Treatment Urged to Prevent Molestations

Orange County communities several times recently have wielded Megan’s Law and forced child molesters out of town.

After protests focused attention on their whereabouts, convicted molesters Sidney Landau and James Lee Crummel both landed back in jail, Landau on a parole violation and Crummel on new molestation charges.

But focusing public fury on just one or two molesters pulls attention from progress that could be made to stop child abuse, experts say.

The study of pedophilia is relatively new, but much is known about the traits and childhood experiences that most likely set in motion the deviant obsessions and compulsions.

Understanding those factors, experts say, means society can treat some pedophiles and prevent child sexual abuse, not just react to child molestation.

“There is a time in a child’s life when his wires can get crossed,” said Dr. Jerome Miller, executive director of the Augustus Institute in Baltimore, where he treats pedophiles. “It differs from person to person, but it’s part nurture, and nature is certainly a part of it, as is timing.”

Experts have found most pedophiles were themselves molested; they experienced extreme sexual repression at home--learning that sex is a taboo subject, had weak emotional bonds with their parents and developed a strong sense of alienation in general.

While not all children who share these experiences grow up to become pedophiles, most child molesters share them, experts say.

Although stressing there is no known biological cause for pedophilia, researchers found an extra X--or female--chromosome, called Klinefelter’s syndrome, in a significant number of pedophiles. Its effect on sexuality, however, still is being researched.

Also common to pedophiles is early exposure to sexually inappropriate experiences, such as witnessing sexual abuse or sexual intercourse.

“Kids can be exposed to certain things that they’re just not ready to handle in that phase of their development,” Miller said.

But if one extreme--inappropriate, early exposure to sex--is bad, repression of a child’s sexual curiosity may be worse.

The prime suspect in sexually deviant behavior is excessive repression of normal childhood sexual curiosity and play and then excessive punishment for being caught, Dr. John Money, a professor of medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, wrote in his landmark book, “Love and Love Sickness.”

At the Augustus Institute, Miller said that almost to a man, the molesters he treats are prudes. Most grew up in sexually repressive, often strictly religious homes and sex was a forbidden topic.

The worst sex offender he treated, a man who had abducted several boys and killed one, was raised in a Christian fundamentalist household where he was taught that sex was dirty.

His parents spanked him if he talked about sex and “soon, all of the sexual things in his family were tied to spankings,” Miller said. “By age 13 he found himself having an orgasm when being punished,” and he could not say “penis” without blushing.

The profile of molestation victims, in cases where molesters seduce--not attack--children is close to that of their molesters.

“Child molesters tend to sense kids who are very needy and might need the affection and adult attention they’re not getting,” said Dr. Frederick Berlin, also at Johns Hopkins University. “Often their victims come from broken homes or are the classic cases of loners.”

Girls are victims of molestation more than 90% of the time if the definition includes non-touching behaviors such as exhibitionism, but boys are the victims 62% of the time when touching is involved, according to Dr. Gene Abel at Emory University.

Only about half of 1% of convicted child molesters are violent; the majority prefer to gain a child’s confidence and attempt to have a romantic relationship.

For example, the story of Sidney Landau, the twice-convicted molester pushed from Placentia to Fullerton before landing back in jail on a parole violation, is the story of a seducer, according to his brother.

He said Sidney always was attracted to boys, even when he was young.

“He’s never attacked anyone or been violent at all,” his brother said. “He always wanted to have a relationship and probably thought that they loved him too.”

Landau’s brother, who spoke to The Times in an interview arranged by Landau’s lawyer, asked that his name not be used.

Their father, the brother said, was an Orthodox Jew, a strict man who would not discuss sex.

Because pedophilia develops before adolescence, someone attracted to children often believes it will be outgrown, Berlin said.

“If he’s homosexual, he starts to think he’ll grow up to be gay and thinks that the age he’ll be attracted to will grow up with him,” Berlin said, “but it doesn’t.”

Many experts agree that treatment works, particularly for adolescent pedophiles.

Adolescents account for about half of all child molesters and stopping them would save untold numbers of children from abuse. Abel noted a 10-year gap typically exists between someone’s first molestation and their arrest.

Because of that gap, locking up pedophiles forever does not stop child molestation, experts said. Treatment is also needed.

“If the crime-and-punishment model worked, we wouldn’t still have an epidemic of child sexual abuse,” said Robert Freeman-Longo, co-author of the forthcoming book “Sexual Abuse in America,” who treats adolescent pedophiles.

The problem is that people don’t know where to go for help. “If you think you have an alcohol problem, you know where to get help . . .,” Freeman-Longo said. “But where in the hell can you turn to if you think, ‘My gosh, I’m having this urge to molest children?’ ”

Treatment ranges from the radical approach of chemical castration to group therapy.

“We would treat a pedophile much like an alcoholic,” he said, referring to group therapy. “There are many reasons people drink, but the bottom line is they give in to an unacceptable temptation.

In therapy, pedophiles are taught to identify the thinking and rationalization that supports their behavior. They are taught social skills to pursue adult relationships, and they learn to empathize with their victims, among other lessons, Freeman-Longo said.

But he and other experts readily acknowledged that popular acceptance of treatment for pedophiles is not on the horizon.

“Right now we can’t do anything about child molestation because we’ve just demonized these folks,” Berlin said. “We take all the humanity out of the human being and have this faceless monster so that it’s OK to do anything we want to with them.”