In one week alone, Israelis were faced with news about allegations of sexual offenses committed by Rabbi Tau and the light sentence handed down to a Bedouin who invaded a home in southern Israel and assaulted a young girl in her own bedroom. Rarely a month goes by without reports of a new offense or updates on older offenses.
From an esteemed rabbi to a house invader out to rob a family, could there be anything that sex offenders have in common?
I spoke with Clinical Criminologist Dr. Yael Idisis asking her to share what it is like to work with sex offenders and to shed some light on the motivations behind their crimes.
Idisis, 66, is the Director of the Sex Offender Treatment Training Program at Bar-Ilan University. In the past, she worked with sex offenders in prison and now provides therapy to offenders in the community. She is often asked how she came to work with this particular population.
“When I was young, I never dreamed that I would work with sex offenders. I fell into it. It surprises me when my students tell me that what they want is to treat sex offenders. “
“I began in a mental health center, a forensic psychiatric unit, and, among other services, we treated individuals with psychological disorders who had committed crimes. As part of my duties, I conducted risk assessments for sex offenders in the prisons and with time, we began to offer them treatment, mostly group therapy. This is how I got into it. The question then is: why did I stay? After all, many did not.”
“I found it gratifying. Probably there was a personal aspect to this – it gave me a sense of control, perhaps imaginary, perhaps real. The whole subject was threatening to me – like many women, and also as a child, the idea of sexual crimes frightened me. So when I sit facing a sex offender I feel like a bomb disposal police officer whose job it is to neutralize the explosive device. This is one of the reasons, not the only one, that led me to stay in this field of therapy.”
“In addition, there are many high-quality professionals in the field, and working together with them provides an environment of professional development and growth.”
“Something I brought from my upbringing is the belief in the basic good in people, the belief that if we do good to others, it will result in “good.” Perhaps it is a bit naive, but I truly believe in that. I believe in giving people a second chance. Therefore, it suits me to work with a marginal population, with people others do not want to deal with, and to offer them help.”
When asked about the greatest challenge she faces in her work, she began, “if the purpose is to put an end to their criminal behavior, to help them live their lives in a way that will not cause harm to others, that is a professional challenge. We are trained to meet that challenge. In the end,” Idisis continues, “the choice whether or not to continue offending is in the hands of the offender. I can be the best therapist, but if he wants to cause harm, he will cause harm.”
A more personal challenge is positioning herself across from the offender. “When I have not met the person, when I have only read about what he did, at the personal level I can hate him, be disgusted by him, and all my aggressions toward him will come out – wishes that they’ll kill him, hang him. Thoughts of revenge that are related to fear.”
But when she sits with him as his therapist, she has to find a personal connection with him, to find some good in him, to like him. “And this is so that I can mobilize my energies for his sake. This is a huge challenge because many of these people are not ‘lovable.’ In fact, some of the reason that they commit sexual crimes is because they are not lovable and they do not know how to be in healthy relationships,” she says.
Idisis describes the social challenge regarding the need to explain to others why she does what she does. “People raise their eyebrows when faced with a sex offender therapist. I don’t think that clinicians working with sex trauma victims are asked why they chose to work with them; it seems quite natural to be there for them. Working with those who inflicted harm is not a natural choice.”
Idisis says that the goal in working with sex offenders is not to defend them or excuse their behaviors but to protect the public.
Question: What would you like the public to understand about sex offenders?
Idisis understands the need to punish sex offenders and the desire for their names to be published so that the general public will know who they are and will be able to keep themselves and others safe from them. However, “this would be ineffective. It pushes offenders to the edge and prevents their rehabilitation. My experience, and the research shows, that these people can be rehabilitated.”
Not all offenders are tried in a court of law and not all find themselves in prison. Some are offered special programs in the community.
“When provided with the appropriate therapy, and with clear boundaries, such as not allowing them to live in the same place where their victim lives, not allowing them to work with kids if they are pedophiles, giving medications that reduce the sex urge, and more, many of them do stop offending.” If community-based programs are insufficient for stopping the offending behaviors, then their place is in prison or a closed hostel. “The first condition is whether or not they can stop offending.”
Idisis continues, “Imprisonment is an important part of rehabilitation for many. They need to be punished for their crimes, they need to be distanced from those they hurt and from other potential victims, and imprisonment shows them that their behaviors are intolerable. It also provides a context apart from their daily lives within which therapy can most effectively be begun. Unfortunately, with a lot of money and a good lawyer, not all pay this price.”
“On the other hand, because it is well known that young offenders can learn criminal behaviors in prison, treating minors in the community is preferred.”
Returning to the subject of publicizing the offenders’ names on sex offender lists as exist in the United States, for example, she claims that it would, in many cases, hinder rehabilitation. “If we want to help them to live a life without harming others, we need to give them space within which this can happen. If they are harassed, if we label them, they have no chance to rehabilitate.”
Question: Why do they do it? What do they get from their harmful behaviors?
“The idea that uncontrollable sexual urges lead to sexual offenses is only a small part of the answer,” responds Idisis. “Sexual assaults are the result of a deep-seated need for human connection that they try to satisfy in a distorted fashion. They want closeness, intimacy, but their lack of relationship skills on top of a difficult life history leads them, under certain circumstances, to force themselves on another. Of course, most of those who grew up in traumatizing backgrounds do not harm others. But this is part of the story.”
“Then there are others for whom the sexual offenses are only a part of a repertoire of antisocial behaviors. These people, as well, were not born this way. Either they grew up in families characterized by antisocial attitudes or they developed a sense of entitlement because they were not given what they needed as children and they later decide to take what they want by force.”
“These explanations,” says Idisis, “do not excuse the offenses. However, if we understand the psychological motivations for their behaviors, we can treat them.”
“For example, an exhibitionist, someone who exposes himself to others – why does he do it? We assume that there is a psychological need that he does not know how to satisfy. He has a need to be seen, but this would not be the only way he acts out this. He may make himself stand out in other circumstances as well, and the need to be seen will be expressed in a number of ways, including sexually.”
Idisis explains that the psychological needs behind other kinds of sexual offenses will also find expression in various aspects of their lives. Most significantly, there is the inability to be in a healthy intimate relationship involving compromise and mutuality.
Question: What is the biggest challenge confronting the sex offender in therapy?
“There are those who have offended and are tortured by the fact that they harmed another person and do not repeat the offense. However, repeat offenders may not acknowledge, even to themselves, that they have a problem or that what they did is hurtful. Recognizing these two elements is the first important challenge they must overcome before they can be rehabilitated. Then they must be prepared to give up the habitual way in which they attempted to satisfy their emotional needs, something that for them may feel quite threatening until they have learned healthy ways to meet their needs.”
One of her patients came to an important realization: “After a particularly difficult experience, he felt the urge to use sex to quell the emotional turmoil, but then he realized that doing that would be like a thirsty man drinking seawater – he can drink seawater, but he would remain thirsty – and would be even more so. We are challenging the sex offender to give up the seawater when no other water seems available to him.”
Question: How many sex offenders succeed in overcoming the offending behaviors?
“The research tells us that the longer someone goes without offending, the less the chance that they will return to that behavior. Those who have undergone treatment and who have family support have a greater chance of stopping the behaviors. And family support means that family members know what the person did and they can talk about it.”
“I have had patients who described how their wives were extremely angry at them and weighed the possibility of divorce, deciding in the end to stay. Coping with the fall-out from the disclosure of the offenses strengthened their couples relationships and helped the offending spouse gain control over the urge to offend.”
“I was once very judgemental about this and could not understand how the wife could stay. Even now, with all my experience in treating sex offenders, it is still difficult for me to understand how the wife stays with a man who offended, especially against his own children. Perhaps we are so critical of the wife who still loves her husband and stays with him because it is a way to distance ourselves from such a possibility happening to us.”
“It is important to recognize that prison without therapy and without support is insufficient to prevent a person from re-offending.”
Idisis concludes by reminding us that the sex offender grew up under conditions that did not promote healthy development: “there was nobody there for him, nobody paid attention to his needs or helped him develop a sense of self-worth. One serial rapist I treated showed the extreme degree to which lack of self-worth can impact upon behavior. He said he raped rather than go to a prostitute (something, of course, that I cannot endorse either) because he believed that even if he paid her money, she would still not want him. By the way, his rehabilitation was successful.”
Question: The centrality of self-worth is an important point for parents and educators to know, not because everyone with low self-worth commits sexual offenses, but because it emphasizes how fundamental self-worth is to psychological health. Given that our topic now is sexual offenses, can you tell us how parents should respond when a child is found to have committed a sexual assault?
“First of all, they should tell their son – because it is usually sons — that they did not raise him to do such things. And that they are very angry, but will stand by him and make sure he does the work needed not to commit such acts in future. Too often, parents are in denial and promote denial in the son, vilifying the victim to avoid blame and responsibility. Parents are not to blame for what their son did, but they are responsible for helping him make amends and to change.”
