Feelings on Freed Molesters Hard to Put in One Sentence

Sometimes I wish I were more conservative of thought. Political and social conservatives I’ve known over the years (they’re everywhere, you know) seem to do much less teeth-gnashing about issues. As a result, they probably have much less heart trouble. How come they’re so sure of themselves?

Near the top of my list of Teeth-Gnashers is what society should do about paroled or freed child molesters who return to live in their neighborhoods. You don’t have to be a parent to worry about the question, but if you are, your concern is intensified many times over.

For many, the issue is a no-brainer. There would be no concern about the molester’s return to the neighborhood because he wouldn’t be returning to the neighborhood. His permanent address would be a jail cell.

That logic has a certain suasion to it: Unlike other criminal offenders who do their time and may never repeat, child molesters tend to be repeaters. None of us wants to play Russian roulette with children.

And yet . . . prison for life? Or, if returned to society after serving their time, should they be tagged forever? There was the case not long ago of the 71-year-old man in San Diego who was required to display a sign reading “Convicted Child Molester” in front of his home whenever he sat in the yard. Among the “traditional values” the traditional values folks often overlook is that people who have paid their debt to society in jail have done just that--paid their debt to society.

Michael Riskin wears three hats that makes him an ideal person to address the dilemma. He’s a psychotherapist with a family and child counseling practice in Santa Ana that specializes in sexuality and related issues. In the course of that, he has treated victims of sex abuse and estimates he’s counseled dozens of molesters over the years.

Second, Riskin is also a civil libertarian interested in the rights of individuals. The third hat he wears is that of a parent of two children.

During our conversation Tuesday, he succeeded in convincing me this is indeed a minefield. If we’re interested in preventing molestations, prison without therapy for offenders is probably useless, Riskin said.

Men molest children (or anyone who can’t provide what therapists call “healthy informed consent”) for two basic reasons, Riskin explained. They have a higher-than-normal sex drive that then combines with feelings of extreme inadequacy in forming a satisfactory sexual and emotional relationship with an appropriate peer.

What the public tends not to understand, Riskin said, is that a strong sex drive doesn’t all by itself turn someone into a molester. “Take the person who’s inadequate and feels he can’t deal with appropriate partners, but yet he doesn’t have much of a sex drive,” Riskin said. “They’re not molesting anyone.”

Riskin said he has given numerous talks to professional groups about the need for those two conditions both to exist before someone becomes a molester, and that the audiences are always surprised to hear it.

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The heartening news, Riskin said, is that he’s successfully treated molesters by bolstering their belief that they can form meaningful relationships with adults. He said a “significant number” of molesters could be minimized as dangers to society if they received adequate counseling.

But that’s a huge if and does little to address the question of how residents should treat a convicted molester who’s back in the neighborhood. Simply put, they have no way of knowing whether the molester has been treated or not.

“I wouldn’t call myself an enlightened liberal,” Riskin said, “but I can put myself in that frame of mind, and assuming he were there, I would educate and protect and defend my child with an extra special degree of care. The fact of the matter is, there’s a reality problem and you can’t ignore it. People say, ‘The guy has done his time and he’s been punished and he should be left alone.’ Sure, that’s real nice, but do I really want my son or daughter subjected to someone that I have no particular reason to believe is not as dangerous as he was the first time he went in” to prison?

While his libertarian leanings tell him a person shouldn’t be punished beyond incarceration, Riskin said, his therapist’s background tells him “that I know that no effective way of dealing with these people has taken place on a broad basis.”

And the inescapable bottom line, he said, is that the victims of molestation sometimes are irreparably damaged for life.

I was almost glad to hear Riskin is as torn as I. At minimum, he said, paroled or released offenders should receive ongoing counseling. He also said he would tell his children about any known molester who lived nearby.

Both of those proposals sound good to me, and yet the issue still seems unresolved.

Maybe I should start listening to Rush Limbaugh. I’m sure he has this all figured out.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.