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HOW DID I BECOME A SEX OFFENDER?
(L. Bays & R. Freeman-Longo)
How did I become a sex offender? Even if you have already asked yourself this question dozens of times, this is still one of the first questions you will ask yourself in treatment. Unfortunately you will find that there is no simple answer. You did not become a sex offender because you have a single problem. You, like most sex offenders, have often made poor choices and these poor choices have led to a variety of different life experiences and a multitude of serious problems. All of your history of decision-making, difficult experiences, and serious problems has been part of what has led to your decision to commit sex crimes (This long history is also why treatment takes so much time and is so difficult).
To begin to understand the answer to "Why did I commit a sexual offence?" will take you a lot of time, effort and exploration. This is natural, for you have spent much of our life up to this point in thinking and acting in unhealthy ways. Therefore, you are not going to find the answers or change lifelong behavioural patterns in a few weeks.
The first stop in answering the question "why" is to look openly and honestly at "what." "What" have you done during your life? Honestly facing yourself and remembering in detail "what" you have experienced and "what" you have done is one of the first steps in answering "why." Honestly remembering and fully disclosing (talking to others about) your sexual history is a good place to start. Most sex offenders have committed many sex offences. They are afraid to admit responsibility for them because of shame, embarrassment, and concern about the consequences. Admitting the frequency of your criminal behaviours helps you overcome the tendency to minimise your problems and their severity. Also, it is a way of showing your genuine desire to get help.
While you are in treatment, you can talk about and discuss your other offences. It is important that you don't give actual dates, times, places, and names unless you make a conscious decision to help your victims by reporting your crimes. While in treatment, no one can press additional charges against you with limited information. We mention this here because in order not to reoffend, it is important that you reveal your true sex-offending history. Only then can your therapists help you to form a complete and individually tailored treatment plan.
There are a number of experiences in your life that are hard to speak about. For example, consider the number of sexual offences in your history. Our experience with sex offenders, such as yourself, suggests that you have committed numerous sexual offences. Very few sex offenders who come to treatment are here because they sexually assaulted only one person on one occasion. However, most offenders begin treatment with the intention of lying about the number of assaults they have committed. They often do this because they don't want to look bad or face up to the truth. But, lying to your therapist about previous sex crimes is like going to the doctor and lying about which part of your body doesn't feel good. If you have heart problems and tell the doctor you have a stomach ache, he cannot diagnose the problem properly and give you the best medicine. You put your life in danger as a result of dishonesty. If you lie about your background to your therapist, he or she cannot effectively help you do well in treatment. When you don't do well in therapy, then you raise your risk of re-offending and having future trouble with the law. As we stated earlier, treatment works best when you are open, honest, and willing to disclose information about yourself.
You must be willing to discuss any part of your life and sexual crimes. When you first begin to explore yourself, you do not know what is important. In fact, you may find that those areas of your life that you have the hardest time speaking of are the most important points to help you answer the question, "Why am I a sex offender?"
Don't be hesitant about talking to your therapist. He or she probably knows more about your background than you think. Your therapist may have seen many offenders and has learnt to recognise the patterns of experiences that are in many offenders' histories.
These common patterns often are part of the process that led you to decide to commit a sexual crime. Even those close to you, like family and friends, have probably discovered patterns of behaviour you engage in, especially when you are about to commit an offence.
In the following information, we will discuss some of the common patterns in the lives of many sexual offenders. Much of this description may apply to your life. As you read/listen, think about your history and see what is important for you. Thinking carefully about what applies to you as you read/listen will give you a start on how to speak effectively about your life.
If we had to make some educated guesses about who you are and what your life has been like (based on our experience), here is probably what we would say about you. First, you probably haven't had a normal life. You probably grew up in a family that consistently had big problems. It is likely that one or both of your parents had or still have marital problems and when you were growing up there were a lot of arguments and perhaps outright fights between them. Your parents were separated or divorced at least one time.
We would also suspect that you had problems relating to your parents and to any brothers and/or sisters you have as well. Your family was not close. You probably felt like the "black sheep" and were punished severely when you got into trouble, which was often.
It is unlikely that you did well in school. You were bored most of the time, were always looking for excitement, and did not do any homework. Your grades were poor and it is likely that you dropped out or barely finished high school. While in school, you probably had a variety of problems relating to your fellow students in a social way.
We find that between 60% to 80% of sex offenders were sexually abused on at least one occasion when they were children. That is, an adult either sexually touched you against your will or seduced you at a young age. In addition to the sexual abuse, you probably experienced some physical or emotional abuse as well. Research suggests that as many as 95% of sex offenders have been physically or emotionally abused or neglected.
Socially, we would predict that you didn't do well either. You had problems with dating, felt insecure, and as a result withdrew from others. If you are a rapist of adults, you lived a lifestyle of a lone wolf, coming out only to party and use drugs. If you victimised children, you probably were very shy and timid or kept a very, very secret life. In any case, you probably have few, if any, close friends and the relationships you do have with people are probably superficial.
You began using drugs and alcohol at a relatively early age (12 or 13). You may have been in trouble because of substance abuse; you are probably either an alcoholic or are chemically dependent on one or more drugs. Over 60% of the sex offenders we treat have drug and alcohol addictions.
As an adult you have created the same type of emotional life that you experienced as a child. If you have been married, you have had marital problems that were severe enough to lead to divorce. You may have had several marriages. If you have not been married, your relationships have been emotionally distant and problematic. In either case, you don't have very many close friends.
You probably have had difficulty supporting a family. You probably have had an unstable work history, going from extremes of overwork to odd jobs or no work. You may not have any real marketable job skills. If you are incarcerated you probably do not know what you will do for a living when you get out.
You probably have been in trouble with the law. Your previous offences may have been relatively minor (in comparison to committing a sexual offence), but may have ranged from such crimes as passing bad cheques or drink driving charges to more serious offences such as burglary, robbery, breaking and entering, and assault.
Finally, without a doubt you have had sexual problems in your life. You began to engage in sexually deviant behaviours at least by your teenage years. Most sex offenders have a history of exhibitionism (exposing themselves to others sexually), voyeurism (sexual spying on others - "Peeping Tom"), making obscene phone calls, cross-dressing (wearing clothing of the opposite sex, especially underwear), and so forth. In addition, you probably committed your first rape or molested your first child victim in your teenage years. You may have begun to engage in these behaviours anywhere from 13-16 years of age, or younger. You currently do have severe sexual problems. Committing a sexual crime is evidence of your problem. You have probably questioned your sexuality at different times, feel sexually insecure and inadequate, and have experienced a variety of problems in your sexual performance and sexual lifestyle.
An individual, like you, who has a history of problems in his life, is usually a very unhappy person. You may think that all of the pain and frustration in your history is reason enough to explain why you have problems. As you understand the history of your problems, you have taken a step towards answering the question, "Why am I a sex offender?" It is not the complete answer. In your case, your problem-filled background resulted in delinquent or aggressive behaviour. But there are many other people who have similar backgrounds who sought and received help and corrected their problems before they ended up in trouble. There are still others who have lived with severe problems all their lives but have used their experiences to become warm and empathic people. Understanding your history is only the first step in a long process of finding out the answer to the question, "Why am I a sex offender?" The answers to this question and the important next question, "How can I stop my deviant sexual behaviour?" can only be found through your active participation in a specialised treatment program for sexual offenders. At the least, you can get a start on answering these questions by going through the information on this website.
My Past, My Present, and My Future
(L. Bays & R. Freeman-Longo)Earlier you learned that you have problems much like other sexual offenders. You learned that this happened because sexual offenders have had common life experiences or have made many similar decisions. You also know that your personal problems are inter-related - one problem leads to and affects other problems.
Your problems, for the most part, probably began in your past when you were a child or during your developmental years when you were a teenager. At these times you began to learn to make decisions that led to your sexually deviant and criminal behaviours. These behaviours were learned by you and you made choice after choice in your life that led to your offences. You learned how to choose sexually deviant and criminal behaviours. The roots of these learned behaviours are in your past.
One of the common experiences of many sexual offenders is the abuse or neglect that they suffered as children. The abuse may have been physical, emotional, or sexual. It may have been pleasant yet confusing (as when a teenage boy is introduced to sex by an older woman or man), or very unpleasant (as when a child is beaten or raped). Physical abuse or neglect is defined as a variety of injuries to a child caused by what the parents or protectors did or did not do. This definition includes failing to provide food, shelter, clothing, or medical care as well as overtly harming the child by beating, overwork, or excessively harmful discipline.
The Past Does Not Control Your Present
This is not to say that you should blame your present problems on any part of your past. You can't blame your childhood, parents or other relatives, or your family's economic condition for committing your sexual crime. Blaming is a defence mechanism and not an explanation of why you made the choices that you did. You can only hold yourself responsible for the problems and behaviours you have today. You are the one who did not seek the help you need, has not remembered how it felt to be abused, or has not learned to think about how not to let abuse happen again to anyone. However, when you were experiencing whatever hard times you had, that was when you began making choices that eventually led to your molesting or sexually abusing another human being.
By the time that you did commit your sexual crime, you knew what you were doing was wrong and illegal. You certainly did not abuse anyone in front of a police officer. So even though you are fully responsible for your choices in life, your past experiences probably interfered with your learning how to make mature decisions in your life.
The best studies show that as many as one in four children will be sexually abused before reaching the age of 18. Given this percentage, imagining the number of children who experience any kind of abuse becomes overwhelming. While most people who are abused do NOT grow up to be criminals or sex offenders, most sex offenders have been abused or neglected as children. The abuse may have been primarily directed at you or it may have been secondary. If your parents were addicted to drugs or alcohol, then you were probably secondarily abused. When you were abused, neglected, or raised in an alcoholic family, you often had problems to solve. If you did not learn to solve these problems, then you may have used destructive behaviours or emotions to deal with them. The inappropriate use of these emotions will get worse over time unless you make an effort to change.
Past Abuse Influences the Present
Being abused has many effects. It can leave scars that last for years. Most of those abused feel ashamed about what has happened to them. Many victims are left with chronic fears and problems with unreasonable angers. Some survivors of abuse feel confused by a variety of emotions that they don't clearly understand and can't explain. Still other victims have learned to hide their feelings by pushing them way down inside so that they are numb. Common reactions to abuse include guilt, denial, hatred, confusion, shame, embarrassment, numbness, as well as a host of other emotions.
When these feelings and emotions occur, either with great intensity or frequency, they can become fixed responses. These fixed responses are habits. Habits can be automatic ways of responding to different situations. Just as a smoker automatically lights up a cigarette, people with fixed emotions automatically pick up an emotion. These automatic emotions mean that one cannot respond appropriately to situations and an inappropriate response often causes more problems. Victims of abuse who have fixed emotional patterns must be helped to change how they relate to life by an experienced professional.
Often, if such people receive no help for their problems, they may begin to react to their lives through such behaviours as drug abuse, prostitution, relationship problems, low self-esteem (leading to depression), and/or aggression. The victims of your crimes, for example, are no different and are presently struggling with these problems and issues in their lives as you read this.
The self-destructive cycle of behaviour that can result from childhood abuse or neglect can look something like this:
ABUSE = denial, fear, anger, etc. = low self-esteem, feelings of insecurity and inadequacy = withdrawal, loner = rejection = sees himself as a failure, a loser, unwanted by others or undesirable = sets himself up as a victim and further abuse, failure or rejection (Note: the symbol = means "leads to")
If you were abused as a child, had alcoholic parents, or came from a family that was neglectful, you may have learned to respond to people in an unhealthy manner. You learned that because others behaviours were not predictable (as alcoholic parents behaviour is not),they were to be feared and not trusted. As a result you do not assert yourself to get your needs met properly. When you don't get your basic needs met in a healthy way, then you feel inferior. If you WEREN'T abused, you may have learned to feel this way for other reasons. Fear, anger, rejection, distrust, low self-esteem, inadequacy, and other such emotions are treatment issues on which you will have to work.
You will find that even though you learned these behaviours in the past, they are all present and operating within you today. Your emotions, feelings, and thoughts directly affect who you are and how you act. Old habits of feeling, thinking, and acting help you to get caught in a cycle of low self-esteem and poor achievement. You will need to correct these old distorted feelings, thoughts, and emotions now so they don't continue to interfere with your new healthy life of the future.
Present Behaviour Affects Future Behaviour
There is an old and very true saying - "past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour". As much as you may not want to believe it, this is true for you and ALL sex offenders. If you have raped or molested people in the past, the chances of doing it again are very high. History and statistics have proven this to be true, and YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT. There is one way for you to change your future, and that is to change your behaviours and thinking patterns through treatment.
So, as you begin to think about your past and work towards your future, stick with it. Don't let your past control your future. You are powerless over the past. You cannot change the past. You CAN control the future by how you allow yourself to feel, think, and behave NOW.
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