Law and Order: SVU surprises me

I wrote a piece for the National RSOL (Reform Sex Offender Laws) website: 

A friend asked me to watch this week’s episode of Law and Order SVU, a show I stopped watching years ago because its enjoyment of perversion–what awful crimes can we detail for our audience this week?–was disturbing. My friend told me this episode, “Collateral Damages” (season 17, episode 15), was about child pornography, so I expected the show to get the details all wrong. Television so often does. 

Stop reading now if you do not want spoilers. 

The episode begins with an undercover operation in which the cops set up a popular local celebrity so that he will commit a sex crime against an undercover cop posing as a girl “almost 16 years old.” In a bare few minutes, the celebrity meets the “teen,” tells her she is a bombshell, gives her alcohol, convinces her to pose topless for him, photographs her, and begins to unbuckle his belt. That’s when the cops move in to arrest him for producing child pornography and for attempted rape of a child. 

I rolled my eyes and settled in for more simplistic nonsense. Then the show gets interesting. 

The celebrity makes a deal to help the cops nail a “pedophile ring” in exchange for a lighter sentence. (The word “pedophile” is tossed around in the show in a facile way that makes it obvious the writers did not bother checking the definition.) He provides information that helps the cops identify IP addresses, and they move in to arrest several men. In a twist, one of the members of the pedophile ring turns out to be one of their own, the Deputy Commissioner no one likes. 

The Deputy Commissioner’s wife, though, is well-liked, and her work as a children’s advocate attorney is respected. She and her husband have two children. 

We watch as their home fills up with cops. We watch the cops take the husband and father away. We watch the confusion of the wife and kids. We watch as they are told to go to a hotel so the cops can search the apartment. 

I wasn’t rolling my eyes anymore. My heart was pounding. I remember this. 

I remember the chaos, the anger, the fear, the confusion. 

Law and Order gets the bad guy, as usual, but this episode, too close to real life, is not neatly wrapped up. 

To protect the children from the media firestorm, they are sent to live with grandparents. The wife is told to take leave of absence from her job. She moves to a hotel to avoid the press. 

The husband tries to kill himself. The wife wonders how she could have missed seeing that her husband was sick. 

The celebrity who actually did sexually assault kids? He will serve about six months. 

The Deputy Commissioner heads to prison for four years as part of a plea deal that includes heavy duty treatment and registration. His anguish and shame and self-disgust is obvious. This time it is clear that he, while disliked by the cops and while guilty of looking at child porn, is also a beloved father and husband. 

A good man whose family will suffer because of what he did. And his family is my family: collateral damage.

When TV shows begin to show the inequities in the criminal justice system and the effect on the families involved, change is on the way.

once and always

The sex offender registry is often touted as a way to protect children. Which children? Not the children who end up on the sex offender registry. In 2013, Human Rights Watch published Raised on the Registry, a report about children on the registry.

Throughout the United States, children as young as nine years old who are adjudicated delinquent may be subject to sex offender registration laws. For example, in Delaware in 2011, there were approximately 639 children on the sex offender registry, 55 of whom were under the age of 12. In 2010, Michigan counted a total of 3,563 youth offenders adjudicated delinquent on its registry, a figure that does not include Michigan’s youth offenders convicted in adult court. In 2010, Michigan’s youngest registered sex offenders were nine years old. A 2009 Department of Justice study, which focused only on sex crimes committed by children in which other children were the victims, found that one out of eight youth sex offenders committing crimes against other children was younger than 12.

For a child, the psychological impact of being on the registry can be devastating. Deadly, in fact.

Nearly a fifth of those interviewed (58 people, or 19.6 percent) said they had attempted suicide; three of the registrants whose cases we examined did commit suicide.

Josh Gravens, a young man who was on the registry beginning at age 13, talks about being labeled a sex offender. 

Three and a half years in Texas juvenile prisons and four years after that on parole, intensive and abusive sex offender “treatment.” While none of those things should be done to a child or adolescent, by far the worst penalty I experienced was being placed on the Texas Sex Offender Registry. I would not realize the life-changing consequences of being registered until I grew up and had children of my own. ...

Speaking from personal experience, I can say that once my juvenile record was public, there was no way to restore privacy protections. Even though I was removed from the public registry, my information was still readily available on for-profit websites. In this day and age, once online, always online. 

We warn kids about sexting because once online, always online and yet kids are listed on the registry with little thought about what that label will do to them.

jesse ryan loskarn's explanation

On YouTube, I saw a compilation of videos of terrible traffic accidents; I was shocked at the violence. Cars overturned, bodies thrown from vehicles, and all caught on camera. I started to turn it off but I returned to it. The next accident wasn't as bad so I kept watching. I didn't like watching but I watched for several minutes before stopping. Some of the videos go on for nearly an hour, accident after accident. (I couldn't find the video again to link to it; you can search for something like it yourself. I don't recommend it.)

Watching child porn must be something like that. An initial revulsion, subsequent curiosity, possible fascination.

A suicide letter left by Jesse Ryan Loskarn, a young man charged with possession and distribution of child pornography, talks about why he looked at child porn.

Everyone wants to know why. 

I’ve asked God. I’ve asked myself. I’ve talked with clergy and counselors and psychiatrists. I spent five days on suicide watch in the psychiatric ward at the D.C. jail, fixated on the “why” and “how” questions: why did I do this and how can I kill myself? I’ve shared the most private details of my life with others in the effort to find an answer. There seem to be many answers and none at all.

The first time I saw child pornography was during a search for music on a peer-to-peer network. I wasn’t seeking it but I didn’t turn away when I saw it. Until that moment, the only place I’d seen these sorts of images was in my mind.

I found myself drawn to videos that matched my own childhood abuse. It’s painful and humiliating to admit to myself, let alone the whole world, but I pictured myself as a child in the image or video. The more an image mirrored some element of my memories and took me back, the more I felt a connection.

This is my deepest, darkest secret.

There are many, many reasons someone might look at child porn. It is not hard to imagine that some are disgusted by the images but cannot look away.

Jesse Ryan Loskarn suffered so much shame from being discovered and outed that he killed himself.

The news coverage of my spectacular fall makes it impossible for me to crawl in a hole and disappear. I’ve hurt every single human being I’ve ever known and the details of my shame are preserved on the internet for all time. There is no escape.

On Althouse, the blog where I first read the letter, commenter Valentine Smith said,

He did the honorable thing, I'll give him that.

Honorable. How is it honorable to cause family and friends such grief over the death of someone they loved? How is it honorable to kill oneself without trying to atone for your wrongs?

How can it be honorable to be so deep in despair that suicide seems reasonable?

His family still suffers. His death doesn't diminish their grief; it only adds to the wild storm of emotions they must be feeling. They will never experience the joy of seeing him come out of his terrible agony.

I am sorry for Jesse and the torments that drove him to do what he did. I am sorry for his family and the torments they are left with. The only way to make such a sad situation better is to get through it.

In a world where Jesse's crime would have forever followed him by way of the sex offender registry, getting through it is difficult. In a world where people like Jesse are treated as if they have or will molest children, getting through it is humiliating and painful.

Jesse closes his letter with an apology:

And last, to the children in the images: I should have known better. I perpetuated your abuse and that will be a burden on my soul for the rest of my life. 

Ah, Jesse. Of course you should have known better. Sometimes people do bad things. Most of the time, those people can change their ways. I wish Jesse had been able to do that.

Jesse could have been a man who stopped looking at child porn. There is no shame in that.

There is honor.

persecution leads to suicides

Five recent stories, eight deaths:

• Fifteen-year-old Alabama boy hangs himself after getting into trouble for streaking at a high school football game.
• Iowa city councilman kills himself when he comes under investigation for possession of child pornography.
• Michigan father of five kills himself when he comes under investigation for possession of child pornography.
• Two charged with child porn and two under investigation (all from Tennessee) die in a murder-suicide pact.
• Ohio man accused of having child porn and plead not guilty to pandering commits suicide. (via eAdvocate)

When the threat of crushing public humiliation looms, too many decide suicide is the only way out or the surest way to keep from embarrassing their families and disappointing their friends.

How do we reduce that threat? Stop the public humiliation. Abolish the sex offender registry so offenders have a shot at a normal life when they finish serving their sentences. Stop treating sex offenders as if they are irredeemable. Stop treating sex offenders as if they are the most dangerous of all criminals. Speak up.

Churches should put their teachings about mercy and redemption into action by welcoming sex offenders. City councils should decrease the residency restrictions for sex offenders. State legislators should stop using sex offenders as the easy way to prove they are tough on crime. We should stop using the phrase "sex offender" to label a huge variety of offenses as if they are all equally bad.

I'd like to see people fight back when comments like this are made:

adios pervert .. now america dont have to pay for your prison life ..

I'd like to see a flood of responses to those comments, defending sex offenders. Yes, defending sex offenders. 

When the law encourages hatred and vigilantism, that law is wrong.

Laws that deliberately make life difficult for sex offenders are wrong.

When a law pretending to protect children results in fatherless children and a child dead of suicide, that law is wrong.

Abolish the sex offender registry.

why suicide?

This is not okay.

A city councilman in central Iowa killed himself only hours after detectives found child pornography on his home computer, a Story County sheriff’s official said Saturday.

This is what comes of the demonization of sex offenders: pointless suicides. Let's not let this one be pointless; let us learn from it.

Investigators also questioned [the councilman] that day about several images of nude boys found on the computer. Most images came from the Internet, but some may have been from local victims, Thomas said. [My emphasis.]

Of course they may have been from local victims! Were they? 

Sheriff's Captain Barry Thomas should be ashamed of himself for smearing the dead man's reputation with an accusation that has not even been made. If local victims turn up, deal with it then. In the meantime, we should remember that Sheriff's Captain Barry Thomas may have been molesting children himself just before he said that.

Why did this man think suicide was the only way out? I don't know. 

Maybe because he has heard the jokes about sex offenders. Why do we test on animals when the prisons are full of pedophiles? That's a real knee-slapper, almost as hysterical as the evergreen Don't drop the soap. 

Prison for sex offenders is more dangerous than for other criminals. Some people celebrate that fact. The irony? 

Inmates who are most threatening to sex offenders--because they think sex offenses are just that unforgivable--are themselves many times more likely to end up back in prison than the sex offenders. The jokes and threats about how sex offenders might be attacked in prison come from people who are more likely to be the victim of a robbery than to be the victim of a sex offender.

Maybe he committed suicide because he has heard people threaten to maim or kill sex offenders and he knows that he will probably be vilified as well. Maybe because he knows that sex offenders have been killed by vigilantes. 

Maybe because he knows that no matter how many years he might spend in prison, the truth is that being added to the sex offender registry is effectively a life sentence.

Perhaps this man committed suicide because he was ashamed of looking at child porn. People who want to stop looking at child porn have no safe way to ask for help; therapists and counselors are mandated to report them to law enforcement.

Put yourself in his shoes. Think of the absolute worst fantasy you've ever had about sex--the dirtiest. You're not the type to do that? Okay, think about even your cleanest fantasy. Now imagine it in a headline. Football coach fantasizes about wearing silky undergarments. Banker fantasizes about meeting the teller in a hotel room over lunch. College professor fantasizes about a steamy afternoon in her office with the student who wears sweater vests. How many of us would find life very difficult if our fantasies were in the headlines?

If this man had known that his suicide was not going to save his family and friends from knowing his humiliation and shame, perhaps he would have gutted it out. Perhaps he would have learned that a life made difficult by others is still a life worth living. 

Perhaps he would have become a better man. Evidence shows, in an article from a less sensational, more respectful article, that this was a good man. The worst thing we know about him--the worst thing we think we know about him--cannot wipe away the good he has done, the good man that he was.

(Updated to add link in final paragraph.)

Updated: Shelly Stow at With Justice for All has related thoughts about another case of suicide.

looking at pictures

A note from my husband:

There was a suicide Tuesday. A 75 year old took his cellmates medicine. He had a 15 year sentence and knew he was never going to get out. Same charge.

Fifteen years for looking at pictures! Using that phrase is seen as minimizing the crime and avoiding responsibility and our attorney hammered home the message that we should never say those words. It is impossible to avoid that phrase because looking at pictures was the crime.

Looking at pictures is what this man did and he paid with his very life. That's inhumane. Putting him in prison didn't decrease the supply of child porn images, doesn't stop the production of more. If there were a direct line between his looking and the people who produce the images, prosecutors would show us that connection but they can't. Because that line, that direct connection, is not there.

Someone out there will read this and scream supply and demand! Supply and demand does not work in child porn the way it works for iPods. If it did, prosecutors would be drawing diagrams in courtrooms, showing how this man looking at pictures motivated someone else--years ago!--to produce the pictures he looked at. There is no way to connect this man's Internet habit with someone who--tomorrow, next month--molests a child and makes an image of the molestation.

There are no diagrams. 

He was looking at pictures.

life and death at Canaan

Canaan, the high security federal prison in Pennsylvania, has been in lockdown since February 25 when an inmate allegedly murdered a correctional officer. Reports from the prison, through phone calls to family members, are that, in the unit where the CO was killed, the cells have been stripped of all personal belongings. Books, magazines, radios...all removed. Other reports say the prison will remain in lockdown until sometime this summer. There is cruel uncertainty for families and friends trying to learn if inmates are safe--from each other and from the angry and frightened correctional officers.

Canaan is a troubled prison.

Since the facility opened in 2005, more than a dozen inmates have been charged with assaulting correctional officers or attacking each other. In the last three years, three inmates have stabbed other inmates to death. The latest victim was 29-year-old Ephraim Goitom in January...

So far this year, inmates at Canaan have been especially ruthless, perpetrating the first inmate-on-inmate murder, the first assault on a guard with a weapon and recently the first homicide of an officer out of all the 114 facilities in the Bureau of Prisons...

On top of all that, the Canaan community is also mourning the death of a CO who killed himself soon after the funeral of the murdered CO. It sounds like a miserable place to work. 

"If you're not scared when you go to work, you're not right," one correctional officer said. "These inmates are there for a reason. If you don't watch your back, you're going to be in trouble."

Darrell Palmer, the president of the union representing correctional officers at Canaan, put it this way:

"Imagine what it would be like if you came to work and they put you in this cell block with 130 criminals and they gave you a set of keys and a radio and said, 'Run it.' And there's murderers, drug dealers, rapists and even terrorists. And you're going to deal with them for eight hours, five days a week. People in the public don't realize what it's like." 

Correctional officers often work alone at Canaan, leaving them vulnerable to attack. The murdered CO was working alone when he was killed.

It does not make sense, correctional officers and their union officials contend, to assign one guard per 100-plus inmate housing unit. But that has been the norm since 2005, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to assign only one officer to each cell block, instead of two, to save money. 

That decision has cost lives, some say.

The solution seems to be to put two COs on duty at a time. That's what the correctional officers union is pushing. They could be right but that is an expensive solution. 

Another idea would be to lower the prison population among Bureau of Prison facilities and spread inmates out so the COs aren't responsible for so many inmates at once.

Keeping non-violent offenders and first-time offenders out of prison if at all possible has a number of benefits: Fewer low-level criminals "graduate" from prison with an education in high-level criminal skills; fewer low-level offenders spend years isolated from society, making it harder for them to re-integrate when they complete their sentence. Fewer families broken up, fewer families in economic distress. More room in prison for those who do need to be there, a better workload for the COs, and a considerable cost-savings for the federal government.

Judging by the article linked above, which includes not even a hint that the inmates may have a perspective worth hearing, no one will consider the possibility of lowering the population of federal prisons. Especially not the correctional officers union...which benefits from hiring more correctional officers.

I challenge journalists to find the other side of the story: the inmate experience. Why is there so much violence in a single prison? 

incidence of suicide among sex crime defendants

According to the September 2009 Federal Probation journal, people who are charged with sex crimes are almost routinely released during the pre-trial phase of the case.

As a group, defendants charged with sexual exploitation charges are typically released at the pretrial stage at a higher rate than defendants with other types of pending charges. In 2006, for example, 53 percent of sex crime defendants were released prior to trial, primarily because they are assessed and classified—correctly, it turns out—to be at low risk for absconding or committing a new offense while on pretrial release.

The 2009 article says that studies of suicide risk deal mostly with people in jail; not much research has been done to learn how many people not in jail commit suicide when they are under investigation or charged with sex crimes but not in jail.

Although no nationwide estimates of suicide attempts or completions among federal pretrial sex crime defendants have been generated, the problem gained attention after several well-publicized suicides occurred in two California federal districts. From 2003 to 2005, the Central District of California experienced four separate suicides of defendants charged with possession of child pornography. In an eight-month span in 2008, the Northern District of California experienced seven suicides of defendants being investigated or charged with sexual exploitation (mostly possession of child pornography).

Seven suicides in eight months! This is shocking but even more shocking is knowing that there have been no nationwide studies to determine the frequency of suicide among people "investigated or charged with...possession of child pornography."


The Federal Probation article talks about what could be done to prevent those suicides--

...the U.S. Pretrial Services Office in the Central District of California created a program to protect defendants against self incrimination while managing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. The program was developed in collaboration with a mental health provider, the federal defender’s office, and the court. The program model/curriculum consists of five modules:

• Crisis Intervention

• Support (group sessions)

• Healthy Coping Skills

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• Keys to Successful Incarceration (prison preparation)

I suppose we should be grateful that California is doing something to prevent suicides among this group. I would be even more grateful if legislators would confront the question of whether a death sentence--seven suicides in eight months?--is altogether too much for possession of images of someone else's crime.   

everyday courage

My husband thought--and still thinks--about suicide. He thought that with him gone, our family would never have to face public humiliation, never have to deal with the restrictions of the sex offender registry, never have to visit him in prison. What we would have had to deal with, though, would have been much worse. He can come back from prison; there is no coming back from death.

A friend told me that her husband also contemplated suicide but when he realized that his suicide would increase the possibility of his children committing suicide at some point, he made the decision for life.

A first-degree relative -- a parent, sibling or child -- of a person who has committed suicide is four to six times more likely to attempt or complete a suicide...

 I watch my husband get out of bed every day, do what needs to be done, even though he thought death was a better place for him. Every day. That is courage. He was--and still is--facing the unknown. Every day, he does something that tells me he is serious about staying with us, serious about leaving porn behind. He attends therapy sessions, 12-step meetings, he reads books about sexual addiction and recovery, he continues to be husband and father. Is he perfect? Nope. Not even close. Am I? Nope. Not even close.

suicide

The first question our attorney asked my husband, "Are you thinking of suicide?" made me sure we chose well. The answer was "yes" as it is for too many men in his position. Try to put yourself in his position: Think of your absolute most private sexual fantasy and imagine it published in the newspaper. Perhaps your fantasy doesn't involve illegal images but are you willing to have even that made the subject of public attention? My husband faces much, much worse. I understand why suicide seems like a solution. If death comes before charges are brought, the family is spared the public humiliation. Of course, it leaves the family with something much worse but it is hard for people like my husband to to see that when all they can feel is overwhelming guilt and shame.

So far, my husband is still with us. Most of the time now, I think he is glad of that. I am glad all of the time.