Society’s Sex-Criminal Dilemma
“The person I know would never go and abduct a little girl ... in his right mind.” So Joseph P. Smith’s boss told NBC News about the mechanic charged with kidnapping and murdering 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in Sarasota, Fla.
Another of Smith’s friends, one of several who had identified him from the surveillance video, remarked: “I never would have thought he was capable, but then I read about his history. It’s a big pill to swallow.”
Most people, hearing such comments, probably would wonder how these men could be so gullible. I don’t. My husband’s best friend is a convicted sex offender.
My husband, Doug, and his friend -- I’ll call him Jack -- had been buddies since junior high; they hunted and fished together; they double-dated. Doug went on to become a college professor, and Jack, a physician. They kept in close touch, and their friendship endured over decades and distance.
After a stint in the Army during the Vietnam era, Jack established a thriving practice in a small Midwestern town. The only MD in the area, he was the kind of talented general practitioner such rural communities needed. He married a local woman, bought a farm of his own and settled into a “pillar of the community” role.
Then, 14 years ago, a complaint to the state medical board led to a criminal investigation. It turned up a pattern of sexual abuse of adolescent girls during gynecological exams. Jack had been the only doctor within a 100-mile radius who would provide gynecological services, including birth control, for teenage girls without telling their parents. Jack was convicted on 18 counts of sexual misconduct and sentenced to eight to 12 years in prison. New allegations arose, some of which were addressed in civil cases: that he had repeatedly fondled a young niece; that he had raped his wife’s younger sister; that he had committed incest with one or both of his now-adult daughters from his first marriage; that he sexually abused one of his infant sons.
Every charge, as Smith’s friend said, was a big pill to swallow. But the evidence was generally compelling. Doug had to admit that the charges were probably true. The most skillful sexual predators don’t advertise their perversion: Even his best friend might not know what a country doctor was capable of.
Jack has never acknowledged his guilt. Diagnosed as a “sexually predacious personality” and a “sexually dangerous person,” he is classified at the top of the scale as a Level 3 sex offender. Throughout his time in prison, he refused to cooperate in the mandated therapeutic program. Jack committed his crimes in one of the 16 states that allow for the civil commitment of dangerous sex offenders when their terms are up. After eight years, considering the severity of his crimes and the subsequent allegations, a judge sent Jack, against his will, to a state psychiatric facility.
The commitment of convicts who have served their time raises serious civil liberty issues. It means the state can keep them locked away indefinitely, not until they complete a term of punishment but until they are deemed to have been cured. Yet because sexual offenders are more likely to re-offend than any other class of violent criminal, this may be the only reasonable solution for certain sexual predators.
Smith is a case in point. Of his 13 prior arrests, one was an attempted kidnapping, another was an assault on a woman. Joey Brucia, Carlie’s father, justifiably complained that Smith “shouldn’t have been out on the street.” In this case, as in so many abductions and murders of girls and women, the system clearly failed.
The system fails offenders like Jack as well. One reason he didn’t cooperate with treatment in prison was that to do so could have been seen as admitting guilt, and he was at the same time (ultimately unsuccessfully) appealing his conviction. More important, the rehabilitation offered sex offenders in prison is demonstrably ineffective, given the rate of those who are released only to re-offend.
Jack was, as one of the jurors in his case remarked, “in every other respect” a gifted physician. His wife stood by him throughout his legal appeals, raising their five children and running herself into debt before finally divorcing him.
Doug too stood by him. It has not been easy. Repellent as Jack’s crimes are to him, he misses his friend of 50 years. You don’t just give up on your oldest friend. He wishes Jack’s therapists could get through to him. He wishes Jack were more cooperative in treatment. He wishes the system worked so that civil commitment was unnecessary.
It’s another bitter pill to swallow, sacrificing civil liberties for public safety: Until we find more satisfactory solutions than the flawed system currently affords, locking up offenders who show no evidence of reform is the one reliable way to keep crimes like the killing of Carlie Brucia from happening.
Mary Zeiss Stange teaches women’s studies and religion at Skidmore College.