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November 20, 2002
News
Specialist Shelley Osterloh reporting
The issue
of child sexual abuse has been a tragic one this year, with
reports of abuse by clergy members and numerous child kidnappings.
We wanted to learn more about how child molesters think --
and if therapy and rehabilitation work.
The numbers
are overwhelming. At the Utah State Prison, there are 1400
sex offenders serving time, and most of them, 900, have abused
children.
The prison allowed us to speak with two convicted pedophiles
-- they are doing well in the prison's sex offender therapy
program, and they provide a rare look into the mind of child
molesters.
The prison
says child sex offenders tend to be less violent inmates.
When it comes to their crimes, they persuade, groom and manipulate
their victims with kindness and trust. They are all ages and
professions.
"There are some that have one victim that offended against
them one time. There are some that have done it for 20 or
30 years, and have upwards of 400 to 1,000 victims,"
says Dr. Ron Sanchez, director of the Utah Sex Offender Treatment
Program.
Sanchez
heads up the Sex Offender Treatment program at the Utah State
Prison. It's an 18-month program designed to help inmates
understand why they offended, take responsibility for their
crime, and find ways to keep from doing it again.
"That's the purpose of doing treatment, to break through
the minimization and denial about the seriousness of what
they've done," Sanchez says.
We'll call this man Ben. He's 39 years old and has been convicted
of sexually abusing many boys between the ages of 9 and 12.
"Through therapy, the therapy program, you learn thinking
errors, and some of them are rationalization and justification,
and you learn how we use those as sex offenders. We use those
to make our crimes OK," he says.
This man, we'll call him Craig, is 29 years old, serving one
to 15 years for sexually abusing his 5-year-old stepdaughter
and another girl.
He says back then he made poor moral choices, abused drugs
and alcohol and was heavily into pornography.
"You can never have enough. Very selfish, very just,
a hateful type of person," he says.
Therapists try to help offenders take responsibility for their
crimes, and learn to feel remorse and empathy for the victims.
"Oh, it's gut-wrenching," Ben says tearfully. "It's
almost impossible to describe how horrible I feel about what
I did."
"I would really want her to know that I am completely
responsible for what happened to her," Craig says. "She
did absolutely nothing to deserve what I did to her."
Therapists and the parole board say they listen for that kind
of remorse when they consider releasing sex offenders.
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