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(L. Bays & R. Freeman-Longo)
An offender, who had been in several treatment programs, would drop out a few weeks after entering treatment. When he started his latest treatment program he asked, why did I fail when I was in treatment earlier? This question is not an easy one to answer. The reasons for failing may vary from one person to the next. However, there are some similar patterns in most of those who fail in treatment. In order to understand why someone fails in treatment, it is important to understand what treatment is.
Treatment is a complex process of events and processes that includes at least the following parts. First, you have to recognise and accept your problem areas. Second, you have to recognise that sexual offending is destructive to your life and the lives of others. Third, you must develop a treatment plan so you know how to work to change your life. The treatment plan includes such tasks as identifying your deviant cycle, dealing with fear and anger, addressing issues such as denial and minimisation, and a number of other issues and processes.
One thing is certain. Treatment becomes difficult at times. You, like the offender mentioned above, may find yourself wanting to stop when the work becomes difficult or psychologically distressing. When you experience this distress (which is associated with personal growth and change), you may find yourself being defensive. If you put yourself on the defensive, you will be working against treatment. Keywords: Investment, commitment, responsible, accountable
(L. Bays & R. Freeman-Longo)
An effective approach to helping sex offenders remain crime-free in society is RELAPSE PREVENTION. The techniques of relapse prevention have been used for years with sex offenders and for decades with alcoholics and drug abusers. If you learn to use relapse prevention skills consistently, they can be effective tools to avoid new sexual crimes.
The Relapse Prevention Model suggests that there are no CURES for sexual deviancy. That is, no matter how strongly you feel that you will not commit another sexual crime, if you make the wrong choices and allow yourself to indulge in distorted thinking, feeling, and action, your sexual problems will return. However, it is possible to live a crime-free life by following the steps of the Relapse Prevention Model.
Contradictory as it may seem, the first and most important aspect of relapse prevention is the awareness of your potential to reoffend. Every sexual offender has the potential to reoffend. In fact, the reoffence rate of sexual offenders may be one of the highest of all criminal acts. The lowest estimates of men identified as sexual offenders who commit another crime is one out of ten. The highest estimates suggest that as many as six out of ten reoffend. If you have even one chance out of ten that you will reoffend, how important is that awareness? In any case, if you feel that you have no possibility of committing another crime, then you are much more likely to fall back slowly into the old behaviours that led you to commit a crime. Someone who denies his potential to reoffend is like an alcoholic who thinks, "I've handled my problem with alcohol". He then goes into a bar to see a friend. One thing leads to another and before long he is having "just a small one".
For him, the first step toward not drinking again is to realise that he will always have the potential for a problem with alcohol and then to take preventive measures. Sexual deviancy is much the same.
The potential for future problems with sex is high. Therefore, you must learn "to be prepared". The relapse prevention approach will aid you in preparing to avoid future problems.
While you are involved with a treatment program or studying on your own, you will gain insights into your behaviour. You will come to understand its causes and the tools you will have to use in order to avoid sexually abusive behaviour. All of this information will be important. You will learn about cycles, defence mechanisms, the interrelationship of problems, and thinking errors. All of this information will be used as building blocks for developing a relapse prevention plan.
High risk situations or events come in a variety of forms. They may be external situations in your environment or they may be internal emotional states. An example of an internal risk situation might be when a strong emotion negatively affects how you feel and think. Often your reaction to stress is a risk situation. For example, when you have work or family problems, you may become tense and anxious. If you are tense, you may try to relieve your tension by masturbating to sexual fantasies. Another internal risk situation for many men is anger. Many offenders find that when they start getting angry they begin to think inappropriately. They start thinking "she owes me sex" or "it's not fair that they are getting good sex and I'm not". Obviously these types of thoughts and actions will increase the chances of sexually acting out, and therefore are risk situations.
Risk situations may also be external. An activity or situation can make it easier for you to feel inappropriately aroused. For example, watching a pornographic movie could result in either a greater number of sexual fantasies or more deviant ideas about sex. Another example of the kind of external risk situation that men with problems sexualizing boys put themselves in, would be for them to decide to go for a walk and "just happen" to walk by the video arcade where attractive teenage boys hang out.
Still another example of an external risk situation that applies to a rapist is his driving around aimlessly. When he does so he is more likely to see potential victims. The following example illustrates a high risk situation in some detail.
Dean is on probation for sexually abusing two boys, aged nine and ten. Part of his probation is to complete a treatment program for sexual offenders. Dean has been in treatment for several months. During this time he has not sexually acted out, but he is lonely and not interested in doing much. One day Dean decides to visit a female friend.
When he gets to her house, he discovers that she has a new tenant, Joan. Joan now lives there with her children, a five year old girl and a nine year old boy. Being lonely, Dean accepts his friend's invitation to come in and have some coffee. Joan is talking about her new car and how great it drives. After a while she turns to Dean and asks him if he will watch the kids for just a few minutes while they go for a test drive. Dean, trying to please her, says yes. Soon he is alone in the house with the two children. As he hears the women drive off, the children come in to get to know him. He smiles at them and says hello. The next thing that he knows, the children are jumping on the couch next to him and asking him to read them a story. Dean picks up the book, puts his arms around the kids, and begins reading.
Now, Dean is in the same position as the recovering alcoholic who is sitting at a bar. It is very easy for him to take the next step and reoffend. There are several poor decisions that Dean made as he placed himself in a high risk situation.
HOW DO YOU THINK DEAN COULD HAVE ACTED DIFFERENTLY?
RELAPSE PREVENTION GLOSSARY
ABSTINENCE: The decision to refrain from taking part in a self-prohibited behaviour. For sex offenders, abstinence is marked by the absence of fantasies, thoughts, materials, and behaviours that are associated with their offence patterns. In other words, deciding not to offend and sticking to it. Not thinking about offending and not offending in any way.
ABSTINENCE VIOLATION EFFECT (AVE): A term used to describe a variety of changes in beliefs and behaviours that can result from engaging in a lapse. Among the components of the AVE are - a sense one is weak-willed and unable to create personal change, an expectation that failure is unavoidable, and the Problem of Immediate Gratification. When sex offenders are not prepared to cope with AVE, the likelihood of relapse increases. The AVE is expected most strongly when clients believe that lapses should never occur.
In other words, feeling bad and thinking that you are a failure and no good. Thinking that you can't stop yourself from offending so what is the point of trying. When you feel like this and don't do anything about it, you will be very likely to commit another offence.
ADAPTIVE COPING RESPONSE: A change in thought, feeling or behaviour that effectively deals with a risk factor or lapse, and reduces the likelihood of relapse. Adaptive coping responses may be either general or situation specific.
General coping responses enhance the quality of life: These include anger and stress management, enhancement of interpersonal skills, lifestyle interventions, relaxation training, and training in problem solving procedures.
Specific coping responses deal with lapses and identifiable risk factors. These include stimulus control, avoidance, escape, programmed coping strategies, cognitive restructuring to reduce the impact of the AVE, lapse contracts, reminder cards, and decision matrices.
In other words, all the good things you can do in your life that keep you happy, healthy and offence free and some special things that you can do if you find yourself in, or get yourself into, a bad situation.
HIGH RISK FACTORS: A set of internal stimuli or external circumstances that threaten a sex offender's self-control and thus increases the risk of lapse or relapse.
In other words, these are special situations or states of mind that mean the sex offender is playing with fire - going places he shouldn't go, letting himself feel bad and not doing anything about it. Not caring about himself or others. When he is in this kind of situation or this kind of mood, he is more likely to re-offend.
LAPSE: An emotion, fantasy, thought, or behaviour that is part of an offender's relapse pattern. Lapses are not sex offences but are precursors or risk factors for sex offences.
In other words, making a mistake that could lead to an offence; doing something that you have done in the past just before you offended last time or remembering your offence and enjoying it all over again - a bad, dangerous mistake.
RELAPSE: A sexual behaviour or sexual offence.
In other words, touching, looking at, or doing something sexual to another person who doesn't want you to be doing that OR who is too young to be able to agree properly.
RELAPSE PREVENTION (RP): A process for enhancing emotional, cognitive, and behaviour self-management and external supervision of sex offenders.
In other words, a whole way of thinking and living your life so that you don't hurt anyone by sexually offending again.
SEEMINGLY UNIMPORTANT DECISION (SUD): Decisions that seem to have little bearing on whether a lapse or relapse will occur, but which actually allow the offender to get closer to high risk factors that increase the probability of another offence.
In other words, something that you decide to do that, to someone else, might not seem very important; that might seem quite innocent, but it's really part of a decision that you make to play with fire. These decisions put you into high risk situations from where you could lapse or relapse.
AM I DIFFERENT?
(L. Bays & R. Freeman-Longo)
Each sex offender is a unique person. There are many ways you are different from other offenders, but, though you may not realise it, many of your problems are just like those of other offenders. You will also find that offenders who have problems like yours also have had childhoods that were much like yours. In fact, if you get to know other offenders well enough, you will find that they made similar decisions to yours about those childhood experiences.
One thing that you probably have in common with other sexual offenders is the tendency to simplify your past. It is typical to find offenders who remember only the good parts of their childhoods and the people in it. It is equally common to find men who reduce their first 18 years into a couple of words, like horrible, hell or unbearable.
The truth is that sex offenders, like everyone else, have experienced both good and bad times in their lives. One of the first steps in analysing who you are is to reflect on the whole of your experience. Consider your past, incident by incident. Try to remember both the good, bad, easy and hard times without distortion. Some examples of your good or positive experiences may have been the time you won an award, were a member of the best Little Athletics team in town, or had a fun-filled family vacation. Your typical bad experiences may have been when you were sexually or physically abused by someone, rejected by people who were important to you, or getting into trouble with authorities.
Believe it or not, you and other sexual offenders have probably had some life experiences that were almost identical. However, like others, you probably have not told anyone about the true details of your life, or found out what someone else's was like. This lack of communication results from isolating yourself or keeping away from others.
Because you don't know anyone else well, whenever you think about your life (and especially the bad experiences in it) you probably ask yourself am I normal? or am I different from others?
The feeling that what you have gone through has made you different from everybody else is a common concern. It is especially true when people have experienced hard times in their childhoods. It is natural to wonder why things had to happen to you. One train of thought that you may have had as a young child is, I must have deserved it, therefore I am a bad person. I'm different from others. I don't deserve a good life. The feeling that you are different can come from a variety of episodes in your life. One of the early steps in therapy is to find out if you are different or if you are normal. As you talk about your experiences and get to know the experiences of others, you will learn that what you thought were major problems or unique experiences that made you feel different from others are both common and solvable.
Common Bad Experiences
Speaking openly about these incidents in your life will help you identify problem areas for you to work on while in the program. It will also allow you to start to receive feedback and help from others. If you had a traumatic childhood, it is important that you remember and share the bad experiences in your past. Bringing them out in the open is the first step towards releasing their hold over you.
The following is a list of some common bad experiences and problems many sex offenders talk about:
1. I was physically abused
2. I was constantly put down by my parents
3. I was sexually abused
4. I had parents who were alcoholics
5. I was the black sheep of my family
6. I never did very well in school
7. I don't have a lot of friends
8. I had severe problems with my parents
9. I had problems with my brothers or sisters
10. I feel rejected by others
11. I am a loner and want to be alone
12. I had/have problems meeting and dating girls
13. I have sexual problems
14. I acted out sexually with children and adults
15. I drink/drank a lot of alcohol
16. I had/have a problem with drugs
17. I dropped out of school
18. I have never really liked myself
19. I have trouble meeting people
20. I have set fires
21. I have tortured animals
22. I have had sex with animals
23. I don't communicate well with others
24. I had sexual problems when I was a teenager
25. I feel angry a good part of the time
26. I don't trust others
27. I usually try to hide or ignore my feelings
28. I have had a hard time asking for help
The list could go on and on. How many of the above problems have you had? How many times have you thought about getting help for your problems? How many times have you turned help away?
What Happens When I Don't Talk About My Life?
Most sex offenders have had many of these problems and others. The memory of them often contributes to your feeling uncomfortable about who you are. Also, because of your past difficulties interacting with people, you may not have learned much about intimacy or communications and as a result became a loner. You isolate and withdraw yourself from others. You may avoid being open and honest with people because you don't trust other people. Often you don't even trust yourself!
This lack of trust often results from a history of problems such as those listed above, and because of your lack of trust you have never worked with anyone to resolve your problems. So, problems and predicaments you experienced as a child are like some of the problems that you still have today. For example, consider Gene:
Gene was a troubled boy. His father, who was in the military, felt that strong discipline was very important. If Gene stepped one degree out of line, his father would have him stand in the corner rigidly at attention. While he stood there, his father would yell and scream at him, "instructing" him in proper behaviour. Gene learned never to answer back, other than to say, "Yes sir." If he answered other than with those words, then the drilling would often continue for hours. To escape this abuse, Gene tried to avoid any contact with his father. Because of this treatment and Gene's avoidance of it, he never learned how to talk out his problems appropriately. In fact, he never learned how to talk about any important matter with people at all. Now, as an adult, Gene still has the same tendencies. If confronted, he either immediately agrees, no matter what he feels, or he runs.
You, like Gene, may have a backlog of unsolved problems in your life. Because of them, you may wonder, "Am I normal?" or "Am I different?"
Common Good Experiences
Everyone has had both good and bad experiences. Every experience influences your life. Good experiences, unlike bad experiences, don't cause unresolved problems in your life. Instead, they often lead to positive qualities in your personality and an optimistic attitude toward your life. Below is a partial list of positive qualities that offenders may have. You will find other sexual offenders who also have some positive qualities that are similar to yours.
1. I communicate well with others
2. I am a good listener
3. I am smart
4. I am willing to help others
5. I am capable of learning
6. I care about others
7. I am good at my career/job
8. I am patient
9. I can make others happy
10. I get things done on time
11. I am creative in my thinking
12. I am good at sports
13. I am good at hobbies
14. I work well with my hands
15. I get to places on time
16. I enjoy helping others
17. I work at self-improvement
18. I am capable of changing myself
19. I can help myself when I have problems
This list could be added to endlessly. Several of these qualities, or others like them, are also part of your personality. Sometimes, however, when you have a lot of problems, you may not feel good about yourself or recognise your abilities and strengths. You become overly concerned about how bad your problems are and overlook your good qualities. Learn to appreciate the good qualities as they are the keys to your recovery.
If My Experiences Are So Common, Why Am I Here?
Neither your past experiences nor your present problems make you abnormal. Your experiences and problems do NOT make you different from others. Rather, THE WAY THAT YOU RESPONDED TO YOUR PROBLEMS is what is not normal. Not using the positive personality qualities, resources, and strengths that were available to you was what was not normal. That you have committed a sex offence is NOT normal, and as a result of that type of behaviour you ARE different from others who do not engage in similar deviant acts against people.
Simply stated, committing a sex offence, a sex crime, or sexually abusing others is NOT normal. Therefore, you do have big problems and you must work to correct them.
Do you trust yourself? Do you trust others? If not, this is one of the first things YOU will need to learn in a treatment program. When you learn appropriate trust, then you can begin openly and honestly to talk about your problems and bad experiences. You will need to learn to build friendships, and being in a treatment program is the place to begin. When you are friends with the people you meet in the group or others who are supportive of you, you can talk about problems together and arrive at healthy answers in a safe environment. You will discover that you are not unique or different from other men who have similar problems and have committed a sexual offence.
Together, you can help one another.
STOPPING MY OFFENCES
(Bays & Freeman-Longo)
Ultimately there is one vital reason for you to be in a treatment program - you have harmed people by making them victims of your deviant sexual behaviour. The effects of abusive sexuality on victims go deep and last long. In a good treatment program you learn in detail about the effects of your crimes.
You must understand what your victims have experienced and are experiencing because of your crimes. Progress in therapy is not based on your level of satisfaction with yourself and your life. It is not based on how well you communicate. It is not based on your understanding.
Progress is based on your not having one more victim. Having no more victims is the only measure of whether you are being successful. Having one more victim means you have failed.
The goal of treatment is to help you build new foundations for changing your behaviour so you will not victimise anyone else. Foundations of understanding support your use of new techniques to keep you from re-offending.
Relapse Prevention
The formal system of preventing a re-offence is called Relapse Prevention (RP). It is a self-control and maintenance program based on the idea that you are responsible for creating your deviant behaviours - and that you are also capable of stopping them.
The Relapse Prevention model teaches you how to figure out when you are starting your deviant cycle or are at risk to reoffend. It shows you how to use the information you've learned about yourself and your deviant cycle to plan for and cope with situations that can lead to relapse. As you practice Relapse Prevention you will gain new healthy behaviours to substitute for old destructive ones. Your goal is to end your deviant, criminal, and abusive behaviours.
Risk Factors
A risk factor is any place, thought, behaviour, feeling, or memory that could make you more likely to re-offend. When considering if something is a risk factor, ask yourself, "If the worst happened right now, would I be more likely to re-offend?" If the answer is yes, it is a risk factor, and you need to intervene to stop yourself from going further.
Encountering a risk factor does not mean that you will reoffend again; it is only a warning sign that you could start sliding into deviant behaviour. If you know that you're getting a little off your healthy path, you can use an intervention, correct yourself, and prevent relapse.
Risk factors can be internal or external. Internal risk factors include emotions, thoughts, beliefs, or behaviours that signal that you are heading for trouble. Some common risk factors include greed, anger, self-pity, deviant fantasies, masturbation as an outlet for loneliness or anger, loneliness, tiredness, over-eating, overspending, or over-working. External risk factors are usually certain places or other stimuli. An X-rated movie theatre, a job with children, a job that requires lots of unsupervised driving, or friends who use drugs or alcohol all may be risk factors.
Links
A series of links join to form a chain. Your deviant cycle is held together by small links of feelings, thoughts, behaviours, and events or environments (some of which may be risk factors). One link leads to the next, letting you choose to put yourself into less and less healthy states. If you are a rapist, aimless driving may link your feeling of boredom with looking for a victim. If you are a child molester, seeing an advertisement on television may be linked by your deviant fantasies to acting out sexually with children.
Because links are different for each person, it is important that you learn what your links are. Links can be very hard to see since they can be common emotions or activities connecting the parts of your deviant cycle. What is a problem for you may not be a problem for someone else. Being aware of your links will help you break them before you are so deeply into your cycle that you are in danger of lapsing or even reoffending.
Lapse Versus Relapse
No matter how strong your desire to maintain an offence-free life, you will have periods when you don't do as well as you would like to. There will be times when you don't perform perfectly and engage in risky behaviour - when it seems like you've taken three steps forward and one back.
A lapse is when you slide back into the beginnings of your deviant cycle without reoffending. This happens when you're not paying close attention and you begin to creep back into deviant behaviour.
For example, when you know pornography is part of your deviant pattern, picking up a Playboy magazine lying around at work is a lapse. You have not reoffended (relapsed) but you are on the way. Another example of a lapse - you know it is wrong for you to be around children, but you open the door and talk to the two girls selling Girl Scout cookies. You are closer to a relapse (reoffence) talking to the children than if you were not talking to them. A lapse is most likely to occur in a high-risk situation.
A relapse is a reoffence, committing another sexual act with a victim. Anyone who relapses (reoffends) has already lapsed several times on his way toward reoffending.
Abstinence Violation Effect
Abstinence means not using or doing something. You may decide to abstain from drugs, pornography, sex, meat, alcohol, or anything you desire. Violation means breaking a rule. The Abstinence Violation Effect (AVE) describes how you feel when you've broken your promise to give something up (lapsed).
When you're experiencing AVE, you feel like a failure and want to give up completely ("I blew it, it's no use, I'll never change"). You may think you might as well go all the way into your offending behaviour. For example, men who stop drinking often backslide, have one more drink, then give up trying to abstain, and go on a binge.
AVE makes it easier for you to relapse by encouraging you to give yourself permission to reoffend. You are most likely to notice this effect when you are deep in your cycle, when high-risk factors are all around you.
By knowing in advance that you will make mistakes, lapse, and feel like giving up, you can save yourself and your potential victim by using an emergency escape. Knowing that you never have to give up controlling your deviant behaviour will help you if you come close to reoffending.
helps you feel better about yourself.
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