Beans and Cornbread D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
October 2009
Sex Offenders
Page: 2He describes a small program in the Oklahoma penal system that seems to working, in which all of the sex offenders statewide are kept in one facility. "They are only allowed to go if they agree to counseling and treatment."
New Mexico does have a small pilot program for those who commit sex crimes, which is located in Las Vegas, NM, but its occupancy is only 24 at this time.
All sex crimes are about power, Cathey adds, and not about a sexual act itself. He feels strongly that many offenders are sex addicts, and that crimes arising from this issue can often be based on lack of acceptance or failed relationships, especially for those who attack children. They often have a history of being rejected by adults their own age, and turn to preying on the vulnerable.
For some New Mexico families, however, Cathey says being sent to prison — for sex crimes or other offenses — is a sort of rite of passage. He recalls being called to the visitation room one time to assist a woman visitor who was distraught upon visiting her son.
"She was crying, but it turned out to be tears of joy," he remembers clearly. "I took her to a side office to visit with her, and she told me that she was happy because now her son had become a man. He was 16."
Cathey says that he has seen this in many other families, where two or three generations in a row will have prison records.
Women, of course, are often the victims of sexual predators, but women can also be victimizers themselves or accomplices to men who commit sex crimes.
On the New Mexico registry of sex offenders, only 12 of the people listed and pictured are women. In part this can be explained by the fact that even though women have the capacity to commit such crimes, "they have the extra restraining factor of cultural female norms and genetics, which make them more aware of the consequences of their actions, both for themselves and their victims," according to an article by Phillip Hodson, a fellow of the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy.
Hodson writes, "What tends to be true is that even if a woman has the capacity for atrocities inside her, the catalyst to bring those behaviors to the surface often seems to be the presence of a man who lacks the imagination to empathize with his victims or restrain his desire for power and sexual or violent gratification. Women who abuse are less unusual than we might like to think. Men tend to be the more common abusers, especially of children, but when a woman does do it, they often do it horribly. Often it seems to be about anger rather than sexual or power gratification. The anger could be due to her resentment that her charismatic man, as she sees him, wants someone else."
Types of sex crimes by New Mexican women vary, but few in the registry are recent offenders.
Dr. Dana Greene is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. An advocate of prison reform, Dr. Greene is also a skeptic about the sex-offender registry.
"It is antithetical that we as a nation espouse as the root principles of crime and punishment the restructuring of the powers of government and individual rights," she says. "So, the registry system doesn't have harmony between the government and the rights of individuals.
"An analysis of the principles of the registry is disturbing: It is punishment using false statistics saying that an individual will reoffend in the future. The registry is used to feed an emotional need, and it also has the effect of cultivating vigilantism."
Greene goes on, "It seems unclear about what people imagine the point of registration to be. Instead of offering programs to educate parents (in particular) about offenders and having programs for children such as the buddy or whistle system, we don't give people the tools to help them learn of other ways to deal with the issue."
Greene does agree strongly that false figures about sexual offenses arise from plea bargaining, adding that all states do that. But she goes on to pose the question of why those who are convicted of DWI don't have their cars marked, much the way sex offenders are stigmatized, showing that they are DWI criminals.
"It is very foolish to marginalize people who have problem with emotional control," she says, "and by using the registry, we think we are doing something to make the lives of children safer, and in fact, we are not."
Much of what Greene says can be applied to the recent case of Phillip Garrido, who even as a registered offender in California was able to keep a kidnap victim his prisoner for nearly 20 years, in spite of visits by authorities and occasional complaints by neighbors.
In any case, Greene says, any solution that would see a decrease in sex-related crimes is a long way off.
At the time Linda told me about the incidents with her father, she was in counseling for help with the emotional toll that her earlier marriage had taken on her, which was certainly compounded by earlier incidents. She was diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and the ramifications of these problems infected our relationship. I went to counseling with her for quite a while, learning how to deal with these issues, combined with my own problems of the time. It helped a lot, but only for a time.
She was able to have her parents attend several counseling sessions, wherein her father had the gall to defend his actions. Her mother chose the path of denial, thus allowing her to stay in the financial arrangement that her marriage offered, despite being loveless, deceitful and filled with tension.
My relationship with Linda lasted only a few years before her issues raised their ugly heads again. She decided to try taming them on her own.
I've not heard from Linda in many years, but recently, I discovered her on Facebook. I saw that she has remarried, still has the same thin but warm smile, and this intelligent, kind and beautiful woman still has that shock of flaming red hair that attracted me like a moth to the light.
Looking at her picture, I was able to smile and remember many good and wonderful things about our time together. But I also still carry guilt for some bad judgment on my part, as the phrase "my conscience still echoes your name" runs through my head.
Today I wonder what we might be doing now if she had not had to say, "He touched me."
As Dodson concludes his article, "Some people are, in the old-fashioned lingo, evil."
Victims of sex crimes, past and present, can find information on help of all kinds at the New Mexico Clearinghouse on Sexual Abuse and Assault Services, (505) 883-8020, online at pages.swcp.com/nmcsap To check your neighborhood for registered sex offenders, visit www.nmsexoffender.dps.state.nm.us.
Senior writer Jeff Berg lives in Las Cruces.