during the games. The confessional -- and dutiful -- introduction Roy delivers to the group implies that the touching was blatantly, consciously sexual on his part, but though he is obsessively introspective about all that took place, he can't seem to figure out whether this is true.

He remembered, with me, his anger at his wife, the fleeting thought that if she was going to leave him taking care of her kids, then he was ''going to get something out of this, too.'' Yet he recalled that there was no real sexual intent at that stage, not even any dalliance with fantasy, that often he didn't want to deal with the girls and their demands that he try to catch them; he didn't want to be bothered. ''I don't think I ever touched them in their private areas,'' he said, making a distinction between those areas and the edges of underwear. ''Grabbing them, pulling them, knocking them down. Them jumping on me. It was still just teasing and playing with them. It wasn't like I wanted to have sex with them. Is there a difference?'' How much of the touching was errant, inadvertent, amid playful mauling? To what degree do normal games of chase played with 11- or 12-year-old girls hold an erotic element? How far beyond the normal did things go, at that stage? These kinds of questions reel through his memories. He can't settle on single answers. ''But was there sexuality behind it?'' he asked once while we talked. He replied immediately, ''Yes.''

The erotic became explicit, Roy said, when they were in separate rooms, at separate computers. The layout of the house mirrored the one he owns now, many towns away. There was a series of rooms along a narrow hall. The basement was crowded with his guitars and keyboards and recording equipment. His stepdaughter was 12 -- though he doesn't face up to reality easily on this point. The first few times he came to this part of his story, he told me that she was by then 14, maybe 13. During his introductions in group, he doesn't mention how old she was; for a short while I didn't know her true age. When I read an old article from a local newspaper about the case and told him that it put her age at 12, he insisted that the article was mistaken. Only after I had asked him repeatedly did he call me one morning: he had just phoned his sister and ''found out'' that the newspaper was right.

When she was 12, then, one evening she sent him an instant message. She asked what he was doing. He was in his office; she was in her bedroom down the hall. He told her he was working on band contracts. She wrote that she was bored, that none of her friends were online. He responded that her brother had been giving their mother trouble, that she was completely different, that she was ''a really good little girl.'' According to Roy, ''she came right back to me and said: 'Roy, you don't know me. I'm not a good girl, I'm a bad girl.'''

She wouldn't tell him what she meant, but he had been smitten with what he had seen as the wild streak in her mother, back when she had left her husband for Roy, and now, right away, his imagination ran along sexual lines. ''Oh, God, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree,'' he recalls thinking; he told me, regarding the effect of that instant-message exchange with his stepdaughter: ''You couldn't have drawn me in any faster. I still remember it. Not excited as arousal excited, but excited as I gotta know more. Major adrenaline rush. I felt myself go flush. I was already overloaded. I finished the contracts I was doing, but I got off the computer right after that, and I went immediately downstairs and started playing. That's what I always do when something's really got me; I need to shut it off. I had to shut that off at that moment. I had to calm it down. Put my headphones on. Had my guitar. I have this jazz routine I like doing. I do a jazz version of 'Blue Skies.' 'Polka Dots and Moonbeams' -- it's a slow jazz tune. I have about an hour's worth of music, and I just have to concentrate on the chord changes and the progressions, and it clears my mind. The only problem is,'' he raised his voice, almost shouting to me across the kitchen table, ''it didn't help.''

Soon he loaded his computer with a software program that would allow him, because of the way his and his stepdaughter's computers were interlinked, to monitor her online conversations. That day, alone in the house, he stepped back and forth along the hall, between rooms, between PC's, making sure his system worked, that she wouldn't be able to detect his lurking. And the next time she came over and logged on and started chatting with her best friend (the same girl he had chased through the house), their words ran across his screen.

His stepdaughter's romantic explorations, confided to her friend, became his pornography. Each time he monitored her conversations (about 7 to 10 times over several months, he thinks), he would have a soda and popcorn and ''put my feet up on the desk, and I watched this thing unfold. 'Cause you have to understand, it's not something I would masturbate to while she was on the Internet. It would almost be like an aftermath of it. 'Cause it had your mind so cranked you had to have some relief. At any point I thought this girl was going to have sex with this boy. That's how intense this was.''

He didn't worry that she would walk down the hall and find him reading her words. ''Impossible, because my computer didn't face the door, and it would have taken a split second to shut it off, literally,'' he said. ''Nobody could catch me, nobody. I'm too good. I'm too good with computers, trust me. I set up that PC so that when I shut the computer off everything was erased. So there was no trackable record on those PC's. It was wrong. So wrong. I put myself in such a bad situation, and I just fell into it. I guess that's how a drug addict gets. Once you've fallen into that, and you've gone in, it's almost like that's it: now you've got it in your head, and it's not going to go away.''

The direct instant-message exchange between him and his stepdaughter continued every so often during the period of his monitoring. ''She would sign on and say something to me, and that's when the conversation started. And I would flip it. She didn't start it sexually. I always flipped it. Just so you know. She didn't do it. She was a kid.''

He would ask her to ''show me something.'' She would refuse. He asked her to have sex with him. She told him no. He wrote to her, in one of their final Internet conversations, months before her 13th birthday, that he was going to step out of his office and into the kitchen to get a soda. He wrote that if she wanted to see what he wished to do with her, she should walk into his office and click on a window that would be on his screen. She left her computer and walked to his. When the window opened, a video showed ''a man rubbing his penis on a girl's vagina that's been shaved,'' he said. A moment later, they passed in the hall. He remembers her calling him ''disgusting'' and each of them going quickly back to their own PC's. Petrified that she would report him, he begged her over the Internet to meet him on the stairs to the basement music room, promising that he would stay at the bottom. He pled his apology as she sat at the top of the stairs. Then she was gone.

Soon afterward, I learned recently from her father, she told her stepmother for the first time about Roy's ongoing solicitations. (Her father had just left on a business trip.) Her stepmother then sent her to Roy's house so that, assuming he would proposition her yet again, she could print out his words for evidence. She did. He was swiftly arrested. It had been about a year and a half since that trip to the beach. In court, he pled under the Alford Doctrine -- a legal acknowledgment that the evidence against him was sufficient to prove his guilt -- to the charges he lists each time he gives his introduction. He has been in treatment now for around 17 months. ''I'm so embarrassed,'' he said to me at the kitchen table. ''I can't believe I did this. You know, I just don't know how I got myself there, I really don't. It makes me sick.''

Roy looks that way -- ill, aghast, mortified -- whenever he finishes his account. His full cheeks appear almost gaunt, as though he has just emerged, barely, from the siege of some terrible infection. To see him like this is to feel that he would never allow himself to come anywhere close to repeating his crime. It is to understand what the owner of the telecommunications repair company -- where Roy's existence can seem so ordinary as he goes about his work -- once told me about his wife's opinion of Roy: their own children are grown, but she would have him in their house even with kids around. ''That,'' the owner said, ''is the confidence that he gives you.''

Yet to think back over Roy's shadings of his stepdaughter's age and to hear his explanation that he wasn't lying to me but somehow no longer knew that she had been 12 is to feel less confident. Whether he has tried to deceive me or himself, this is exactly the kind of evasion, the kind of diminishment of hard truth, that would worry Liddle; it's a sign that Roy may not be capable of self-confrontation and self-control. And then I discovered, in a statement his stepdaughter made to the police, that some of the troubling touches, through clothes, began when she was in second grade. To have heard his consistent denials about this, his certainty that back then there had been only innocent games, is not only to wonder if she has imposed the taint of recent events on earlier moments but also to wonder if anything Roy says can be believed. And then when I learned, from the transcript of his sentencing hearing, that he used Freekypeephole as his Internet screen name, I could see him, simply, as a dangerous creep -- except that when I asked him about this, he recited the lyrics of a disco song he wrote and recorded back in the late 70's, a song called ''Freaky People,'' about the drug use he observed at Studio 54. (His father was an alcoholic, and Roy has never been much for drugs or alcohol.) He recounted that the song got some airtime on a major radio station, that because of this he wanted ''Freaky People'' as his screen name, that it was already taken, and that his server supplied the alternative, Freekypeephole, which he accepted well before his crime as a joke. My sense of Roy shifts back and forth ceaselessly, from perceptions of basic normality to those of extreme aberrance, from guarded trust to deep unease. But one constant is the reverberation of his words: ''I just don't know how I got myself there.''

How did he get there? What are the causes of child sexual molestation, which is committed against perhaps 20 percent of girls and 5 to 10 percent of boys under the age of consent in the United States, according to David Finkelhor, the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. (Finkelhor, who has examined the studies extensively, added that the numbers range widely from 10 to 40 percent for girls and 2 to 15 percent for boys, depending on definitions and methods. The victims are preadolescents about as frequently as they are older. Most are abused by someone they know, often by a member of their family.) What parts are played by biology, by an abuser's own childhood, by aspects of isolation in his (for males make up around 90 percent of offenders) current life -- or by the powerful arrival of the Internet into the world of Eros? Calling psychiatrists and psychologists, researchers and clinicians, who have been working in the field for decades and asking about origins and explanations, I have heard in response regret and laughter. The laughter came from Dr. Martin Kafka, senior clinical associate in psychiatry at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., where he studies and treats sexual disorders. ''I'll give you a quick answer,'' he said, cutting me off at the word ''causes.'' ''We