Why Child Molesters Should Never Walk the Street Again - Essay Example

Why Child Molesters Should Never Walk the Street Again Fear is the natural human emotion, the one that gives men the opportunity to retrieve when they feel they are in danger and that keeps people from the unreasonable actions. But it's well known that when fear becomes constant it ruins the human's personality, and deprives him/her of the chance for happy living. It's obvious, that for people who have children, fear for their descendants is one of the worst emotions they can feel. For most parents their child is the most valuable creature they have in their life. Being blood and flesh from their parents, totally dependant from them at their birth, children are the creatures that call for protection and love. No wonder that the emergence of a person, who can heart the child, abuse it mentally, physically or psychologically is one of the worst parents' fears. The scientists, psychologists, social workers and medical workers express various opinions on the punishment, which should be laid on child molesters. They offer the variety of alternatives, beginning from psychological treatment and ending with paroling and chemical castration. But the recent experience shows that all of those methods are insufficient, as they do not influence the rate of repeated crimes after the molesters are let out. The thing is that pedophilia is a sexual disorder which's very hard to treat, and Zigmund Freud emphasized it was incurable. The only way to indemnify our children from those people is to lock them somewhere, for not to le them see the objects of their lust. Unfortunately, in the past few decades the amount of those, who see children as the sexual objects, has considerably increased. The numbers given by different institutions vary a lot, but it's still seen that the amount of children molested is far greater than any ordinary citizen can imagine. The official data of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was that the amount of the young molestation victims equaled 138,000 in 1986. (The case for castration, part 2 - as punishment for child molesting. Washington Monthly, 1994). Katy Butler says in her article Beyond the Bogeyman in Psychotherapy Networker, that: "The Social Organization of Sexuality--the landmark 1994 study of American sexual practices spearheaded by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and University of Chicago professor Edward Laumann--found that 17 percent of its adult female informants and 12 percent of its male informants said they'd been touched sexually (90 percent genitally) by at least one adult before they turned 14." It means that at least 23.8 million adult American women and 16.7 million men were sexually abused as children. Karen Crummy in her article in Boston Herald says that the study conducted in May 2000 proved that over half of the sexual assault crimes are against children, and the majority of the wrongdoers are the members of the kid's family or people close to the family Lets compare this number to that of the registered child molesters. For example, in Idaho there were 2,562 registered sex offenders in 2005. (Worst Molesters Unsupervised. After prison, Idaho's violent sex, Spokesman Review, The (Spokane), 2005). Even if we presume that one molester is capable of hurting dozens of children throughout his lifetime, the difference in number still shows us that only a small part of child molesters are caught and registered. One of the most terrible things is that this type of crime is rarely reported to police. The thing is that according to the statistical data given earlier, most sexual crimes against children are committed inside the family. The other members often choose not to let anyone know about the molestation and sexual abuse which's happening inside the family, as they are afraid of public attention and disgrace. It often happens in such families that the child is blamed for the things that happen with him or her, like in the case that was investigated in Milwaukee in 1999. The 13-year old girl was assaulted by her step-father, but when he was let out on bail it was she who was sent out of home to live with another relative, as the molester was forbidden to see his victim. A man returned home, to where his wife, the girl's mother together with their mutual child awaited him. " The child has been further victimized by her family, who have told her she is to blame," Assistant District Attorney Holly Bunch said. "She's the one who is out of the house, not the defendant. The victim's mother has chosen him over her daughter." The jurists say that molesting, especially in case children are the victims, is one of the hardest crimes to prove. The prosecutors often fail to prove molestation due to the lack of physical evidence. The only things the court usually has to lean upon are the evidence of the victim, which are often bizarre and muddled, as the psychic of the child supersedes the memories about the traumatizing experience. One more significant factor is that the atmosphere of the court is also traumatizing for the child, and in most cases the parent is not allowed to sit near the child who's witnessing. Thus the child molesters often manage to get off light and are let out to our streets where they can search for new victims. It is also that some judges and law-makers have their own opinions about the seriousness of the molesting and sexual assaults crimes against children. Lots of them see chil molesting as something not very important or dangerous, thus still there are stated were the punishment for molesting crimes, and sexual assaults aganst children are punished very lightly. According to statistics provided by Karen Crummy's article Prey State; Mass. judges often lenient with child molesters Almost 20 percent of all people convicted of raping a child in 1999 were never sentenced to one day of jail or prison time. Over 30 percent of those convicted of indecent assault and battery against a child, walked away - free. 60 percent of perpetrators convicted of assault and battery and injuring a child got probation. 100 percent of all those convicted of assault with intent to rape a child, were never sent to jail. For example, the minimal prison sentence for aggravated rape in Massachusetts in 2000 equaled 11 years, while if a person brutally raped a child he could get away with a minimum of 6 years of staying in prison. A person who was convicted of second time adult rape got seven years more than the assaulter who raped a child second time. For those, who had assaulted an adult with the intention to rape him or her, the sentence was 3 to 5 years in prison, but those who tried to rape a child served no time. The origins of this kind of attitude are incomprehensible for most of the ordinary people, as our Constitution says that all of the U.S citizens have equal rights. Over the decades the psychologists tried to find out what make some people choose children as the sexual objects. The author of the article Settling the Child Molesters in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (2003) claims that "some sexual predilections -- and pedophilia is one of them -- are everpresent." This viewpoint seems to be the sound one, as it's known that in spite of all of the treatment the offenders get, the rate of the re-offence doesn't lower. The attraction to kids is a sexual disorder, the one that is still incurable in our times, at least the serious cases of it. Child molesters are simply the deranged individuals who cannot control their sexual emotions towards children. They have the normal sexual urge, but it is the object of this urge which is not normal. Despite of all the measures taken for to help them change this object, or to limit their access to children, the pedophiles will make everything they can for to get the contact with children. Every crime leads the punishment after it, and, regardless of the fact, that in some U.S states the punishment is too light, sooner or later the child molesters and assaulters have to be let out of prison, at least so our laws and norms say. Child molesters are not the exception for that rule. But it's obvious that the years spent in prison do not cure them from their sexual disorder. Moreover, the prison isolates them from the possibilities to satisfy their sexual urge in a socially acceptable way, thus after being let out of it child molesters are very likely to search for new victims immediately. Understanding that the government created the rehabilitation program for the sex offenders they pass both when they are in prison and after leaving it. The job of a counselor in a sex offender program requires the specific skills not all the counselors possess and create numerous problems. Working with the imprisoned sex offenders is one of the most complicated kinds of the Counselor's job, as there are many problems that appear immediately after the treatment program starts. Alec P. Spencer, the author of the Working with Sex Offenders in Prisons and Through Release to the Community: A Handbook listed in the first chapter some of the problems the staff from the prisons, where this program was introduced faced. Among them were: 1. Staff involved in the program became alienated from each other 2. Real and imagined breaches of confidentiality were used to undermine the project by those, who were not very keen on it. 3. Uninvolved staff became very negative and either actively got in the way or were unable to offer appropriate support Besides there appeared lots of other problems in the area of staff-prisoner relationships. Thus we can conclude that the counselor has to possess comprehensive and full knowledge in the area of group work and interpersonal relationship. The counselor also has to learn about the category of clients she is going to work with. Dennis M. Doren in his book Evaluating Sex Offenders writes that at the first sight those are people who do not differ from the ordinary citizens; it is often unbelievable that they could commit crimes. But, in the same time, those people are often very intelligent and highly manipulative; they try to apply the techniques they used on their victim on the counselors and the prison staff. Thus the counselor has to remember about this fact for not to let the client manipulate him/her as it would diminish the effects of therapy. For example in Britain the Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP) exists, which "was launched nationwide in 1991 as part of an integrated strategy for dealing with sex offenders." (The sad truth about child molesters, New Statesman, 2003 ). This program provides for the alongside treatment of the pedophiles and rapists for few hours five days a week. There they are taught to see the behavior from their victims' viewpoint and to sympathize with their victims. The psychologists also try to plant the thoughts in them that regardless of the social impropriety of their behavior, their actions often hurt their victims badly, both psychologically and physically, and may even ruin their future lives. Another example of the program for working with various types of sex offenders including pedophiles is the program developed in Canadian Nova Scotia Sexual Behavior Clinic The specialists from the Nova Scotia Sexual Behavior Clinic thought that the program had to: reduce the offender's denial and minimization of the offence, change the cognitive distortions relevant to the aberrant behavior, increase victim empathy, modify deviant sexual preferences, improve problem-solving and coping skills, improve social and communication skills, construct a relapse-prevention plan. (1990) The specialists who work as a counselors with this kind of criminals say that those people are actually curable, but they need to put a considerable amount of time, effort and will to do it. Without it, they confess, the cognitive therapy can only enhance the effectiveness and self-awareness of the troublemakers, which will make them even more dangerous. (The sad truth about child molesters, New Statesman, 2003.) Thus, as you see, the effectiveness of therapy and counseling for the child molesters is often low. Jan Evans, the coordinator of the he Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) at Maidstone tells a terrible story of a man whom she counseled for six month, and, in her opinion, he got on very well. He realized his motivations and struggled with them, and when he was transferred to another institution Evans was sure he was soon going to return to normal life. There the officials decided that he could be let out on parole, and after few months out of prison he thoroughly planned and enacted rape, torture and slow murder of a woman. (The sad truth about child molesters, New Statesman, 2003) The study that was conducted by I. K. Marques and his three colleagues made the question of whether counseling is effective more clear. The offenders from the first group they studied were given the highest-quality treatment known for pedophiles, and the ones from the second group weren't given any treatment. The supervision over those two categories of offenders showed that the ones who got that expensive and time-consuming treatment were just as likely to reoffend as those who didn't get any psychological treatment or counseling while being in prison. (The sad truth about child molesters, New Statesman, 2003). Another way lots of people think is appropriate for dealing with the sex offenders is castration, whether surgical or chemical one. Surgical castration may look like either like taking off the penis or the testes. Chemical one means the lowering of the testosterone level in the patient's blood flow. All of those methods are built on the assumption that after castration the molesters' sexual desires will disappear. Unfortunately, this assumption is wrong. The removal of penis deprives the molester of the possibility to have sex, but it doesn't remove the desires he has. These kinds of assaulters just find the other ways to get sexual pleasure from contacts with their victims; they even sometimes use other objects instead of the absent penis. The alternative to cutting the penis off is the removal of testes which, as the scientists prove, are producing testosterone which is the hormone that regulates the agency of the sexual system. When the testes are removed the sexual activity of the man is reduced greatly, But a recent study found that when the main source of testosterone is absent it is produced by the intestine instead. Thus it's obvious that a of surgical castration doesn't remove even the physical component Another offer for dealing with the child molesters was the chemical castration, when the level of testosterone is decreased by some medicine. The doctors and psychologists proved that when a level of this hormone is less, the possibility of repeating the crime is also lessened for the patient. But, when offering this way of dealing with child molesters the psychologists and scientist forget about the psychological aspect of this illness. The problem is in their heads, it's the distorted view of the world and of people around them that makes the child molesters want the relationship with children. Molesters continue abusing children despite of any measures taken, as it is the part of their natural behavior. Nowadays the usual measures taken for to indemnify the citizens from child molesters are the parole officers that watch for the assaulters and check if they are doing , buying or using something prohibited. The parole officer is able of coming to the criminal's home and checking for all the prohibited things. Unfortunately, there are few parole officers, thus only little amount of former criminals are getting the proper support and help. It is also that a parole officer cannot follow his clients all the time, and those are the periods when the molester can do whatever he wants. This is actually the time when all the impropriate things happen. Thus, as you can see, parole officers are giving mostly qualified help, but there are too little of them, without the proper weapon and equipment, thus they cannot ensure the safety of those, whom they have to protect. So, as we can see, there is a variety of ways of treating the sex offenders, beginning from castration and ending with the parole. For to rehabilitate the child molesters, the social activists offer counseling, psychotherapy, but, unfortunately, it rarely works, as the routes of their illness are still hidden somewhere deep inside. There are also opinions that the child molesters have to come through the procedure of castration, whether the surgical or the chemical one. But it is also not the best idea, as it's known that even been castrated sex offenders tend to try to get sexual pleasure, as the level of testosterone is still high despite of all the measures taken The child molesters are very likely to repeat their crimes, especially if there is a child somewhere near. Some of them are still active despite of their senile years. Thus it is obligatory for the child molesters to register when they move into the new apartment. The neighbors often pay the molester more attention than the police does. It is also necessary to spread their photos and articles in the major newspapers. As for me, building the special place for sexual assaulters is a good idea. There the child molesters should be isolate from the ordinary people for not to let them hurt any more children and the adults. We have to accept and make our mind with the thought that pedophilia is incurable for now, and do our best for to isolate the potential source of danger from all of the kids running in the streets, as no child shouldn't be deprived of the normal childhood . Works Cited 1. Butler, K. Beyond the Bogeyman. Psychotherapy Networker, 2003, 6 2. Russell, B. Worst Molesters Unsupervised. After prison, Idaho's violent sex, Spokesman Review, The (Spokane), 2005 3. Crummy, K. Prey State; Mass. Judges Often Lenient With Child Molesters. Boston Herald, 2001 4. Berlin, F. The Case for Castration, part 2 - as Punishment for Child Molesting. Washington Monthly, 1994, 5 5. Lynch-German, L. Judge Sends Child Molesters to Prison. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1999 6. Stanford. Settling the Child Molesters. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2003 7. Hari J. The sad truth about child molesters. New Statesman, 2003 8. Spencer, A. Working with Sex Offenders in Prisons and Through Release to the Community: A Handbook, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1999. p.13-14 9. Doren, D. Evaluating Sex Offenders. SAGE Publications, 2002. p.19 10. n.d. The Nova Scotia Sexual Behavior Clinic: Evaluation, 1 September 1990-31 March 1991. Correctional Service of Canada Website, 1991 < http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/pblct/forum/e034/e034j_e.shtml> Bibliography 1. Butler, K. Beyond the Bogeyman. Psychotherapy Networker, 2003, 6 2. Russell, B. Worst Molesters Unsupervised. After prison, Idaho's violent sex, Spokesman Review, The (Spokane), 2005 3. Crummy, K. Prey State; Mass. Judges Often Lenient With Child Molesters. Boston Herald, 2001 4. Berlin, F. The Case for Castration, part 2 - as Punishment for Child Molesting. Washington Monthly, 1994, 5 5. Lynch-German, L. Judge Sends Child Molesters to Prison. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1999 6. Stanford. Settling the Child Molesters. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2003 7. Hari J. The sad truth about child molesters. New Statesman, 2003 8. Spencer, A. Working with Sex Offenders in Prisons and Through Release to the Community: A Handbook, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1999. p.13-14 9. Doren, D. Evaluating Sex Offenders. SAGE Publications, 2002. p.19 10. n.d. The Nova Scotia Sexual Behavior Clinic: Evaluation, 1 September 1990-31 March 1991. Correctional Service of Canada Website, 1991 < http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/pblct/forum/e034/e034j_e.shtml> 11. O'Connell, M. Leberg, E. Donaldson, C. Working with Sex Offenders: Guidelines for Therapist Selection. SAGE Publications, 1990 12. Flora, R. How to Work With Sex Offenders: A Handbook for Criminal Justice, Human Service, and Mental Health Professionals. Haworth Press, 2001 13. Van Dam, C. Identifying Child Molesters: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse by Recognizing the Patterns of the Offenders, Haworth Press, 2001 14. Leberg, R. Understanding Child Molesters : Taking Charge. SAGE Publications, 1997 15. Vogrin, B. Molesters Release Has Neighborhood Wary. Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), 2004 Read More