THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506250160
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLAND, VA. LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
When a hostile blond man in sunglasses and headphones showed up at Virginia's first prison treatment community for sex offenders last year, the other sex offenders steered clear. The guy acted dangerous and mean, even for prison. They gave him a nickname: ``Psycho.''
Last week, after a year of living, sleeping, eating and undergoing therapy with him, they sat in a circle of chairs and told him he hasn't progressed enough in his efforts to stop viewing women as objects.
``But I take care of them, too,'' protested the man, now called Jack.
``Jack,'' sighed Cliff Roberts, serving 36 years for abduction, forcible sodomy and armed robbery. ``So what? You take care of your car, too.''
The Bland Therapeutic Community for Sex Offenders - a compound of four double-wide trailers set apart from the general population of the Bland Correctional Center - houses 48 convicted rapists, pedophiles and exhibitionists. In the spring of 1994, they came from prisons across the state to the facility west of Roanoke.
All applicants to the intensive group therapy-oriented program were required to own up to their crimes in order to be considered. Their goal - and the goal of the program - was to prevent repeat offenses. The program was supposed to last two years. But this week, it will end, after only one. The men don't know what will happen to them next. They fear they will be scattered throughout the system, where treatment is limited.
Ordered by legislators last year to cut $40 million from the Corrections Department's $460 million budget, Director Ron Angelone decided the $220,000 price of running the treatment community wasn't worth the money.
Angelone, a ``get-tough'' administrator recruited from Nevada in 1994 by Gov. George F. Allen, has maintained that treating sex offenders does not change their behavior. His position is backed by a 1989 analysis of the 55 recidivism studies that existed up to that date. The analysis, by Wisconsin psychologist Lita Furby, concluded that ``there is no evidence that treatment effectively reduces sex offense recidivism.''
But Furby noted, ``Treatment models have been evolving constantly, and many of those evaluated in the studies reviewed here are now considered obsolete. Thus, there is always the hope that the more current treatment programs are more effective.''
Recent studies suggest they are. Among them:
A Department of Justice report citing statistics that, without some form of therapy, 80 percent of sex offenders repeat their crime. That compares with a recidivism rate of 35 percent for other types of offenders.
A 1991 study tracking recidivism among 406 pedophiles, 111 exhibitionists and 109 sexual aggressives treated at the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic in Baltimore, Md. More than 90 percent of those treated did not re-offend over the 5-year-plus period studied.
A study commissioned by the Canadian government following a 1990 rape and murder by a sex offender who left the residential facility where he was being treated. After analyzing 20 years' worth of European, Canadian and American studies on the subject, a panel led by the country's solicitor general concluded that treatment programs cut the rate of re-offenses by half.
Participants at Bland say the progam changed their lives. For most of them, it was a first chance to talk about their crimes. Because sex offenders are shunned and tormented in the general prison population, they tend to keep quiet or lie about what they have done.
``This is the first time in my life that I've finally been able to get a picture of what all was really wrong with me,'' said an inmate named Ricky who who was sentenced to six years for sodomizing his 7-year-old nephew in Arlington.
``If I had just served my time, I would have stayed hard and cold. I wouldn't have gained any knowledge. I wouldn't have learned about empathy, and how I violated trust.''
Jack, the inmate nicknamed ``Psycho,'' had a similar experience. When he started the program, he said, he saw nothing wrong with the fact that he had sex with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. In fact, he felt the child had seduced him.
``That was my way of relieving the responsibility,'' he says now. ``Of making it not seem so bad.''
In an unusual effort to save the program, the inmates filed a petition in March asking the U.S. District Court in Roanoke to issue an injunction preventing the state from closing it. The petition was denied. Last week, they sent a letter to the governor urging him to change his mind.
``The cost of the program for one year will be recouped by not having to pay the expense of the arrest, trial and incarceration of a repeat offender,'' they wrote. ``More importantly, there would be a citizen of this commonwealth who would be spared the excrutiating pain of becoming a victim.''
But Allen remains unmoved.
``They'll have to heal thyself. Thyselves,'' he said this week.
``I'm not going to be wasting taxpayers' money on programs that sound good, may make people feel good, but don't do anything but waste taxpayers' money.''
DOC officials have estimated that closing the community at Bland will save the state almost $1 million. But program advocates maintain that figure is inflated because it includes start-up costs for Bland and a second sex offense treatment community that never got off the ground. Now that supplies have been purchased and the compound has been built, they say, the annual cost of running the program is closer to $220,000.
No matter what it costs, experts say, the state's decision to close the Bland program is shortsighted. Ultimately, said Jerome Miller, director of an Arlington clinic that treats sex offenders and their victims, the closure will increase the number of sex offenses in Virginia.
``It's a poorly motivated policy because it will backfire,'' said Miller.
``A lot of these offenders, you don't cure them. They'll be bothered with impulses much of their lives. But you can teach them how to manage those impulses, the same way you manage a chronic medical condition like epilepsy or diabetes. They can learn what to do when they're vulnerable.
``Just throwing them in prison generally enhances their deviant fantasies. It just makes their fantasies more bizarre, and when they come out, they're loaded for bear.''
Robert Freeman-Longo, co-director of the Safer Society Program, a national sex-offense research group in Vermont, has a name for policies that favor stiffer sentences and more prisons over treatment.
``I call this `feel-good legislation,' '' he said.
``You close programs, you build more prisons, you make stiffer penalties. But there are no studies that say stiffer penalties are a deterrentto sex offenders. So what you have is an option to treat or not to treat.''
``We need to be interested in what causes this level of violence, whether it's sexual violence or any other kind of violence. We need to look at what causes people to not develop a conscience. Because these people don't. They don't get past looking at their own pain. They get stuck in rage, loneliness, shame, inadequacy. And then we isolate them.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
VICKI CRONIS/Staff
Participants in the Bland Sex Offender Treatment Community embrace
after a morning therapy session. Their discussion, which lasted
several hours, focused on accountability for their crimes and
empathy for their victims.
Sex offenders came from prisons across the state to live in the
compound of double-wide trailers set apart from the general prison
population at Bland Correctional Center.
Photo
VICKI CRONIS/Staff
Bland Treatment Community inmates had a party June 14 to commemorate
the end of the program.
KEYWORDS: SEX CRIMES SEX OFFENDERS TREATMENT
PROGRAMS by CNB