Reply #70: Huge statistical and data gathering flaws in those averages, though.

[politicat]

(on the average) commit between 100 and 200 offenses before they are caught.

One thing about sexual offenders: they are usually liars. Compulsive lying goes with sociopathies and psychopathies, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, grandiose personality disorder... and sexual offenders usually have something other than philiae going on in their mental states. Compulsive lying and exaggeration becomes a way of life for them. (Usually neurosis, not psychosis. The 4% number only applies to severe mental illness of the schizoid, bi-polar and similar, not to personality disorders and conduct disorders.)

So the only way we know about those average 100 incidents is that they self-confess. A colleague of mine in grad school was working with sexual offenders at Florence in AZ (State prison) doing data collection and verification. His final report basically said that for every 4 confessions he was given (and usually quite freely, they like to talk and tell their tales and hope to shock the shrink) 1 could be traced to a verifiable person, and only 2 of 5 of those that could be traced turned up anything even remotely related to the story given by the offender. My colleague was of the opinion that most sexual offenders make shit up to entertain themselves, rather than using false names and details to obfuscate and prevent further sentencing. (He worked with several Life No Possibilities; they had no incentive to protect themselves.) Some states use polygraphs to weed these jokers out, but polygraphs are EASY to corrupt, and thus, about as reliable as a Yugo.

Second: There are a lot of things that get classified as sex offenses, and that people have to go to counseling for. If you haven't seen "The Cucumber Incident" on Sundance, try to find it. It's a documentary about several women who took it upon themselves to punish a guy for molesting. All of them are now registered sex offenders, required to go to counseling, and write down their sexual fantasies and acts. In several cases, the women have made up their journal entries because the therapists refuse to believe that they don't have deviant sexual fantasies. (Considering that I'm quite normal, and have almost no time to have anything like a fantasy, because I'm BUSY, I'd drive a sex offender therapist crazy. Fantasy requires leisure time... :eyes: ) Since I know that other states use these fantasy and journal books as data collection to "prove" that sex offenders are more prevalent and capable of staying out of the law's reach.... It's just not reliable evidence. Self-reporting nearly never is.

I'm not in favor of the laws. For one, I don't think the laws are about notification, but about vigilantism. It may be social and economic vigilantism rather than physical (depriving someone of the right to get on with zer life after having fulfilled zer sentence) but it's still mean-spirited and unforgiving. It's Old Testament, early state morality rather than an evolved morality.

Second, They encourage complacency. As Ms. Toad said, it's not the ones you know about, it's the ones you don't that are the danger. And since something like 70% of all sexual crimes against children (and 95% of all abuse) comes from WITHIN the family, looking outside for sexual predators is stupid. If your daughter's going to be molested, it is far more likely to be your nephew or your brother than the weird guy three blocks over. A girl is most at risk from her step-father, her father, her uncles, her brothers and her male cousins. No sex offender law is going to protect her from them.

Third, (and this is the point where I get hammered, flamed and beaten bloody, though I am a molestation survivor and technically a victim of statutory rape), there's some serious work going into the thought that we treat victims of sexual assault and offenses in a fashion that undermines their ability to recover effectively, and that in SOME cases, (by no means all) the prosecution and therapeutic settings that both perpetrator and victim go through are more damaging than the acts themselves. This is especially true in cases of stat. rape and adolescent homosexuality. For many gay kids, (and I was one) there is no one out or comfortable out within one's own age group to date and have experiences similar to what the other, straight kids are having. In my tiny high school town of 6,000, the only even marginally out lesbian was a woman at least twice my age. Had we been caught, she would have done prison time, but *I* was the aggressor. And at 16 and 17, I did know enough to pursue and neither of us feel guilty about it. (We're still pen friends, though she was bright enough to move out of that hole.)

When it comes to treating a five year old, I'm pretty cautious: take care of the physical damage, if any, work on any abuse-related issues that are based in pain and/or secrecy/trust, but take a watchful waiting stance on the sexual activity. Sometimes the therapist can cause more damage to a child when the sexual and social aspects of sexual abuse are presented to a child than the actual abuse did... and I'm not sure I'm entirely behind this yet, but there are researchers who are studying to find out IF sexual abuse must necessarily cause damage to every child. I can see situations where it wouldn't, and if it doesn't cause damage, then don't bloody prosecute. (No, I'm not advocating pedophilia and if that's what you read, then you're not getting it. What I'm saying is that the legal and therapeutic systems should do no more harm to the victim/survivor than did the perpetrator/offender.)

My several cents....

Pcat



(Stats from: Kilpatrick, D., Edmonds, C., & Seymour, A. (1992). Rape in America: A Report to the Nation. Charleston: National Victim Center and Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Medical University of South Carolina, 1.; Tjaden, P., Thoennes, N. (1998). Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3.)