Into the Darklands

by Nigel Latta

  ‘Anyone.’

  ‘Where would you grab her from?’

  ‘Walking home from school.’

  ‘Which road?’

  ‘I don’t know, somewhere round a school.’

  ‘Which schools do you live near?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ And all the time he’s talking that little sneer is there.

  ‘When’s the last time you followed a girl, thinking this?’

  ‘I haven’t. Not yet.’

  I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t want to get bogged down. If you’re moving, keep moving. You can always come back to the sticky bits. ‘What about the two girls you exposed yourself to?’

  He pauses. ‘OK, I thought about it but I wasn’t following them.’

  I’m processing all this as we go. The fact that he says he doesn’t have a knife and rope already is a good thing, because it means he’s still probably turning the idea over as fantasy and not as a solid plan. He doesn’t have his ‘rape kit’ in his car but he’s starting to source it. He’s looked at the rope in his garage and thought about how he would use it. His description sounds more fantasy than real-world planning at the moment, but the distance between those two points can be as long as years or as short as minutes.

  I make a mental note to verify all this by having a look in his car before he goes. If he lied to me about not having the equipment I would have to drastically rethink my assessment of his risk. The ice had suddenly become very thin.

  And I still needed more. He had described sadistic rape fantasies but he hasn’t given me any concrete acts that would be grounds for recalling him to court. I’m only going to get one go at this and if I screw it up then he walks and he’s even more dangerous than before. He can’t be recalled for thinking bad things.

  ‘Tell me about the sexual offending that you’ve never talked about,’ I say, staring him down, actively trying to focus his attention purely on this moment. I don’t want him thinking about the possible consequences of disclosing new offending, I just want him to focus on him and me, on the mental sparring he enjoys so much. ‘Tell me about the stuff you’ve been doing since you were caught.’ Forget about all that stuff, I’m projecting, none of that really exists, it’s just you and me.

  He shakes his head. ‘There’s nothing.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ I say, and I’m trying to pour my will into the words. I want him to believe I already know.

  ‘There’s nothing.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ I say it quick, snappy, without hesitation, without doubt.

  He looks at me for a long time. ‘OK,’ he finally says, ‘what the hell.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’ve been jerking off under the counter when women come into the shop,’ he says. He was working in a 24-hour service station at the time. While the rest of us slept Sam read porn in the shop and jerked off behind the counter while serving women. He gave me the details.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘My friend’s little sister.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘When I gave her piggybacks I’d put my hand inside her shorts and touch her.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  He shrugs. ‘Five, something like that.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s her brother’s name?’

  ‘Steve something.’

  ‘Last name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I thought he was your friend?’

  ‘Not really, we hung out a bit.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘They moved.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not, they moved.’

  His petulant tone tells me I’m going to get no further so I give up on that one.

  ‘I’m going to ring your probation officer now and get him to come down so you can tell him everything you’ve just told me.’

  He looks alarmed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he needs to know.’

  ‘I won’t tell him.’

  ‘Either you can or I can, but it looks better for you if it comes from you.’

  ‘I’m not going to jail,’ he says.

  ‘That’s not up to me.’

  His little piggy eyes narrow, and the malice is almost palpable. ‘I’ll kill anyone that tries to send me there.’

  I pause from my writing. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Are you saying if I ring your probation officer and you get sent to jail, then you would kill me?’

  ‘If you did that I would.’

  ‘Do you realise threatening to kill is an offence, Sam?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you just threatened to kill the guy who’s writing a report on your progress in therapy. Not too bright, Sam.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  My judgement said he was all bluster, at least as far as his threats to me were concerned. Still, he wasn’t small, and desperate people can be strong and unpredictable. I was also aware there was no relationship between us that might have been a brake. If push came to shove there was a metal chair off to my side I could probably belt him with.

  ‘Well, Sam,’ I said, putting down my pen and paper, ‘I am going to talk to him, and you might get sent to jail, so if you’re going to have a go, now would be a good time.’

  Never show fear to a sadist, that only feeds him. My instincts said it was best to respond to his display with quiet confidence, and in such moments I always trust my instincts. We sat there for a few moments in silence, staring at each other.

  ‘I didn’t really mean it,’ he said finally.

  ‘Too bad, Sam. You said it and it will be in my report.’

  (Actually there’s only ever been one man I thought might really try to kill me. He was a drug-addicted, drug-dealing, personality-disordered, violent sex offender with big-time criminal connections. I’d been a key part in him not gaining custody of his child and for months afterwards I scanned the car park as I left the building each day.)

  Sam did end up telling his probation officer all the things he’d told me. As a result he was recalled and sent to prison. It was the hollowest of victories. I knew he’d be off the streets for about 18 months maximum. He was never charged with the extra offences he admitted because there wasn’t enough evidence. While in prison he completed a sex-offender treatment programme, but made no therapeutic progress. He eventually walked out the front gates just as dangerous as when he’d been driven in.

  Even now I know there was nothing more I could have done with Sam. He wasn’t responding to treatment, wasn’t completing tasks assigned to him and was showing clear signs of dangerousness. Getting him recalled was my only real option, but it was also only a short-term solution.

  A few months after Sam was released an 11-year-old girl vanished from a park near the area where he was living. Whilst I was no longer working with him I’d kept tracks on him through various contacts, and when I heard about this little girl’s disappearance one afternoon I felt my stomach drop all the way to my shoes.

  Straightaway I knew Sam was someone the police should be looking at. The circumstances of the little girl’s disappearance matched the scenario he’d described to me 20 months previously.

  At that point there were a few ethical dilemmas, namely the client’s right to confidentiality versus the risk to some other person. I had no reason to believe Sam had been involved other than the fact that it fitted with the scenario he’d described to me. It’s only ethical to breach confidentiality if you have evidence that a specific person is at risk. You can’t breach confidentiality on a hunch.

  Still, there was nothing stopping me making a few discreet enquiries. As it turned out, I never had to wrestle with my conscience. Sam was already a key suspec
t. He’d been interviewed by the police and, even though he denied any knowledge of the girl, he’d apparently spent some time driving around with them showing them where he would dump a body. I’m certain he would have loved every minute of it.

  In all the years I’ve been working with thousands of offenders, this is the only time I’d been so concerned as to consider passing on a name to the police. I work with lots of bad guys and there are many crimes I hear about where it’s possible any one of them could have been involved. I have always worked from the clear position that unless I had specific evidence that someone was at risk, it was unethical to breach confidence. I still believe that.

  But in this case the timing and circumstances of the little girl’s disappearance were simply too much to ignore. It was exactly the kind of scenario he had described to me in our sessions, including the age and sex of the victim, and the general location. In any case, Sam would have already been on the police suspect list because he was a known sex offender living in the area. I would have just moved him a little higher up the priority list.

  If that makes me unethical, so be it. I can more easily live with that than I could live with the knowledge that I might have known something that could have helped find that wee girl.

  Tragically, several days later the girl was found dead from what appeared to be natural causes. The coroner eventually ruled her death was indeed accidental.

  Sam is, as far as I know, still out there walking around. I’m sure he still has the same sadistic fantasies, and I believe one day he may take that terrible step between the world inside his head, and the one you and I walk around in.

  I hope I’m wrong. I really do. Like I said, in my job the hardest thing isn’t what you can do, it’s what you can’t.

  WHY DO YOU HELP THOSE ARSEHOLES?

  STANDING THERE, a half-chewed barbecued chicken leg in one hand and a stubbie in the other, I can’t help but sigh.

  Welcome to my own personal Groundhog day—a conversation I’m forced to play out every so often. This time it’s with a bloke I’ve just met, Geoff. He’s a bit pissed, but I don’t mind because I’m a bit pissed myself at that point.

  ‘Who knows,’ I say, smiling and shrugging my shoulders. ‘I wanted to be a hangman but I failed the knot test. I can only do bows, so the buggers kept falling out. A shrink seemed the logical second choice.’

  ‘No mate, seriously,’ continued Geoff, and I realised he wasn’t as pissed as I’d first thought. ‘How can you do it?’

  Men often ask the question in a slightly aggressive way, like they’re pumping up for a fight. Women more often come in a little easier, more interested than angry. Whatever the case, everybody has that little glint in their eye, that give-me-a-peek look. Geoff looked like he was itching for a lynching.

  ‘Beats working for a living, I guess.’

  ‘Did you see that guy in the paper?’ Geoff asked. ‘The one who molested his daughter for years, and did all kinds of sick shit to her?’

  I nodded. ‘Yup.’ Actually I’d spent a little bit of time chatting with the man in the paper, but I didn’t think it would help things much to point that out to Geoff.

  ‘So what would you do with him?’

  ‘Well, I’d like to hang him, but like I said, I’m no good with knots.’

  Geoff wasn’t going to play. He wanted a serious discussion. I looked around desperately for a familiar face, but in the last few minutes the party seemed to have been gatecrashed by a busload of strangers. I was on my own.

  ‘How the hell is a bit of counselling going to stop someone like that?’

  He said the word counselling like he was talking about something the cat had just sicked up on the rug. I didn’t mind the fact that he was having a go at counselling—God knows I do enough of that myself. The thing that really got me was the fact he was having a go at me. Geoff wasn’t just passing judgement on the field, he was passing judgement on me. He was calling me a tree-hugger. That was what really pissed me off.

  I don’t mind a debate; in fact I think talking about this stuff is incredibly important, but I don’t like being disrespected simply because I choose to work in an area most people don’t understand. My job, at the end of the day, is to protect people like Geoff and his kids. My job is to sit at the edge of the flock and try to convince the wolf not to eat the lambs. Which is fine, but when someone like Geoff says I’m the problem, it makes me a little cross.

  ‘Well, what would you do?’ I ask him.

  ‘Put a bullet in his brain.’

  ‘Fair enough. How?’

  ‘What do you mean? I’d just shoot him.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Geoff, but we aren’t allowed to shoot people in this country.’

  ‘Well, we should be,’ he said.

  ‘That may be, but we aren’t, so what are you going to do?’

  ‘Put him in jail forever then.’

  ‘For the rest of his life?’

  ‘Yeah. Problem solved.’ Geoff looked well pleased with himself. Clearly this man was a resource the Minister of Corrections had overlooked.

  I shrugged. ‘That’s not going to work either, Geoff. Do you know how much it costs to keep a guy in jail for a year?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just over $50,000. It costs about $73,000 in maximum security.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, do you know how many people there are who commit sexual offences in this country every year?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shitloads.’ I’ve never had a good memory for statistics but have found that ‘shitloads’ will suffice most times. ‘So it’s going to mean big tax increases if you want to keep all those people in jail for the rest of their lives. You want to pay more taxes?’

  ‘If it kept those bastards off the street, I would.’

  I didn’t believe him, but I let that one go. ‘OK, so how are you going to convince the politicians to raise taxes to pay for keeping these people in prison forever? Because they have to sell it to us voters and we don’t even want to pay more tax for a better health and education system. Why would we want to pay more for sex offenders?’

  ‘Well, why did the country all vote for tougher sentencing then?’ Geoff asked, with a got-you-this-time smile.

  ‘They didn’t.’

  He screwed up his face. ‘Yes they did.’

  ‘No they didn’t.’ I took a sip of beer and smiled.

  ‘Ninety-something percent of the country voted for tougher sentences. What are you, stupid?’

  ‘They voted for a solution, they didn’t vote for tougher sentencing.’

  ‘The referendum was about tougher sentencing.’

  ‘No it wasn’t.’

  Geoff looked at me like he wasn’t sure if he should thump me or laugh. Actually I think he was leaning more towards thumping me, but I was gambling that this was a fairly civilised do, so thumping me wouldn’t really be an option. ‘So what was it about then?’ he asked.

  ‘It was about fear, about wanting to stop bad people from doing bad things.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Geoff laboured, like he was talking to a retarded person. ‘Through tougher sentencing.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. People were saying they’re scared of the violence and they want it to stop. If making criminals dress as chickens stopped offending they would have voted for that.’

  ‘But tougher sentencing will work. If they know they’re going to go to jail for life, then they won’t do it.’

  I sighed. ‘How many murderers have you met, Geoff?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘OK, how many sex offenders have you met?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Armed robbers?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Well I’ve talked to shitloads,’ I said, reverting once again to my hard statistical argument, ‘and believe me, tougher sentencing won’t stop bad guys from hurting people. At best it’ll keep the ones we’ve caught from doing it again, but it won’t stop others from doing it. And ther
e are plenty of wannabes waiting in the wings.’

  ‘Are you saying that if you knew that if you killed someone you’d go to jail for life, that wouldn’t stop you from doing it?’

  ‘Of course it would.’

  ‘But you just said…’

  ‘I’m saying it would stop me. It wouldn’t stop the kind of people who really do go out and kill people. Murderers fall into three piles: sad bastards, bad bastards and mad bastards. None of them pay much attention to the legal-schmegal stuff in my experience. Threats will never stop them.’

  ‘You see,’ said Geoff, obviously taking offence at what I was saying, ‘that’s the whole problem. People are too soft on them. Jesus, guys in prison eat better than I do.’

  ‘Have you ever been in Mount Eden Prison?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well I have. It’s cold and it smells like a urinal.’

  ‘Good job,’ Geoff said. ‘Maybe they’ll think harder before they break the law next time.’

  ‘The only problem with that, Geoff, is they don’t.’

  ‘What, so we should just keep giving them colour televisions and pizza? Will that stop them?’

  I sighed. ‘No, it won’t. As far as I know pizza has no inherent rehabilitative value.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I think we have to be nice to them.’

  Geoff shook his head, just as I knew he would. ‘That’s the problem with the whole system. We’re too nice to them already.’

  Now, I could have used a different word instead of nice, something less likely to ruffle poor old Geoff’s feathers, but my beer was gone and the night was wearing on. There was no way he was going to understand what I was saying. It was time to bring this conversation to a close.

  ‘You want to know why I really help these guys, Geoff? I’ll tell you. I help them because that’s the only choice I have. That’s all I’ve got. I don’t have the luxury of standing on the sidelines bitching about what everyone else is doing wrong. So if I have to be nice to some sex offender to stop him raping kids, then I’m happy to do that.’

  One of the research papers I quote in every training workshop I run was published by an American psychologist, Michael Lambert, in 1992. Lambert reviewed a large number of studies on treatment outcome to see which factors contributed the most to therapeutic change. His findings were both simple and profoundly important: