Where they keep the paedophiles

[Ansar al-Zindiqi]

Where they keep the paedophiles

California thinks it has found a way to deal with recidivist paedophiles by putting them in a comfortable mental hospital. Indefinitely. But is this the answer, asks Louis Theroux.

I'd been at Coalinga a couple of days when Mr Rigby showed me his dormitory. He'd been a high school sports coach before being convicted of molesting some of his students.

He told me he was a great appreciator of the male physical form.
FIND OUT MORE
# Louis Theroux: A Place for Paedophiles is on BBC Two on Sunday, 19 April, at 2100 BST
# Catch up at BBC

Above his bed were photos of classical statues of male nudes. These gave me pause, since I knew some paedophiles like to justify their proclivities by citing the ancient Greeks' famous enthusiasm for pederasty.

There was also a reproduction of a painting of young male ballet dancers, which had a definite erotic overtone. I asked one of Mr Rigby's social workers, who was standing by, if it was okay for patients to have mildly sexual imagery on their walls, especially since it seemed to me it was in the area of the patient's offences. He said it was - "as long as they're of age".

Mr Rigby's room, which he shared with three other men, was airy and spacious. There was a large window with no bars on it. Mr Rigby had told me he was married with two sons, but that he'd also been in a physical relationship with another of the men at Coalinga, who was also a child molester.

Nice place

This too, apparently, was not in violation of hospital rules. Mr Rigby's therapists told me he'd been making good progress in his rehabilitation. In theory, if he carried on with counselling and group sessions, he might be back outside in less than a year.

One of the striking things about Coalinga, given that it houses 800 or so sex offenders, is how nice everything is. There is a large open indoor area - called "the mall" for its resemblance to a shopping mall - with a barbers shop and a cafe and a small library.
“ The staff treat the patients with an occasionally over-the-top decorousness ”

You can spend time in the well-appointed gymnasium, where loud music plays over an indoor tennis court and a variety of exercise machines. You can drop in on an art therapy class or visit the music centre. All in all, you'd be forgiven for thinking it might be the newly built premises of a posh boarding school.

In fact, Coalinga is something quite different - a maximum security hospital containing some of the state of California's more serious paedophiles and rapists.

Coalinga is the flagship of a relatively new programme created in response to public anxiety about the release of sexual predators from prison. All the men at Coalinga have completed their custodial terms, but instead of being released they've been diagnosed as mentally ill, and locked up again - this time indefinitely and not in prison but in hospital.

Legal loophole

The niceness of the surroundings at Coalinga is part of the package. The patients are not there to be punished. They have had their punishment in prison. The purpose of Coalinga is to try to make them mentally well.

In a sense, in creating Coalinga and other Civil Commitment Centres, the authorities have exploited a legal loophole. The public demanded that the state should lock up sex offenders for longer. But since they've done their time, the only way to keep them confined past their sentences is by hospitalising them.

On the one hand, the patients are legally classified as "sexually violent predators". They are behind high barbed-wire fences in a remote area of California.

Many of the patients do not agree to have therapy

On the other hand, the staff treat the patients with an occasionally over-the-top decorousness. The approved term for the confined men is "individuals", since the word "patients" is considered demeaning. In conversation, they are called "Mr".

No one can leave, but otherwise, the rules are surprisingly relaxed. Patients can vote in elections - one mentally ill rapist, who'd amputated his own toe in a protest against hospital policy, told me he'd voted for Obama. They can view pornography. There are no rules against watching TV shows with children in them or receiving DVDs on a children's theme.

One of the ways the hospital tries to foster a healthy ambience is by allowing regular social events. One night I attended the Coalinga Halloween party. I was treated to the surreal scene of 15 or so serious sex offenders singing the theme tune to the Addams Family. The following week was a talent show - billed as "Coalinga Idol".

No consensus

The therapists and social workers have their work cut out for them. Using therapy to overcome phobias, anxiety, and addiction, is one thing. But the men at Coalinga are some way beyond that.

Though no consensus exists as to whether paedophilia is genetic or environmental in origin, therapists at Coalinga agree that it can't really be cured. There is evidence to suggest that a sexual attraction to children may be an "orientation" and no easier to reprogramme in a person than, say, heterosexuality.

For the patients involved in therapy, their time at Coalinga is a regimen of group meetings and counselling - something like a twelve-step recovery programme for alcoholism. Those in the early stages of recovery make a full account of their sexual offences, including those never reported to the authorities.

They learn to acquire a sense of empathy for their victims. They also monitor their ongoing thoughts and learn techniques for redirecting their thinking away from areas that are likely to lead to fantasising in unhealthy ways. The therapists challenge their "cognitive distortions" or delusions - the big one being that children actually want sex with adults.

Patients have lie detector tests and a form of sexual test called a plethysmograph. This is a device which is put around the subject's penis to measure his sexual arousal as he's shown a variety of images.

Reformed character

Some are pornographic images of consenting adults, while some are deviant such as violent sex or suggestive images of children eating fruit and running around in bathing costumes. Then there are non-suggestive images to establish a baseline of non-arousal (photos of the Canadian city of Toronto).

At least one of the men I met, Mr Lamb, gave the impression of being a reformed character.
“ The main problem Coalinga faces is that the vast majority of patients are refusing any kind of treatment ”

In his late forties, he had been an inveterate molester of teenaged boys, some of them playmates of his two young daughters.

He admitted that even prison hadn't shaken him out of his old ways and said he'd only begun to change on the Sexually Violent Predator programme. He valued the therapy, but said the turning point for him was being castrated, which freed him from intrusive paedophilic thoughts. Castrations are not part of the therapy at Coalinga, but patients can volunteer for them.

One of the first men I spoke to at Coalinga was Mr Price, an ageing Vietnam vet with an extensive history of abusing small girls, many of whom he met through his local church where he taught Sunday school.

Mr Price was deeply committed to his therapy programme, keeping tabs on his own thoughts by "journaling" at great length in a notebook. He repeatedly deplored his own offences.

But the main problem Coalinga faces is that the vast majority of patients are refusing any kind of treatment. This is mostly because they feel they shouldn't have been sent to Coalinga in the first place.

They feel that they aren't mentally ill, that they committed crimes, for which they've done their time, and that they should no longer be locked up. They view the therapy programme as a charade, designed to keep them locked up indefinitely.

Alcohol problem

I spoke to several men not involved in therapy. They were indignant at the idea that they might have psychiatric problems. When I asked one, Mr Yahn, if he had considered treatment, he said: "Would you get treatment for a headache?".

Another patient, trying to excuse his transgressions, blamed the fact that he'd molested children on an alcohol problem - as though paedophilia was something anyone might be capable of, given a few too many drinks.

Men like these are clearly damaged. But one part of the argument is on their side. The record shows that in the more than 10 years the SVP programme has existed, of the hundreds that have come to Coalinga, only 13 have ever graduated and left the hospital through the therapy route.

And so there is a kind of stand-off at Coalinga - with mistrustful patients arrayed against a therapeutic establishment. Despite the therapeutic language and the kindly atmosphere, for the vast majority of men at Coalinga, the hospital might as well be a prison or a warehouse or indeed a pod in outer space for all the good it's doing them.

American taxpayers are funding a lavishly appointed hospital in which hundreds of child molesters and rapists can idle their days away. The annual cost to keep one person at Coalinga is about $200,000. Multiply that by the 1,500 men who would be in the hospital at full occupancy.

Whatever the hopes nurtured for the hospital as a therapeutic institution, it has become a well-upholstered holding pen for keeping America's least wanted out of sight. The men can vote, take tennis lessons, watch their porn videos, throw parties, have sex with other men at the hospital, play bass in a jazz combo. They just can't leave.

More states have signed up to the Coalinga model - including, recently, New York. If a lifelong country club-style internment is the price of keeping paedophiles off the streets, many appear to be willing to pay it.

COMMENTS

If paedophilia is a mental illness, and we accept that paedophiles are sick individuals who cannot control their actions, then we have to come up with a long-term solution to keep them away from children without locking them up in prison. We should consider how we treat murderers. If a murderer is insane, we don't put them in prison, we lock them up in a secure hospital. If they are incurable they stay there for life. It's not really a punishment, as you can't punish someone for being ill. Putting them somewhere safe and reasonably comfortable where they can't harm anyone seems like a fair solution for insane criminals of any kind who are a public danger. I shall watch the show with interest. Rev Sue Scottley, London, UK

Instead of pampering these violent sexual predators, they should be castrated, like Mr Lamb. Therapy isn't going to cure these men's' sickness, as it's a part of their make-up. It's like trying to cure being hetero or gay - it just can't be done. People cry "human rights", but what about the right of the victims not to be assaulted in the first place? Repeat offenders have no desire to stop themselves, as demonstrated in this article, so it becomes the legal system's responsibility to stop them. Charlie, Edinburgh

You have to consider how much a child's innocence is worth. It may seem outrageous to spend that much on a seemingly lavish lifestyle for repeat offenders with no signs of repentance after serving a jail term. People do not choose their sexuality, but it is also about controlling urges that are not acceptable. Surely the biggest worry is that most offenders do not realise or see anything wrong with what they think and do. Government schemes and policies already in place are failing our children, so maybe this is the only way forward. Natasha Buthee, Northampton

Are these men put to work in any fruitful way? Sloth is not good for anyone. If they do have a productive utility, the system could mitigate the costs incurred. I am glad they are kept off the streets. Paddy Flynn, Fort Lupton, CO, US

It seems there is a trade-off between our children's safety and the morality of providing such horrible people with such comfortable lives, in which they have easy access to images of children and pornography. They need far longer jail sentences, and castration should be compulsory for those who don't show signs of remorse and/or recovery. Obviously this is an extreme measure, but as one of the men above has shown, it works. Tom, Brighton, England

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/u ... 004064.stm

Published: 2009/04/17 10:35:40 GMT

[Psycho Bunny]

I watched the documentary last night. It was fascinating and is certainly a contentious establishment. It is an abuse of these people's rights to detain them there indefinitely, but as so many paedophiles reoffend, abusing the rights of children, and so many are accomplished actors (skills they need when grooming kids) it is hard to really know whether someone is really "cured". They probably never are cured, but some may be able to control their urges with monitoring.

You should be able to see the whole show on BBC iplayer. Worth watching, as it is certainly thought provoking. I was left wondering if the establishment was right or wrong. At least kids aren't being exposed to risk - of the very few people who have been cleared for release, one individual is still there. Eleven hundred places were reviewed for him over a year, but no place was suitable - either landlords did not want a convicted paedophile (he had undergone voluntary castration) or the places were too near to schools and family homes.

This link should work - ADSL required:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... edophiles/

[Ansar al-Zindiqi]

Thanks for the tip. I had a conversation with an old friend the other day who revealed that one of his brothers was a pedophile and how it had hurt his family. I am convinced that there is a neurological link to all this that may lead to future developments in understanding why some men have such a sexual preference for children. I don't know if the facility in Coalinga has medical staff that are equipped with fMRI machines but it would be worth a try to get everyone of the inmates scanned. In my view, allowing them to be so close to each other just permits them to network with each other on the outside once they are released and creates a resistance to any challenges to their assumptions and beliefs. Come to think of it, I wonder how many of the men in that place are Muslims. Already, this article has been commented upon very recently

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7006628.stm

[crazymonkie_]

There's definitely some sort of mental link, though even what it is (some say it's a pathology, others, it's a bunch of symptoms, others, that it's a disorder all to itself) is unclear. Hard to say if this method will be positive, since, as you said, it may allow them to network and be together (whether in a sexual way or more, um, 'professional'- pardon the term, it just came to mind).

[Chewchy]

It's my understanding that the vast majority of pedophiles were at some point in their young life, victimized themselves. Based upon this understanding, wouldn't it be better to give them the death penalty so they could never again victimize another child and eventually there will be no more children molested and abused therefore no more pedophiles after a time?

[crazymonkie_]

Sources?

[Psycho Bunny]

I don't know if the facility in Coalinga has medical staff that are equipped with fMRI machines but it would be worth a try to get everyone of the inmates scanned.

Because Coalinga is for people who have already completed their custodial sentences handed out by courts, the inmates are technically "free citizens" even though they are held against their will. In protest against this (for some) ad in denial of their problems (for others) only 30 per cent of people in the unit agree to undergo the "treatment" programs on offer. Therefore only a few people would probably agree to a brain scan.

Of these 30%, one wonders if they are really doing the therapy sessions to get "cured" or if they are doing at as a means to get out into the outside world again - where children live. Only people who have agreed to the therapy program can be released, and only a fraction of these are ever considered suitable for release.

[Psycho Bunny]

It's my understanding that the vast majority of pedophiles were at some point in their young life, victimized themselves. Based upon this understanding, wouldn't it be better to give them the death penalty so they could never again victimize another child and eventually there will be no more children molested and abused therefore no more pedophiles after a time?

Many paedophiles were - upon questioning - saying that they were molested as children. Whether they were really "molested" or if they were just trying to say "well I grew up with it" to somehow normalise and condone their own adult behaviour is unknown. But I do not believe all paedophiles were molested.

Look at our nearest relatives - bonobo chimpanzees. An unpleasant aspect of their lives is that males get to the female nucleus of the group to mate with females by first grooming and having sex with the infants belonging to those females. Paedophiles are - in the light of bonobo activity - potentially to be seen as "evolutionary throwbacks".

[crazymonkie_]

Though there is a difference there. For the most part (thankfully) bonobos don't hump their young. Bonobos hump a lot of things, but at least not their children.

[Psycho Bunny]

Though there is a difference there. For the most part (thankfully) bonobos don't hump their young. Bonobos hump a lot of things, but at least not their children.

But they do, and frequently. I remember a documentary on Channel 4 in the UK where there was graphic video footage of this happening in a wild colony.

As Dr. Frans de Waal (author of "Bonobo - the Forgotten Ape") states:

"Bonobos have a greater variety of sexual postures. The bonobos can do it any way they want – and they can do it face to face also. So positionally – so to speak – they have a richer repertoire. And their sexual behaviour is not just male to female. It's also female-to-female and male-to-male and male-to-juvenile."

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vin ... umans.html

[crazymonkie_]

Well I'll be dipped.

Wonder if that could just be evolutionary 'kitchen sink-ism', meaning life trying a bit of everything (as gross as it may seem to most) to see if something will work.

Anyway; learn something new every day.

[Stout Viking]

Pedophilia seems to have a special status lately. If at the beginning it was only regarded to as a crime, now it is also regarded to as a mental condition which creates a kind of loophole and somewhat removes the personal responsibility from the offender.

Admitting that Pedophilia is a mental condition is much like saying "It's not your fault! You're ill and the disease is causing you to do this!". This reminds me of the medieval attitude towards sins when sinners and clergy were putting responsibility for the sins on Satan. "Satan made me to it!" and if you pay and pray your sin will be forgiven.


There are indeed pathological to pedophilia but they're not always direct.
There are several types pedophiles and subtypes.
* Regressed — usually a one-time offender who feels inadequate
* Naïve — an offender who does view their act in terms of right and wrong
* Fixated/Preferential - offenders stuck in adolescence who claim to "love" children
* Opportunistic - offenders who will use children as a substitute to an adult sexual object
* Mysopeds - offenders who seek to hurt someone


I'll stop to discuss about the last three types:

The Fixated Pedophile clearly prefers children as sexual objects. He shows little to no interest in adults and seeing children in swimsuits at the beach acts like viewing the playboy to them. Some of them can restrain their urges to try and fit in and not cause suspicion and act quietly over a long period of time, while others hardly can keep a straight face at the sign of children.
These individuals often have additional complexes, such as communication deficiencies. They find it hard to communicate with other people, especially people their age. They have little to no friends and likewise of romantic relationships. These disorders could be organic and could be caused by environment (difficult childhood, traumas regarding other people and being victims of sexual abuse). They find communicating with children easier especially since many of them are infantile to some degree, having hobbies unfitting their age and they will try to befriend children or get their trust through these hobbies. "Wanna come to my place and play Nintendo?". Once getting the child's trust they could assault them shortly after or to manipulate the child into thinking there's nothing wrong in what's being done to them or even turn to extortion.


The Opportunistic pedophiles hold no distinctive preference for children as sexual objects but rather, like many of the Fixated pedophiles, have communicational difficulties and are incapable to approach adults and develop normal relationships with them. They're likely to be abusing authority to use children sexually (teachers / clergy / etc...) or simply adults who "date" adolescents (unlike prepubescent children) because it's easier to manipulate them and their hormone endorsed minds than of rational adults. They will often go for distressed teenagers and buy them off. They understand that what they do is wrong, they simply curtail their deeds and get to get the victims "consent" to the offenses and thus often will get lighter punishments.
Some will simply attack children or adolescents because they can and have the opportunity to (thus the name) and think they're unlikely to get caught.

The Mysopeds are probably the most depraved kind to be found. They don't prefer children as sexual objects, they will simply attack anyone who's in their path. Berserkers if you like. They have other urges than sexual and they're sadists. They'll rape, maim, torture and kill anything in their path be it a child, man, woman, elderly person, disabled or even an animal. They do it because they want to hurt someone, anyone, in any way, for the sake of causing pain, torture, humiliation and terror and feel powerful over them or to take revenge on society for something done to them in the past (or so they think). Some will clearly go for children because they find it difficult to take someone "their size" being physically unfit to assault a healthy adult. Other preferences for victims may be present but the motive stays put.
The best example to a Mysoped in criminal history is most likely to be Karl Panzram, tho he clearly preferred male victims of all ages and didn't bother with women. In his case it could be partially link to abuse he went to through as a child and adolescent. He raped, maimed and killed hundreds of people.
Their character is shifty and could range from "Berserker" to cold rational predator who will carefully plan his offenses before carrying them out and such often take many victims before caught - if at all.






Back to the idea of putting pedophiles in psychiatric facilities; It is like letting the offenders get away with carrying responsibility for their acts and thus exempt them of punishment and repaying their debt to society. If one offender will get away with punishment and simply be treated in some psychiatric "resort", all others will follow pressing charges to be excused from serving prison sentence and sign into a nice secluded senatorial residence, in the Swiss Alps if they can, and very likely it'll be paid for by the citizens.
Only the citizens will pay twice. According to majority of scholars and experts on the subjects (criminologists and psychiatrists), pedophiles cannot be "cured". They are more likely to act as expected from them during treatment and say/do anything their care takes would like to hear just to be off with it and back into society where they will continue hurting children.


Another problem missing out on the entire aspect of punishment and repaying the debt to society. Since ancient times offenders were demanded to pay for their crimes in this way or another. A punishment is a recompense for bad, immoral and depraved deeds which we refer to as crimes. Punishment has a role in human society. It is meant to deter potential offenders (or prevent previous ones from committing the acts again) and to let society avenge them by hurting them in some way and throughout the history of human society punishments appeared in the form of fines, imprisonment, beatings, organ removal and death penalty. The "Eye for an Eye" principle has a long tradition. Like in physics, where every action has a reaction, so must be it. It is unthinkable that someone will get away with punishment when found guilty and this is exactly what pedophiles will be doing if they will be recognized as "patients" instead of criminals.
The idea of punishment most common nowadays - imprisonment - is being depraved of all earthly pleasures and this is what prisons are for. No privacy, same sex cellmates, no alcohol, confinement, limited movement, limited to no communication with the outside world, disgusting prison food, lack of activity (although this parameter seems to be on decline) and most of all - plenty of time to think of what they had done that gotten them in there. How can we allow pedophiles out of all people to miss all that fun in this "theme park" their fellow thieves, drug dealers, gangsters, rapists, murderers and others go to?!



I don't mind. May they be sent to whatever psycho ward they like if they will also serve full time punishment afterward in prison. But it's unacceptable that they do it on taxpayers money. Money that the victim's family also pays. Money that could be used for better things like rehabilitation and treatment for victims. I say **** prisons too. These scum, along with the other, should be put in a work camp and slave for 15 hours a day or get disposed off like rabid animals.

[Ansar al-Zindiqi]

This one will qualify as a mysoped or more commonly a "violent pedophile"

http://www.allserialkillers.com/clifford_olson.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Olson

[ixolite]

Playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EwlEQo8 ... playnext=1

[Stout Viking]

This one will qualify as a mysoped or more commonly a "violent pedophile"

http://www.allserialkillers.com/clifford_olson.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Olson

Yup, that's a Mysoped. It seems insignificant but his senseless driving manner is adding to it. These people have no "aim" or "motive" in their deeds other than cruelty. There is no point keeping them alive, they're a danger to society and keeping them imprisoned is simply a waste of budget that could be invested in the non-depraved part of society.

[Aksel Ankersen]

It's my understanding that the vast majority of pedophiles were at some point in their young life, victimized themselves. Based upon this understanding, wouldn't it be better to give them the death penalty so they could never again victimize another child and eventually there will be no more children molested and abused therefore no more pedophiles after a time?

Dear Chewchy, there's a flaw in your reasoning. If it was a self perpetuating loop there would have been no pedophiles to start with, because they'd need earlier pedophiles to have molested them.

[Aksel Ankersen]

Look at our nearest relatives - bonobo chimpanzees. An unpleasant aspect of their lives is that males get to the female nucleus of the group to mate with females by first grooming and having sex with the infants belonging to those females. Paedophiles are - in the light of bonobo activity - potentially to be seen as "evolutionary throwbacks".

They may be our closest relatives, but we didn't evolve from them and there's no evidence that human kind was ever sexually akin to bonobos, humans tend to be more jealous, more like Pan troglodytes in that respect.

[crazymonkie_]

The idea that we're more jealous could just be a question of 'nurture' over 'nature,' though. That we *are* jealous is undeniable. That we're more jealous than bonobos? Questionable, to say the least.

Anyone have any peer-reviewed studies on this? I've got access to JSTOR, the MLA site and free inter-library loan.

[tobias malachi]

when we talk of paedophiles we are talking of sex with children that is babies up to pubity, these scumbags are incurable and will reoffend time and time again. They must be given whole of sentences and serve their time in special prisons working twelve hour shifts six days a week no pay no luxuries.

The bible tells us to forgive those who truly repent, these scum buckets are only sorry that they have been cought they will re offend at the first chance they are just full of self pity and no remorse for their victims