Sex offenders not treated in prison until 18 months before release

By Katie Brown, Journal staff | Wednesday, March 07, 2007

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The South Dakota State Penitentiary does not treat inmates with tendencies to commit sex crimes until 18 months before they are paroled

David Kauffman, a consultant psychologist for the Department of Corrections, said the reason for waiting to provide treatment for sex offenders until 18 months before their parole is so their skills are fresh when they are ready to make the transition into the community.

“If you have a big test and study for it a year in advance, that doesn’t work,” he said. “If you treat them mid-way through their prison term, some of those skills may deteriorate.”

Kris Petersen, the DOC program director for sex offender management, said every inmate who comes into the state penitentiary, regardless of the crime, is evaluated for tendencies to commit sex crimes.

Petersen said several methods are used to determine the inmate’s risk to the community.

“We always are screening for people with sex offenses as they come through,” Petersen said. “If it’s a sex offense crime, we are notified of that right away and we start tracking them from the time they come in.”

As part of parole conditions, inmates who serve sentences for sex crimes are required to receive psychological treatment when they return to the community.

Kauffman said inmates must be accepted by a treatment provider before they are allowed to be paroled. In addition, they must be paroled to either Rapid City or Sioux Falls, the only cities in South Dakota with such providers.

“It’s a pretty tight process,” Kauffman said.

Professionals disagree about whether people with tendencies to commit sex offenses can be treated.

Kauffman said some sex offenders cannot be treated.

“Some people just aren’t good candidates for treatment because they are anti-social and because of their attitude toward society,” Kauffman said. “In those cases we look at using supervision.”

But Whitney Gabriel, executive director of the Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute in Oakland, Calif., said many people with sexual attraction toward children can be treated.

Gabriel said the goal is to treat them before they offend, but many who have already offended can be treated so it does not happen again.

“We look at what things we as a society can do to prevent these children from being abused,” she said.

Gabriel said the important thing is that people with any type of sexual urge toward children be evaluated and seek treatment.

“Often there are many obstacles to getting any kind of mental help treatment, and this having to do with sexual behavior makes it all the more difficult,” she said. “It’s hard to face that and find out if there is a problem or not.”

The institute does research based on adults who sexually abuse children as well as children who sexually abuse other children. Gabriel said researchers look at the earliest signs the people had that they might abuse.

“There’s a period of time when they are thinking about it but have not acted,” she said.

She said the institute advises parents and guardians of children who show signs that they might abuse to take the child in for evaluation.

Some of those warning signs include a child being overly attentive to much younger children (3 or more years younger), acting out sexually at school or home, having excessively sexually provocative behavior, attempting to get another child or adult nude, and using sexual language beyond his or her age group.

“Many times it’s nothing, just part of being an adolescent,” Gabriel said.

But sometimes the behavior leads to the diagnosis of a psychological disorder.

Gabriel said there are three main reasons people sexually victimize children. She said in about 47 percent of cases, the abuser was sexually abused as a child and continues the cycle. In the other 53 percent of cases, the abuser either has a spontaneous attraction to young children or became an abuser through accidental conditioning.

That means the person, usually as a child, experienced a sexual feeling while accidentally seeing an image that has nothing to do with that feeling. The person then becomes sexually attracted to the image. That escalates, and if the image is a child, it can often lead to sexually victimizing children.

Pennington County State’s Attorney Glenn Brenner said many of the child victimization crimes his office prosecutes start with less serious crimes and then escalate. For instance, someone might make lewd phone calls, then expose himself in public, then possess child pornography and eventually physically victimize a child.

Brenner does not believe offenders who victimize children are treatable. When stating his case at a sentencing, he does not want to risk another child being victimized.

“Nobody can see the future, nobody can make a guarantee someone won’t re-offend,” Brenner said. “But we can make the guarantee that no children will be harmed by an offender when that person is locked up.”

Gabriel said people sexually attracted to children should never consider themselves cured but can suppress any feelings with cognitive behavioral treatment and, sometimes, medication.

She said people with these feelings need to be re-evaluated throughout their lives, as many times a year as their therapist deems appropriate.

“We want people to know there are treatment providers out there when they or a family member are at the earliest stages of developing a problem,” Gabriel said. “The goal is preventing the cycle of abuse.”

She said when parents are talking to their children about sex and being safe from others, they should explain what is inappropriate.

“We recommend parents talk to their children about sex and give them guidance that they should never be thinking those thoughts about much younger people,” she said.

Therapists are required to report to law enforcement if a client identifies a child he or she has molested.

If a client says “I have sexual feelings toward young children,” a therapist has nothing to report. But if a client says he or she had sexual contact with an identified child, the therapist must report it.

Contact Katie Brown at 394-8318 or katie.brown@rapidcityjournal.com