by Donald West
Ralph fled to his mistress, telling her he had killed a man. He was arrested the next day and at first denied responsibility, but soon confessed. On remand in prison he was fearful and depressed, refusing visits from his family and was considered a suicidal risk. When I saw him in prison he seemed more worried about being branded a perverted sex killer than about his forthcoming trial. My opinion that homosexual panic was a reasonable interpretation of his behaviour was supported by two other psychiatrists and I have not regretted giving an honest view. This was a sick, unhappy man whose crime brought him no gain. A reduced sentence, however justified legally, seemed reasonable.
Many years later, after Ralph’s release from prison, a journalist who had been following the case informed me of some evidence that Ralph had been involved in actual homosexual behaviour. Although the suggestion was that this meant his defence was a fraud, it seemed to me, if true, the observation was not inconsistent with the assumption that the emergence of his own homosexual impulses had triggered his violent reactions.
In the next case a psychiatric report was required after conviction pending sentence. The offender, whom I shall call Norman, was a late middle-aged homosexual charged, together with an accomplice, with various sex offences against four under-age boys, to most of which he pleaded guilty. He had a list of previous convictions for similar offences and also for property offences ranging from robbing meters and fraud to burglary. He had already served many years of imprisonment.
Norman came from an impoverished home. From the age of seven, because his mother could not provide for him, he was placed in a children’s home where he spent the rest of his childhood. He said there was a lot of sex there between the boys and sometimes members of staff were involved. On occasion he was forcibly buggered by older boys. Through ignorance of life outside, he did not at first realise all this was out of the ordinary. By the time he left there he knew he was a homosexual. Apart from one abortive attempt at sex with a woman he has never had any heterosexual contacts. He has always been fixated on boys of fourteen to eighteen years. His first job was as a ship’s steward, where there was much homosexual activity. He participated and as a result he was dismissed from the merchant navy following conviction for a sex offence.
The existence of paedophile ‘rings’, involving a group of offenders and multiple victims, has attracted attention recently. Norman’s case verges on this stereotype. He was charged jointly with an old friend of similar sexual habits. They shared the same boys and sometimes Norman would telephone his friend to arrange a rendezvous for him with one of them. The four boys who gave evidence against Norman were from the same comprehensive school and knew each other. At the time of the offences in question they were all aged fifteen and sexually mature, since they readily produced erections and ejaculations during their activities with men. They agreed that Norman was well known as a ‘queer’ willing to pay for sex with a few pounds, but sometimes significantly larger sums were given. Their accounts of what would occur at his flat were quite explicit, namely viewing pornographic videos, mutual masturbation with Norman, fellating him and being fellated by him, and sometimes being anally penetrated by him.
Norman admitted to all but this last activity, being well aware that, if established, it would qualify for life imprisonment. The boys said that penetration sometimes hurt and they would ask him to desist, but he did not always do so. Two boys, however, mentioned that after the first attempts the process was less uncomfortable. At any rate, they were not deterred from repeated visits. It seems unlikely that they were subjected to much force. On one occasion one of the boys brought along a ten-year old companion, but he was excluded from the sex, which seems to confirm Norman’s assertion that he was not interested in young children.
The boys tacitly admitted that they had been prostituting themselves. After initial encounters they did not always wait for Norman to pick them up, but would call on him when short of money. Norman maintained that he had been positively pestered by the boys to the point where they demanded money on threat of denouncing him. He was sufficiently scared to give in to their demands. That larger sums were passed over at times is consistent with this version. According to Norman the boys were delinquents and one of them was heavily involved with drugs and needed money for that. Norman turned against his accomplice, arguing that he was pressed into collaborating by this stronger character, who was heavily into buggery and transporting boys in his lorry.
When interviewed, Norman was gloomy about his situation, but rational and forthcoming in his comments. He said he was ashamed and dismayed by his fixation on boys and he fervently wished he could form relationships with older males. To that end he had repeatedly begged for therapy, but never succeeded in obtaining adequate help, either in prison or on probation. It was difficult to believe that this was the whole truth, although his requests for transfer to Grendon, a prison with specialist treatment facilities, had been turned down. He continued to write to me after he began his four-year term of imprisonment, asking me to intervene to secure help, even if that meant chemical castration.
Norman was typical of persistent offenders, full of complaints against the authorities and putting as much blame as possible on his accomplice and on the boys who gave evidence. He told me he enjoyed playing an older brother or fatherly role with boys, without intending anything further, but ending up wanting to have sex with them and the boys agreeing to it. The evidence, however, pointed to relationships concentrated on masturbatory pleasure rather than on the role of a friend to children in need.
I was somewhat at a loss what to recommend, as was another psychiatrist who was asked to provide a report. I wrote:
“I do not consider this man dangerously aggressive. His behaviour represents a moral rather than a physical danger to youths. Treatment is indeed difficult, but there does not appear to have been any consistent or determined attempt. Considering his age and history I think the best prospect for changing his behaviour would be through realistic supervision and counselling to control his living circumstances and life style, possibly supplemented by anti-libidinal medication… He appears motivated to co-operate in any treatment plan.”
What I did not express, but still feel, is that repeated imprisonments, without constructive attempts at attitude change and strict arrangements for help and supervision on discharge, promotes rather than deters further offending. Given that sex orientation may not be possible to alter, attention to employment, leisure occupation and social and family relationships may offer the best prospect of protection from temptation. One point in Norman’s favour was that his desires were not directed to pre-pubertal boys.
The last case I shall mention is included because it highlights what I consider to be an unsatisfactory aspect of the law on the criminal responsibility of mentally disturbed offenders. Since the Homicide Act, 1957, persons charged with murder can have the charge reduced if, by virtue of “abnormality of mind”, mental responsibility is “substantially impaired”. As has been noted, homosexual panic may qualify. An offender may also be treated as insane and committed to hospital if by “defect of reason” or “disease of the mind” he did not know what he was doing or did not know it was wrong (Mc’Naughton Rules). One would have to be very mad indeed to fulfil these rules literally. Such a plea was common in murder trials before diminished responsibility was introduced and hanging abolished. Now it is rarely made because, although a conviction may be avoided, it can be at the cost of psychiatric detention of indefinite duration under a Hospital Order. However, in the unusual circumstance that an offender was insane when he committed a crime, but was recovered when brought to trial there would be no justification for a Hospital Order and the offender might walk free. This was the situation in the trial of Mr K.
K was around forty years of age when he sent to the Cyprus government a thirteen page document announcing a plan to attack the island with newly-invented devastating weapons. A powerful toxic gas would be released by remote electronic command fro
m generators already installed in secret locations. The only way to stop the attack would be for the Minister of Finance to deliver in person a large sum of money by obeying the elaborate instructions set out. A follow-up note from a “Captain Nemo, Force Majeure” announced that the weapons were to be activated in a few days, failing prompt payment of fifteen million US dollars. A telecommunication, purporting to be from British Intelligence, warned that the existence of gas generators was real and advised payment of the demand. There were also telephone calls on similar lines. The affair ended when Mr K, masquerading as a Mr C, claiming to be a negotiator, visited the High Commission and accepted a package containing bundles of £10 notes.
When asked to comment on documents sent to me before the trial, I was struck immediately by the implausibility of the claims made in Mr K’s threatening material, couched as they were in grandiose and jargon-filled language. It seemed surprising that, although concluding it was almost certain they were a hoax, the authorities felt the need to give them serious attention. In response I wrote: “The superficial rationality and lucid language of the exhibits might lead a jury to doubt that the author was mentally incapacitated. A psychiatrist reading it would quickly pick up the absurd flamboyance and loquacity typical of hypomanic productions”.
Observers closer to the events were also convinced of Mr K’s mental abnormality. He was eventually arrested in England for possessing an offensive weapon, criminal damage and attempting to drive somebody down with a motor vehicle. At that time he was diagnosed by the police surgeon as “hyper-manic”, talking fast and inappropriately, asserting his importance and demanding contact with the President of Cyprus. Examined in prison some months later, a forensic psychiatrist found him still in a state of manic psychosis, noting that for some time after arrest he had continued to behave in a manner consistent with his own description of how he had been before, namely “overactive, sleepless, distractible, grandiose, irresponsible, domineering, over-confident, irritable, garrulous, and preoccupied with living out his fantastic notions”. He was still deluded, believing that “a full and expensive trial would expose the incompetence of the British and Cypriot governments and result in his vindication and his installation as President of a unified Cyprus …[Also] he believes that there is collusion at the highest government levels to prevent him achieving these goals ”. The report concluded that Mr K was at present unfit for trial because “his plea would be determined wholly by [his] delusional beliefs”, and also that at the time of his offence, and probably for a year or two beforehand, he was suffering from manic-depressive psychosis.
Another psychiatrist, examining Mr K the following month, found him more rational and fit for trial, but agreed that the evidence pointed to Mr K having been in a state of hypomania when he committed the offences, and that the illness would have severely affected his judgement, but not so much as to make him insane within the McNaughton Rules.
Five years before the offence, Mr K had had been given some psychological assessments that found no indication of mental illness. Subsequently, he became depressed and also obsessed with the idea of forming a ménage à trois with his sister-in-law. He was treated for this by excessive doses of anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs in unusual and varied combinations; including one drug that was later withdrawn on account of the mental symptoms it sometimes produced. It could never be established exactly when and what drugs were taken, but it became a reasonable supposition that his hypomania might have been an illness, but one provoked by, or wholly caused by, improper medication, and that his recovery in prison was due to its discontinuance.
The actual cause of the hypomania was less relevant to the issue of Mr K’s legal responsibility than the severity of the disturbance and his understanding of what he was doing. I felt he would not have behaved as he did if he were in a normal state. Hypomanics are well known for ruining themselves and their families with unrealistic and costly projects arising from delusory ideas of grandeur, invincibility and destiny. My own feeling of natural as opposed to legal justice made me feel that Mr K did not deserve to be convicted as a common criminal, but I was acutely aware of the limitations of the Mc’Naughton Rules. Being questioned at the trial was inevitably an uncomfortable experience. Here are some extracts from a more extensive transcript:
Q. Can you tell us – the hypomania may well have been drug-induced, or endogenous or a combination of both – can you please tell us what are the principal symptoms?
A. The typical symptoms are mood change in the direction of elation and excitement and activity. There is change of mood and attitude towards over-confidence and arrogance and loss of judgment, so that the affected person does not fully appreciate the consequences of what he does and acts very impulsively…
Q. With this lack of judgment – can you take us a bit further, “lack of judgment” effectively meaning what?
A. It means that they do not exercise the normal judgment and restraint that they would do when they are in a healthy and fit state, and that they may therefore behave recklessly towards themselves and others, in a way they would not do in a normal state.
Q. Can I ask you this: lack of judgment, would they have, could they have, comprehension of what they were doing?
A. I think they would understand, for instance, the literal meaning of the words that they wrote or said, but they would not have a full appreciation of the consequences because they would not stop to think what it meant, what they were doing. Also it may be – in fact I think it is – that in some conditions of mania the distinction between what is fantasy and what is reality is blurred in the mind of the excited person.
Q. Can it involve a person thinking they are persons that they are not?
A. Certainly when the condition gets into a more acute phase, when it becomes what you might call manic. People indeed have what are then very obvious delusions, delusions of grandeur. The behaviour of grandiosity and arrogance which is observed in hypomania is only, as it were, one stage towards the acute condition.
Q. In a sense the intellectual parts of the mind are fractured?
A. Yes.
Q. So they could have comprehension, an intellectual ability to comprehend what they are doing. Would they necessarily comprehend the effect upon others?
A. I think they would not be able to consider it in the way they would in a normal state; they wouldn’t stop to think.
Q. Would they necessarily comprehend the effect in due course upon others?
A. I think not, otherwise they would not behave so recklessly.
Q. Separating the intellectual aspect – I am using this in the legal term not just in pure English – but separating it as it were the intellectual capacity to sit down and understand what they are doing – would they have the capacity to – directly have the capacity to have intent to do what it is they are doing? Do you follow?
A. I think in a common sense way they would not have the full capacity of normal intent. An analogy is even drawn between hypomania and a person in a state of alcohol intoxication, acute alcohol intoxication, when they would say and do things they would never do in their normal state …
Q. Can I take you up on almost the last sentence or two you spoke when being asked questions. You drew analogies rather like an alcoholic who can say and do things he would never do in a normal state. That does not relate just to an alcoholic; many of us when in a state of drink do say things we regret afterwards. Is it the same? Are you saying that in those circumstances, although a person who has taken drink and his judgment may be clouded, he will still know what he is doing?
A. I think that depends on the level of intoxication, and the main difference between this and alcohol intoxication is, of course, there is longer loss. It is induced by or can be induced by a drug, but it continues after the drug is withdrawn.
Q. Put it another way: let us come back to this alcohol. A man can have, when sober, an intent to kill and he can just as well have a drunken intent to kill. The judgment may be clouded,
but he still has an intent.
A. He may formulate intellectually an intent, but he may have done so when drunk , when he would not do so when sober.
Q. Exactly, but he has a drunken intent?
A. As I understand what you say, yes.
Q. Coming back to what you say with regard to hypomania, in the context – I appreciate a lack of judgment may be present, but your evidence is, I think, he would understand the literal meaning. In other words you think in this case a person would understand the meaning of a blackmail demand?
A. Yes.
Q. Let us be plain about it, he knew it was a blackmail demand?
A. I think if he were asked that question he might have answered “Yes”.
Q. Let us take it one stage further, and perhaps the final stage: you have said to this jury that he would not necessarily comprehend the effect on others.
A. Yes.
Q. That is a very broad general statement, is it not?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you seen the defendant?
A. I have not.
Q. Have you heard the telephone calls he made, after having originally sent the demand document to the Cyprus Government?
A. I have not. I have only seen the documents I have mentioned.
Q. If I were to tell you in summary that, having sent up the demand document, he made some 22 telephone calls, the broad effect of which was he was saying, “This is a serious matter, you would not want Cyprus to be contaminated. I suggest you pay up”, and then he would go into details how the money might be collected. If you were to bear that summary in mind would that then lead to the inference that he certainly did comprehend the effect on others?
