Friday, October 30, 2009

Here is a powerful article about sex offenders -disturbing and good - a 'thinking' response


Here is a powerful article about sex offenders

It is disturbing and good.
It is a 'thinking' response to the horrific sex offenses which have been described in the press recently.
It is so easy and understandable to only have an emotional response to these obnoxious acts.


"Violent reaction outside the Plymouth court where nursery worker Vanessa George was charged with child sex abuse. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

When I read the details of the Vanessa George case, I had to stop, breathe and calm myself down. Once I'd had my initial human reaction to the nightmare tale of this nursery worker who abused children, I allowed a more measured response to rise. If I were to follow through with my desire for vengeance on the person who abused me in 1979, to hurt him in the way my fantasies played out, I would be no better than him – and I would end up in prison.

If an individual is genuinely willing to address his or her crime and its consequences, there is, I believe, no crime that cannot be forgiven. They may well need to be locked up, but if they show signs of thawing and healing from their monstrous approach to themselves and others, they warrant my forgiveness.

This is why I now run workshops in prisons for sex offenders. We use the written word as a medium for personal reflection, understanding and, with any luck, transformation. Prisons have come a long way in understanding and working with sex offenders in recent years. The scale of sex crimes for which people are serving sentences is astonishing. Beyond my fleeting car-crash voyeurism, I have no interest in what they are in for.

There are clear boundaries in my workshops: if it looks as if prisoners are veering towards some kind of confessional, I steer them back to the writing, keeping the content away from their crimes and focused on them as individuals. As the workshop unfolds, I notice subtle transformations – boosts in self-esteem, improved communication, and sometimes moments of personal revelation when they see themselves in their writing, understanding more of who they are and how they tick.

Barriers of denial

I've also spent the last seven years helping to run groups for individuals who are in recovery from varying levels of sex "addiction". The common ground they share is that they are either in the process of, or have broken through, powerful barriers of denial.

They willingly enter the painful process of addressing the trauma and fallout of damaging sexual behaviour; behaviour that has sometimes deeply shocked me. If there was ever a chance to break out of their sexually abusive cycles, this was the place to do it.

My own behaviour in my relationships with women, my addiction to pornography, my total disregard for human feeling, brought me to the brink of suicide. I tried to distance myself from some of the more shocking revelations in these support groups: I never harmed children, but I did harm the women I was involved with. We were consenting adults but our behaviour built up a slow toxic residue, hardening me against the world for the best part of 15 years.

The root of my problem? At the age of 12, when my father was in prison, I was groomed and sexually abused by a local man. Part of my healing process involved sitting in support groups, talking about my resultant sexual addictions and their consequences. I witnessed the slow, miraculous transformation of people who had walked through the doors looking frightened, sometimes aggressive. As we thawed from a lifetime of denial, I experienced the emergence of damaged humans with deep feelings. Paranoid, darting eyes calmed and a real and lasting peace began to unfold.

The peer support I received from individuals further down the healing line was invaluable. In time, I was able to offer support to those newly in from the cold. This mutual support continues to this day, as does the therapy. Long after I had given up on myself there were people out there who saw a glimmer of hope in my deadened eyes and helped me build it into something strong and resilient. In turn, this is what I focus on in my work with sex offenders and in the support groups.

The way much of society and the media react to paedophiles is an understandable, human response to something horrific. I forgave my abuser a long time ago. I was able to do this by having the courage to look deeply into myself, my pain and the damage I had wrought on the world.

Inhumane acts

Understanding why I acted the way I had towards women helped me understand a little of where my abuser may have been coming from. Inside his inhumane acts of violation I'm sure there existed a human being who had probably been abused himself. Perhaps if he had known there was support available in the form of the kind of groups I attended, and workshops I run, he would have been able to stop wreaking havoc on the world – and on me.


If people like Vanessa George know this kind of help is available, if they are willing to engage with it, maybe, just maybe, the scale of the epidemic of child sex abuse we are facing today would decrease. Maybe the perpetrators of sex crimes so clearly locked away from human feeling and consequence may feel safer to come in out of the cold prison of denial, seek whatever healing they need, and stop destroying lives."
Caspar Walsh
The Guardian Newspaper