by Donald West
In the present climate it is dangerous to know someone who might be a paedophile. An acquaintance of mine, a middle-aged, respected publisher of children’s books, was unexpectedly raided by police early one morning in his marital home in a leafy suburb. The aggressive rudeness of the intruders came as a shock. The house was turned over and masses of papers and books relating to his business taken away. To add insult to injury, after finding nothing suspicious, the police suggested his wife make tea. The reason for the raid was that his name had appeared in the address book of a paedophile suspect. He had known the man in question when he was young as a family friend, but had had virtually no contact with him for many years and no knowledge of his paedophilia. The police kept the appropriated property for many months, causing much inconvenience, and returning it without apology.
Efforts to over-protect children can be to their detriment. Of course infants should not be expected to cope alone with traffic, but when older children cannot go for walks or cycle rides unaccompanied, or to play out of sight of a parent, they are denied the natural learning experiences enjoyed by previous generations. Sex instruction by parents and schools should promote common-sense rules on such matters as accepting gifts or invitations from strangers, or meeting up with someone known only through the internet. On the other hand, instilling the notion that all adults are untrustworthy is not good for promoting respect. The numerous rules imposed on teachers about touching or being alone with a child is a barrier to helpful relationships. Fear of malicious accusations of ‘inappropriate’ behaviour means teachers keeping their distance. This is an understandable response to the volume of complaints from mischievous or disaffected pupils. Teachers’ unions have complained about immediate and sometimes long suspension and subsequent blighted career, even when allegations have been deemed unfounded. Such anxieties can have an effect on recruitment of men as primary school teachers and the allocation of men to social work with children.
Given the current public attitude, how offenders should be dealt with is a difficult issue. I have not been directly involved with the treatment of paedophiles, but the prevalent view is that paedophile orientation is ineradicable and that the best that can be hoped is that some of those affected may be shown how to resist their impulses. Certainly those who have been all their lives exclusively attracted to pre-pubertal children cannot alter their orientation, any more than exclusive homosexuals can do so. However, there are many offenders, especially among heterosexuals, whose attraction is not exclusively towards minors and certainly not towards the very young. Many are married men whose interest in their daughters does not preclude sex with their wives or other adults. Tests have shown that a significant percentage of the ‘normal’ male population show some degree of sexual arousal to erotic pictures of children and a larger percentage to pictures of budding adolescents, without ever, or perhaps only in exceptional circumstances of provocation, yielding to the impulse. Some men resort to children only in their later life, having lost and been unable to replace their adult partner.
There is no clear consensus on the causes of paedophile fixation. An ineradicable genetic predisposition is not excluded. Psychological theories include the ‘imprinting’ of an erotic response to children through some early sexual experience. Another suggestion is Oedipal sexual fixation on a parent leading later in life to guilt and inhibition in relation to sex with any adult. More straightforward is the theory that socially incompetent, mentally retarded or sexually unattractive individuals may have difficulty relating to adult partners and find children less threatening and more approachable. This cannot apply to all, since many offenders are socially successful, smart businessmen, respected professionals or, of course, priests.
The cognitive behavioural techniques on offer in prisons and some clinics seek to instil self-control and avoidance of situations of temptation. Some offenders have not so much a problem with the nature of their sexual inclinations towards children than with the exercise of normal social restraints. Those truly incapable of sex with adults have greater difficulty learning to distance themselves from children. Measures of treatment effectiveness, based on the absence of detected offending over long term follow up, are difficult to arrange. Random allocation of a substantial series of unselected cases to treatment or non-treatment groups, necessary for ensuring comparison of like with like, is rarely feasible. I have the impression that the best available evaluations suggest that current treatments have a positive but disappointingly small effect. This is unsurprising in view of the limited resources available, the ambivalent attitudes of some who are made responsible for conducting treatment, and the unfavourable environment for therapy in prisons (where inmates have reason to fear making frank revelations of their feelings). I suspect that the chance of finding an acceptable niche in some community after release is more influential than what happens during detention. The provision of a supportive friend – on the model practiced among alcoholics otherwise may be resented and resisted. Paedophiles who disappear harm themselves and are more likely to reoffend.
The reason for publishing unpopular views was my belief that it is not in the best interests of children to single out paedophilia as the most prevalent and dangerous threat that they have to face, necessitating severe restrictions on their freedom and excessive punishments for all offenders. This is a plea for a balanced response to complex situations, and emphatically not a proposal to regard actual assaults or true molestations of children as other than serious crimes.
Repetitive Homicidal Rapists
During a sabbatical leave in the winter of 1975–6 I secured a place as participant observer at a group psychotherapy programme for dangerous sexual criminals at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The Centre was a secure psychiatric hospital admitting violent mentally disordered offenders and serious sexual criminals transferred from the penitentiary. An elderly, motherly and remarkably devoted psychiatrist, Florence Nichols, ran the programme for sex offenders. Her warm hospitality and attention to creature comforts made my stay enjoyable as well as instructive. She and her husband lent me their car so that I could drive into nearby Vancouver from time to time, enabling me to sample a convenient sauna. During a Canadian postal strike they would drive me across the nearby US border to post letters. At that time the border controls were lax and did not challenge local cars.
The treatment project was unique in its intensity, comprising a group of about a dozen patients who had to attend daily discussion meetings at which totally frank self-examination was expected. On first admission, each member of the group had to write an autobiography to include a detailed account of their crimes and the events and thoughts preceding them. The men mingled with other patients in the hospital and were expected to take part in work tasks, educational courses, hobbies, sports and socialising activities and to maintain neat attire and respectful behaviour. Less than full co-operation could mean return to the penitentiary. Nurses observed and reported on their behaviour and attended the group meetings. Besides attending the sessions, I studied the autobiographies, interviewed the men individually and discussed my impressions with Dr Nichols and Dr Chuni Roy, Director of the Centre. Conclusions were published as a book – Understanding Sexual Attacks by West, D.J., Nichols,F. and Roy, C. London, 1978, Heinemann.
The book was based on the 12 men under treatment during my official posting, but a further 9 were interviewed during a short subsequent visit. Unlike the generality of rapists, whose assaults are most often committed against someone with whom they have a relationship, their victims were often total strangers, some having been lured into the offender’s car and others pounced on without the slightest provocation. Of the 21 interviewed, all were recidivist offenders, many with criminal records extending over years. Some admitted to scores of sexual assaults, many undetected. Two had killed during the course of their assaults and several others had narrowly avoided doing so. They were in sharp contrast to the less serious offenders I was used to seei
ng in out-patient clinics, such as exhibitionists and men whose behaviour had been inappropriate rather than violent.
Like many other innovative therapeutic experiments, this project depended upon the personality of its leader and the special circumstances in which it was set up, namely the establishment of the Regional Centre, a few years earlier, and the political and administrative talents of its Director. Sadly, it has long since closed and the outcome of the treatment has not been scientifically validated. However, it afforded an opportunity to study in depth the backgrounds and motivations of a particular sample of extreme offenders and to suggest theories as to how their crimes came about.
Virtually all the men had dysfunctional upbringings and most exhibited the uncivilised behaviour and poor anger control typical of persistent criminals. However, superimposed on this was a more specific theme, namely a hypersensitivity to real or imagined slurs on their masculinity, and a smouldering anger against women, particularly those with whom they had attempted a sexual relationship. They were not lacking in sexual drive, but frustrating experiences, often the result of unrealistic expectations, caused a build-up of tension eventually exploding into horrific sexual crimes against totally innocent females. Details varied, but one dominant theme emerged repeatedly. The following brief case summaries illustrate the trend. (Phrases in quotes are approximately verbatim from original interviews)
(1) John remembered his childhood as very unhappy, with an overbearing and interfering mother and a father who was often away and let his mother dominate in all household matters. One vivid memory was of an incident when he would not apologise to his mother for calling her a liar and had to be beaten endlessly until he finally broke down and gave in. He had a pet cat that he loved, but in states of anger and humiliation after such punishments he would mistreat the cat and feel very guilty afterwards. Bed wetting lasted until his teens. Sometimes he would lazily let it happen, knowing his mother would have to change the bed. From an early age he stole from his mother. After detection and punishment this continued more secretly.
He was born with the left side from the hip upwards underdeveloped and the left hand visibly deformed. At school he was ridiculed by his peers because of his appearance and was also physically bullied. One time when he got into a fight he collapsed on the ground and let his assailant kick him. Onlookers sneered at his cowardice and he felt friendless. He took part in pranks with some bolder schoolfellows, breaking windows, shoplifting, smoking and putting tacks on girls’ seats. These demonstrative escapades failed to compensate for his feelings of inadequacy and oversensitivity to put-downs that dogged him into adulthood. He struggled to make his mark in such sports as he could manage, but cared less about scholastic achievement, falling behind to spite his mother who, as a former school teacher, was aggravated by his poor performance. At age fifteen he discovered a talent for golf, which he pursued obsessively from then on as his best means of socialising, “becoming big-headed because of my accomplishments”.
He discovered masturbation early and “the pleasure of rubbing” became a frequent habit. His first sexual contacts were with his sister. “As we began to touch each other in bed I began to associate sex feelings with parts of her body. Many times I would sneak into her bedroom to fondle her. Sometimes she would go along with it, other times resist.” “From age thirteen onwards my face broke out in pimples and my self-image took a further dive … I hesitated to talk to girls because of what they might think or say about my face. I had a great deal of embarrassment about this when the school was being taught to dance, picking the ugliest girl because I believed she would be the least likely to offend me”. By age 16 he was still shy, sitting in corners and covering his face and hand at dances. When boarding buses he would strive to hide his hand while putting money in the slot. He was still pre-occupied with sex and would sneak into his sister’s room to look at and touch her genitals. “It is hard to recall even a short period when I wasn’t masturbating or thinking about sex”.
In the years following, attempts at sex remained fraught and his drinking increased as he found it made him more relaxed. He liked dimly lit bars to hide his pimply face and deformed hand. When he felt really brave he would scheme how to entice girls out into his car, where he could kiss and fondle them. When he secured a date he would take her to a golf course so he could show off. He was looking for an ideal woman, beautiful and intelligent, but the ones he met always disappointed him. Instead of making a clean break, he would behave badly, ridiculing them and treating them like sex objects. He hated to be without a female companion because it made him feel a loser.
At age twenty-one he was neglecting his studies, his performance at college was falling off and he was having bitter arguments with his mother about it. He left to get a job, but soon lost it because of drinking and failing to turn up for work. He had to have his father’s help to find another place. At age twenty-two he became infatuated with a girl who did not want intercourse before marriage. He felt dependent on her for the love he did not get from his family, but she broke off the relationship in spite of his pleading and crying. He began to fantasise about forcing her to have sex and became desperately frustrated. He met a girl in a bar and put on an act of super confidence, insisting she must come to his room for sex or he would ditch her. After penetration he found he could not ejaculate and the problem persisted each time he tried. He felt terribly inadequate. He went on dating girls, but often put them off by demanding sex immediately, though if they cooperated he was still unable to ejaculate after penetration.
Driving around, drinking, and picking up girls became obsessive and led to real assaults. He recalled stopping to ask a girl the time, then getting out and following her, dragging her into the bush and struggling to remove her clothes. She was screaming and he became angry and punched her in the stomach saying he would kill her if she did not shut up. Disturbed by a dog barking he ran off. Other similar incidents followed, but his attempts at rape were never successful. At age 25 he was still living at home. He started peeping at a girl in the next house and was determined to get at her. When his parents were away and he was alone, drinking, he broke into her bedroom and pulled off the bedclothes and touched her breasts and genitals. As she awoke he made off home, where he masturbated furiously. Next day the police came for him and, under questioning, he confessed to this and to two of his highway assaults.
Receiving probation and a suspended sentence, his sexual prowling ceased for a time. He managed to make friends with a girl, but she was Catholic and declined intercourse and again he became frustrated and angry and resumed his sexual assaults. At age 27, when drinking and feeling sorry for himself, he followed a woman into an apartment building and got into a lift with her. He had got her on the floor and was pushing her dress up when the lift door opened with a man standing outside. For this he was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary and placed in protective custody.
In prison, he settled down and found satisfaction in working on the inmates’ paper and in a relationship with a female officer. On release he went to live with an aunt, his prowling ceased and he began a friendship with a girl he had known previously. Sex life with her was improving and he almost overcame the ejaculation problem, but even during the act of sex with his girlfriend, he was still having fantasies of spanking and rape. One week end when she was away visiting her parents he went out drinking and picked up a girl. He said he only wanted to touch her, but she pulled away. He responded by hitting her and ordering her to undress. “All that existed for me was her body and my desire”. She told him she would do anything except fellate him. He had not intended that, but now he made her do it. That failed to excite him, so he said he wanted sex. He penetrated, but again without achieving ejaculation. Angry because nothing seemed to work, he told her to lean across him so he could spank her buttocks. Still this did not satisfy him and he took off his big belt and, losing all control, used it to beat her hard. Then he ordered her to ask for ten more, which she did. That fini
shed, he snapped out of his madness and began to cry and to try to console her. After letting her go, arrest was inevitable. In the early hours the police arrived. Now aged 30 he was defined as a “Dangerous Sex Offender” under Canadian law and spent the first year in protective custody in the penitentiary. After further assessment he was offered a place in the sex offender programme, which he accepted readily.
When I interviewed John, he was trying hard to co-operate, but admitting that his problems were still acute. He was struggling to control his masturbation and plagued with fantasies of rape and bondage. He realised that his behaviour with women had been just “quick in and out conquest” and that “everything stemmed from the awful feeling of lack of manhood” and that he was still feeling he had to defend himself against people with sarcastic phrases instead of communicating properly.
John’s unusually explicit intellectual acknowledgement of his feelings was an optimistic sign, but he had yet to gain the confidence to interact differently. His beating fantasies, as well as his beatings in real life, were plainly expressions of rage followed by remorse when his fury subsided. This form of sadism is quite unlike the enthusiastic, guilt-free, playful pleasures enjoyed by patrons of sado-masochistic clubs.
